The chaos engendered at airports around the nation by President Donald Trump’s Friday night executive order imposing an immediate — albeit temporary — ban on refugee resettlement and on travel to the United States of citizens of seven Muslim-majority nations is an example of how not to make policy.
Read more: Federal judge grants stay on deportations after Trump’s executive order
Trump is right that Americans want to be secure. It is the federal government’s job to protect our shores. But there is a right way and a wrong way to accomplish this goal — and we call on those with the ability to do so to use their legislative power or influence immediately to begin working on the right way.
Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio needs to take the initiative to inject Congress into this matter. Using the legislative process to investigate and repair any gaps in visa vetting to make the process more secure is far preferable to what Portman himself characterized as a poorly vetted executive order.
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Republican lawmakers from Ohio include some openly opposed to the ban — U.S. Rep. Steve Stivers of Columbus said the executive order “risks violating our nation’s values and fails to differentiate mainstream Islamic partners from radical Islamic terrorists” — and others such as Portman who appear critical at the margins. None can remain silent. They must act to repair this matter.
Trump’s sudden Betpas and sweeping travel ban swept scientists, doctors, elderly family members, war interpreters and other clearly peaceful people into its net — and will inevitably be seen as another proof that America is at war against Islam. That just helps the Islamic State and other terrorists recruit.
The anti-Muslim perception is compounded by statements from Trump himself about Christian exceptions to the ban and from Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani that it grew out of an effort requested by candidate Trump to find a legal way to implement a “Muslim ban.”
The scores of people who had lawful visas but were held for hours in airport detention last weekend included an Iraq War interpreter for the U.S. Army who had been under threat of death overseas and two Cleveland Clinic doctors who were held in New York before being released. Others, such as another Cleveland Clinic doctor, Dr. Suha Abushamma, a Sudanese national, were sent back whence they came, in her case, to Saudi Arabia.
The unjust treatment they experienced is a signpost of the economic cost to America as well as the personal unfairness of this ill-considered executive order. The prominent impact it had on Clinic personnel should cause Cleveland Clinic President and CEO Toby Cosgrove to use his personal influence with Trump — Cosgrove, a Vietnam veteran, was high on Trump’s list to head the Department of Veterans Affairs but withdrew from consideration — to argue for quick termination of the executive order in favor of a more orderly process to improve visa vetting.
Two Cleveland Clinic doctors vacationing in Iran detained in New York, then released
America is under threat from terrorists; there can be no sugarcoating of that fact. But this requires a careful, targeted effort to make our borders secure, close visa-vetting gaps and improve intelligence, not a blanket ban. A minute number of post-9/11 terrorist attacks on U.S. soil can be traced to nationals of only two the seven states named in the executive order (Somalia and Iran). The home nations of the 19 terrorist hijackers who killed nearly 3,000 Americans on 9/11 were not included (Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and Egypt).
Portman and other GOP lawmakers have a chance to repair the damage done by this poorly conceived and implemented measure.
They should act now.
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