Saudi
Arabia and Egypt are excluded from Trump's ban. Why?
Aryeh Neier
The
American public needs to know the real reasons behind the arbitrary
list of countries
Monday 30 January
2017 15.59 GMT
When President Trump
issued executive orders limiting immigration on Friday, it appears
there was at least one important omission. He has failed to instruct
the National Park Service to put a hood over the Statue of Liberty,
the world’s most renowned symbol of freedom.
It is not the only
omission. In identifying Muslim-majority countries from which
refugees and visas will be blocked because of concerns about
terrorism, Trump left out Saudi Arabia. Yet most of those who
hijacked airliners to attack New York and Washington DC on 9/11, the
deadliest terrorist episode in history, were Saudis.
Does Trump shy away
from offending Saudi Arabia because he has business dealings with
wealthy Saudis? Or because he expects them to curry favor by
patronizing his new hotel in Washington? We don’t know. By refusing
to release his tax returns and by refusing to divest himself of his
businesses, he raises such questions.
Another country left
off the list is Egypt. Yet the leader of the 9/11 hijackers was
Mohammed Atta, an Egyptian. Was Egypt omitted because Trump is
developing a warm relationship with the country’s brutal dictator,
General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi? Again, we don’t know.
Of course, excluding
all Saudis and Egyptians from entering the US is a bad idea.
Applicants for refugee status or visas should be considered
individually. Yet failing to exclude them highlights the
arbitrariness of barring all those from some countries whose
nationals have had no part in terrorism in the US.
During his campaign,
Trump focused particularly on excluding Syrian refugees, calling them
“the ultimate Trojan horse”. It must be acknowledged that despite
the extreme suffering they have endured, the US was not especially
welcoming of Syrian refugees before Trump took office.
The United Nations
high commissioner for refugees has registered more than 4,800,000
Syrian refugees. The great majority are in Turkey, Lebanon and
Jordan. The Obama administration proposed to admit 25,000 Syrian
refugees to the US in the year beginning 1 October.
Trump has now halted
that process. Meanwhile Canada has announced that it resettled 39,617
Syrian refugees by 2 January 2017. The process has gone very well.
Many thousands of Canadians are voluntarily helping the refugees and
contributing financially to enable them to adjust successfully to
their new environment.
Before accepting the
Syrian refugees, Canada vetted them with care. So far, there have
been no security issues. The vetting by the US before Syrian refugees
are accepted for resettlement has been similar, and has taken up to
two years. As in the case of Canada, the US has had no security
incidents involving Syrian refugees.
Yet now, except for
a provision that appears intended to exempt the Syrian refugees who
are Christians, and therefore of special concern to Christian right
supporters of Trump, they are to be blocked from entering the US.
This highlights the attempt to engage in religious discrimination.
(Actually, if the exemption is applied as written to members of
minority religions who have been most severely persecuted, the
principal beneficiaries should be Yazidis from Syria and Baha’i
from Iran. That may not be Trump’s intent and it may not be
followed in practice.)
In the period
following the devastating 9/11 attacks, the US committed a number of
acts that damaged the country’s global standing. They include the
invasion of Iraq that was justified by the false claim that Saddam
Hussein possessed an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction that
endangered the US; the water-boarding, wall-slamming and other abuses
of detainees from many countries at CIA “black sites”; the
extremely prolonged detentions without charges or trial at
Guantánamo; the poor administration of occupied Iraq that allowed
the country to descend into chaos and helped to spawn terrorist
movements in the region; and the torture and sexual humiliation of
Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib.
Now, by excluding
all refugees from certain Muslim-majority countries and by denying
all visas to nationals of those countries, Trump is further
detracting from the prestige of the US as a country where people are
treated fairly regardless of race, religion or national origin. If he
thinks this will enhance safety, he is sadly mistaken.
Even if he could
keep out all those he thinks might threaten the US, he will heighten
the danger to many millions of Americans who live, work and travel
outside its borders. America, and Americans, would be safer if the
country is seen by the world to live up to the ideals represented by
the Statue of Liberty.
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