“The record before this Court is unique. It includes significant and unrebutted evidence of religious animus driving the promulgation of the Executive Order”. U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson’s’ language in blocking the president’s travel ban is difficult for the average reader. I had to do some digging into the ruling and third party legal commentary but I translate that statement to mean that Trump’s action based on his self-declared paranoia or hatred of Muslims for political purposes but without logical evidence violates the law.
I never understood why he was targeting Muslims or specific nations in the first place. There is nothing in either their belief system or actual criminal data that warrants his use of the travel ban. We can only conclude that this travel ban is another political gimmick to appease uneducated supporters who like to believe that it somehow improves our national security. It does not improve national security. It seems that the travel ban is pure bigotry intended for political appeasement of the uneducated who may get their information from sources like Breitbart News.
Let’s be clear that there is no factual evidence that a blanket ban of travel from some countries helps improve our national security in any manner whatsoever outside of the imagination of the president and his supporters. The president’s false statements on this matter have been rebuked in considerable detail by a range of fact checkers.
There is plenty of evidence building in daily news stories, however, that the tightening of border controls under Trump has already had significant detrimental effect on law-abiding citizens, businesses and industries. Leaders of two of the nation’s top four CPA firms have already spoken out against the travel ban. PWC was the first to say “silence isn’t an option” in the face of this president’s action. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg said, “We need to keep this country safe, but we should do that by focusing on people who actually pose a threat.” Google’s Google CEO Sundar Pichai wrote “It’s painful to see the personal cost of this executive order on our colleagues”. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings wrote “Trump’s actions are hurting Netflix employees around the world, and are so un-American it pains us all. It is time to link arms together to protect American values of freedom and opportunity”. Even Goldman Sachs chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein sad the executive order “is not a policy we support”. The list of opposition on the travel ban from from well informed people goes on and on.
Yesterday 58 companies filed an amicus brief against the revised travel ban.
Closing our nation’s borders based on illogical fears, hatred or bigotry based on citizenship or religion is both morally wrong and economically stupid. It does nothing to improve the safety of ordinary Americans. The president’s angry actions to promote political propaganda on this matter is deplorable.
I hope that in the future we can focus our nation’s resources on tracking known criminals based on actual real data, not on hindering the ordinary citizens of various countries based purely on a minority of people’s bigoted beliefs.
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