There is No Good Justification for the New Immigration Ban

Alex NowrastehOn January 31st, the Trump administration issued a proclamation that stopped the issuance of most green cards to citizens of Nigeria, Kyrgyzstan, Eritrea, Myanmar, Tanzania, and Sudan. If the ban applied to these countries in 2018, it would have blocked 12,313 green cards that year.This is the second wave of ‘travel bans’ issued by the Trump administration since the initial ban of many predominately Muslim‐​majority countries in 2017. The stated justification for these bans is to protect the public from terrorist and criminal threats that could be committed by immigrants from those countries. Fu rthermore, they claim to target green card holders because it is more difficult to deport them than other migrants.However, these claims are not supported by historical data about the threat of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Furthermore, because the administration fails to publicly release the criteria used to determine why these countries are banned, the public cannot truly know why these countries were chosen.My own research shows that citizens of the new banned countries have not contributed significantly to terrorism.From 1975 through the end of 2017, 11 foreign ‐​born terrorists from those countries attempted or committed attacks on U.S. soil. They murdered six people in their attacks. The annual chance of being murdered by a foreign ‐​born terrorist from those six countries on US soil is approximately 1 in 1.9 billion per year.Those ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs