Wednesday, February 19, 2020
Tuesday, February 18, 2020
Why Did President Trump Expand the Travel Ban?
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| The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June 2018 that the U.S. president has the authority to issue travel bans as part of his duty to protect American citizens. Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf (right), arguing for the administration, opined that it is only logical that any people applying for a visa to the U.S. be properly vetted. (Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour) |
- General justifications for the travel ban include: poor vetting of travelers to the U.S. by the restricted countries; an unwillingness on the part of those countries to share personal data on would-be visitors to the U.S.; and the refusal to accept the return of their nationals if expelled by U.S. authorities.
- Kyrgyzstan made the travel-ban list largely because of its lax passport issuance, which has caused a global glut of false Kyrgyzstani passports used by criminals and terrorists to enter Eurasian countries. Kyrgyzstan is also notable for its poor counter-terrorism efforts.
- The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June 2018 that the U.S. president has the authority to issue such travel bans as part of his duty to protect American citizens. The ruling also determined that the first list of countries placed on the restricted visa program in 2017 did not constitute a "Muslim ban," as North Korea and Venezuela were also included.... Eritrea has more Christians than Muslims. Myanmar is almost entirely Buddhist.
- Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, arguing for the administration, opined that it is only logical that any people applying for a visa to the U.S. be properly vetted.
There are general and specific justifications for U.S. President Donald Trump's January 31 order to add Nigeria, Tanzania, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Sudan and Myanmar (Burma) to the list of seven other countries -- Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen -- subjected to a restriction on travel to the United States.
General justifications for the travel ban include: poor vetting of travelers to the U.S. by the restricted countries; an unwillingness on the part of those countries to share personal data on would-be visitors to the U.S.; and the refusal to accept the return of their nationals if expelled by U.S. authorities.
General justifications for the travel ban include: poor vetting of travelers to the U.S. by the restricted countries; an unwillingness on the part of those countries to share personal data on would-be visitors to the U.S.; and the refusal to accept the return of their nationals if expelled by U.S. authorities.
Although each of the additional six countries added to the list will be subjected to restricted travel – as of February 22 -- Sudan and Tanzania also will be ineligible to participate in the State Department's "green card lottery" program.
The specific justifications for each of the six new countries added to the travel-ban list can be broken down as follows:
Nigeria
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is concerned by the large number of Nigerians who overstay their visas. In 2018, this number was estimated at 30,000. In addition, according to DHS, Nigeria fails to cooperate adequately in efforts to apprehend Nigerian criminals who abscond to and seek safe haven in the U.S.
Nigeria is the country that will suffer the most from the travel ban if it does not satisfy U.S. security concerns. Many Nigerian workers -- green card holders legally employed in the U.S. -- send money back home to their families. The World Bank estimates that remittance funds from the Nigerian global diaspora amount to about $25 billion.
Nigerians make up the largest immigrant group in the U.S. from Africa. At a joint February 4 press conference in Washington with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Nigerian Foreign Minister Geoffrey Onyeama agreed to address all American security concerns, to avoid being subjected to the travel ban.
Tanzania
Tanzania is on the travel-ban list for three main reasons. First...
The specific justifications for each of the six new countries added to the travel-ban list can be broken down as follows:
Nigeria
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is concerned by the large number of Nigerians who overstay their visas. In 2018, this number was estimated at 30,000. In addition, according to DHS, Nigeria fails to cooperate adequately in efforts to apprehend Nigerian criminals who abscond to and seek safe haven in the U.S.
Nigeria is the country that will suffer the most from the travel ban if it does not satisfy U.S. security concerns. Many Nigerian workers -- green card holders legally employed in the U.S. -- send money back home to their families. The World Bank estimates that remittance funds from the Nigerian global diaspora amount to about $25 billion.
Nigerians make up the largest immigrant group in the U.S. from Africa. At a joint February 4 press conference in Washington with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Nigerian Foreign Minister Geoffrey Onyeama agreed to address all American security concerns, to avoid being subjected to the travel ban.
