If you’ve been watching the news over this past week, I’m sure you heard that U.S. president Donald Trump has issued an executive order banning people from Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. (well, except the countries where he has done business, of course).
On a side note, I just realized I will probably have my visa to the U.S. denied if immigration officials google my name and read the editorials I’ve been writing.
Needless to say, Trump’s executive order caused confusion and anger over the weekend when immigrants and refugees were left stranded in airports around the world. Many of them were green card holders who were visiting family and friends in their home countries.
What’s absurd about this ban is that it is simply not based in reality. According to an analysis of terrorism immigration risks by the Cato Institute, no person accepted to the U.S. as a refugee has been implicated in a major fatal terrorist attack since the Refugee Act of 1980. Before 1980, three refugees had successfully carried out terrorist attacks – all three were Cuban refugees – and a total of three people were killed, according to CNN. In fact, the primary perpetrators of the major terror attacks have mostly been U.S.-born citizens.
An individual’s likelihood of being hurt or killed by a terrorist in the U.S. is insignificant, according to the Washington Post. In fact, since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Americans have been no more likely to die at the hands of terrorists than being crushed to death by unstable televisions and furniture.
You would think that with all the school shootings that take place in the U.S., the American president would have other security priorities in mind. Fear mongering is the only explanation for such an absurd action. There’s simply no other explanation.
Washington’s governor Jay Inslee, who recently condemned Trump’s ban, said local U.S. officials weren’t given any notice.
“The illegality, the unconstitutionality and the religious discrimination of his executive order is now on full display at Seattle international airport, and the gross incompetence and ineffectiveness without notice to local officials whose jobs it is to run this airport is now on full display here,” said Inslee last Saturday. “These are people who have left war-torn regions, chaos and mass poverty, many of them who have relatives here, who are citizens of the U.S., and are now torn apart from their relatives who are waiting at the end of the gate.”
With Trump as president and the alt-right movement on the rise in Europe, I have never been happier to live in Canada.
Although it was still unclear by press time if prime minister Justin Trudeau would welcome refugees who now find themselves shut out of the U.S., his message remains strong and clear.
“To those fleeing persecution, terror and war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith,” Trudeau wrote on Twitter last Saturday. “Diversity is our strength.”
