FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 6, 2017
Contact: media@dreamteamla.org
Response to President Trump’s “not a Muslim” Travel Ban
The President has just reissued his “not a Muslim” Travel Ban executive order. It now includes just six nations, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Syria and Libya. These six nations have something in common. They are majority Muslim. And we have bombed all six.
How willing would Attorney General Jeff Session, or Secretary of Homeland Security, John F. Kelly be willing to remain in their homes if bombs were raining down upon them? How willing to remain in rubbles of a city and “work to make their country a better place”? And how accepting would they be to know the process as refugees for safe entry into a receiving country was denied with lawfulness and humanity?
The world is “more dangerous” over the last 14 years in their eyes precisely because conservative, authoritarian U.S. presidents have made it so. We have created the very need for the world’s refugees that we seek to ban. A religion did not attack the U.S. on 9/11, Saudi Arabian nationals did.
Just last week, a joint statement by Homeland Security agencies concluded that country of origin is the least likely predictor of domestic terrorism. That “radicalization” occurs decades after arrival. Somehow, refugees become “terrorists” only after living in America. Perhaps, they learn someone from the “radical Christian terrorists” on our own shores.
The simple fact is that the Trump Administration does not want migration of any kind but refuses to say that. Instead, they issue Muslim bans, build a wall with Mexico, and moves to end the H1B visa program to target South Asians engineers.
The United States creates both the “push” factors for migration via our endless wars of terror, and the “pull” factors that attract both low and high skilled workers. It’s time for America to realize these two facts and that we cannot uncouple our nation from the rest of the world.