Tanzania
Tanzania is on the travel-ban list for three main reasons. First...
Utah Republicans Consider Calling for Romney to “Immediately Resign” After Sham Impeachment Vote
After Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) voted to impeach President Trump, the Utah Republican Party is considering three different resolutions in response, including one which calls upon the lawmaker to “immediately resign,” according to Utah’s KUTV.
Steven Clark, chair of the Sanpete County GOP, drafted the non-binding resolution calling for Romney to step down immediately, claiming the lawmaker has had a “vendetta” against Trump.
“I feel like Mitt Romney has betrayed the party, betrayed the voters,” Clark said. “I think he’s had a vendetta against Trump from the beginning. I think his actions have done significant damage to the party.”
The other two resolutions being considered include one expressing support for Trump’s acquittal and another supporting legislation to recall a U.S. senator.
GOP activist Brandon Beckham, who previously called for the party to censure Romney, drafted language for the resolution supporting Trump’s acquittal and said, “We want to express our disapproval of that vote.”
Beckham wants the GOP to declare it “strongly disagrees with the vote cast,” and urge “all Utah elected Republicans to work with President Trump to implement the conservative policies of the America First agenda that are helping our country succeed.”
Romney’s vote enraged many in the Republican Party, with Donald Trump Jr. calling for his expulsion from the GOP.
“Mitt Romney is forever bitter that he will never be POTUS. He was too weak to beat the Democrats then so he’s joining them now. He’s now officially a member of the resistance & should be expelled from the @GOP,” Trump Jr. wrote on Twitter.
A recent Rasmussen Reports survey has found many Republicans do not approve of Romney (64 percent) with a great deal wishing to see him expelled from the party (39 percent). Only 43 percent disagree, and do not want to see him pushed out of the GOP.
“Mitt Romney was the only Republican senator who voted guilty last week on one of the impeachment counts brought against President Trump by House Democrats. Many Republicans were furious at Romney, and a sizable number of GOP voters are ready to...
Why Everyone Should Cheer That Roger Stone’s Corrupt Prosecutors Resigned
The prosecutors who attempted to deceive the court and their DOJ superiors all resigned in a huff. Let’s hope the door hit each of them in the backside as they stormed out.
I spotted the young lady who later became my first college girlfriend as I rode my mountain bike across the University of Kansas campus. She offered me a brochure from her post behind a folding table. It featured the image of a candle with barbed wire.
Our first date, an Amnesty International meeting, began with a volunteer passing around profiles of political prisoners. We each chose a case that moved us and then wrote a letter to senior government officials who could address the injustice.
It was no small matter, the coordinator told me, for a foreign official to receive a letter from an American addressed to him personally. The mere fact that we could identify the persecuted by name might shame the official into reviewing the case.
In 2020, I find myself wondering whether a college student in a distant country at an Amnesty International meeting might select the profile of Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, or Michael Flynn. All of these committed the unspeakable crime of helping Trump win an election.
Flynn and Papadopoulos were guilty of nothing until FBI agents got them talking long enough to find a mismatch between secretly recorded conversations and their targets’ failing memories. Manafort’s tormentors use torture through solitary confinement, violating international human rights standards. Everyone knows politics motivated the viciousness with which U.S. prosecutors pursued these men.
If an international student were writing to seek justice for Stone, she would write the letter directly to Donald Trump, the president of the United States. The president has two constitutional powers that authorize his intercession to stop the persecution of a political dissident, which Stone absolutely is.
First, as I’ve written before, Trump is the head of the executive branch. The Department of Justice is not an independent branch of government. Nobody at the DOJ stands for an election. Only through the president can the voters reach and control the awesome power of the federal criminal prosecutor. Second, the president has the un-appealable constitutional power to cancel any federal prosecution—even before the trial.
On Feb. 10, holdovers from the lawless reign of terror known as the Robert Mueller probe filed a sentencing memorandum recommending nine years in prison for their political target, Stone. The memorandum contains one critical untruth:
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