Would banning Muslim immigration be illegal?


We see the predictable huffing and puffing from Left-leaning lawyers below saying that the ban would be unconstitutional -- opinions which blatantly ignore the fact that the USA has a long history of limiting immigration by certain groups.  What the lawyers "forget" is that the American constitution protects Americans, not other nationalities. The first amendment, for instance, says that you are free to practice your religion in the USA.  It says nothing about a right to enter the USA or immigrate to the USA.

And, anyway, who cares about the constitution these days?  Obama has shown how to use executive orders to ignore both statute and constitutional law.  If Obama can do it, why not Trump? Democrats never seem to realize when they are setting bad precedents.  They live only for today

And how come you must not say anything derogatory about Muslims?  Leftists pour out hate at Christians all the time.  Why is that different?  Why is one religion sacrosanct and another is abomination?  Why are beheadings just fine while public Christian prayer must be stopped?  Plainly, it is not religion that Leftists want to protect. What they want to protect is people who hate Western civilization as much as they do.  Leftists are the enemy within


Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump set off a political firestorm Monday when he called for at least temporarily barring Muslims from entering the United States – even U.S. citizens trying to return from travels outside the country. Earlier, fellow GOP candidate Ted Cruz proposed accepting for U.S. resettlement only those Syrian refugees who are Christian.

But could the nation’s chief executive legitimately order such actions, even with congressional approval?

“It violates the Constitution. It’s discrimination on the basis of religion, which is prohibited by the Constitution,” said Suzanna Sherry, a professor at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.

Trump’s plan is “a troubling proposal,” also potentially breeching the 14thAmendment’s equal protection clause, said Kevin R. Johnson, dean of the law school at the University of California, Davis. “It’s really amazing in its breadth and hostile in its unconstitutionality.”

“Our entire legal and regulatory system is based on nondiscriminatory policy,” said Jonathan Turley. The George Washington University legal scholar wrote in his blog Tuesday that Trump’s call for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States “would violate a host of domestic and international protections.” And, he told VOA, “Instead of being a country that has long defended religious freedom, we would become the scourge of religious freedom.”

“Donald Trump is dividing us along religious lines. That’s un-American,” added Akhil Reed Amar, a Yale University law professor.

They were among the constitutional scholars who weighed in with VOA on Tuesday, a day after billionaire real estate developer Trump issued a statement urging a ban on Muslims’ entry “until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” It followed terrorist attacks last week in California and last month in Paris.

“Large segments of the Muslim population” have expressed “great hatred” toward Americans, Trump said, reiterating his calls for suspending access both at a South Carolina campaign rally later Monday and on multiple U.S. news talk shows Tuesday.

His remarks drew widespread condemnation, including from House Speaker Paul Ryan and other prominent Republicans seeking to distance themselves and their party from Trump.

But U.S. Senator Cruz of Texas held a news conference Tuesday to “commend Donald Trump for standing up and focusing America’s attention on the need to secure our borders.”

Cruz acknowledged he disagreed with Trump’s plan and highlighted his own. Accompanied by Texas’ Republican governor, Greg Abbott, the senator announced he’s introducing a bill that would let governors opt out of refugee resettlement in their respective states if they believed advance screening was insufficient to ensure public safety. Cruz already has introduced legislation calling for a three-year moratorium on accepting refugees from countries where the Islamic State group operates.

WHAT THE LEFTIST LAWYERS OVERLOOK:

U.S. immigration laws long have differentiated among potential newcomers based on their nations of origin.

“We do not have the best history when it comes to this country,” said UC-Davis’ Johnson, author of “The Huddled Masses Myth,” a book about U.S. immigration and civil rights. “In some ways, you could view this as a revival of the now-discredited Chinese exclusion laws.”

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first of several legislative maneuvers to block Chinese immigrants. Later, the Immigration Act of 1924 created quotas that favored white Europeans over people from Asia and Africa, a policy curtailed in 1965. In subsequent decades, the U.S. government, fighting Soviet-style communism, welcomed Cubans as political refugees but discouraged Haitians as economic refugees, because “it was important for us to repudiate a communist regime on our doorstep,” Amar said.

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the U.S. government in 2002 and 2003 required male noncitizens 16 and older to register with the Immigration and Naturalization Service if they’d come from one of 25 countries with predominantly Muslim populations. The program ended after the INS was absorbed by the Department of Homeland Security.

SOURCE

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Jimmah did it.  Why not Trump?

Liberals are beside themselves that Donald Trump would suggest a hiatus on permitting Muslim refugees to thwart terrorism, but one very liberal President did almost the same thing.

During the 1980 hostage crisis, then-President Jimmy Carter issued a series of executive orders to tighten the screws on the government of Iran – among them were banning Iranians from entering the United States. Here are Carter’s comments upon making the action:

The Secretary of Treasury and the Attorney General will invalidate all visas issued to Iranian citizens for future entry into the United States, effective today. We will not reissue visas, nor will we issue new visas, except for compelling and proven humanitarian reasons or where the national interest of our own country requires. This directive will be interpreted very strictly."

Carter did this while hundreds of Americans were held hostage by Iranian students in Tehran. At the time, there were no comparisons to Hitler, or Mussolini or even right-wing Republicans.

More HERE

It could be said that Jimmah was REALLY racist -- as he targeted a national group, not a religion -- JR


Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).