Is Trump’s refugee ban illegal? The past five presidents didn’t think so

Before writing one more word, I feel compelled to dispel a yuuuge myth established by Democrats and their propaganda division, the ‘mainstream’ media: The immigration executive order signed by President Donald Trump over the weekend – the one that has spurred the angry Left’s most recent round of protests – is not a “Muslim ban.”

No matter how many times mainstream journalists report it that way or Democratic senators with fake tears claim that it is, it’s just not. The order, which you can view here, merely suspends entry of “immigrants and non-immigrants” from entering the United States from countries rife with terrorist groups and activities for 90 days. Why? So U.S. intelligence and Homeland Security personnel in the Trump administration are given the opportunity to review current policies, including those used to vet individuals from these mostly Muslim countries that were put in place by President Obama.

Why? Because there are legitimate questions about the Obama era vetting processes after nearly two dozen people who were “vetted” were allowed into our country, only to initiate terrorist activities.

But beyond these facts, Trump’s action is being questioned as constitutionally suspect. As in, illegal. Yet, if we take into consideration similar actions ordered by the five previous presidents, this argument doesn’t hold up, despite the order to suspend a portion of Trump’s actions by a liberal federal judge. (RELATED: Find out current threats to our safety and security at NationalSecurity.news)

Before I get into that, let’s examine a recently issued brief by the non-partisan Congressional Research Service addressing this issue, titled, “Executive Authority to Exclude Aliens.”

“The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) provides that individual aliens outside the United States are “inadmissible” – or barred from admission to the country – on health, criminal, security, and other grounds set forth in the INA,” the brief begins. “However, the INA also grants the Executive several broader authorities that could be used to exclude certain individual aliens or classes of aliens for reasons that are not specifically prescribed in the INA.”

Specifically, presidents rely most heavily on Section 212(f) of the statute, which reads:

Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by  proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of  all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.

It doesn’t get any plainer or clearer than this, and that’s saying something for a federal law. Many times they are intentionally ambiguous so as to give specific federal agencies charged with carrying them out wide latitude to implement them as the Executive Branch sees fit.

But in this case, if a president deems certain people from certain parts of the world (or all parts of the world) are dangerous, and admitting them to the U.S. an unacceptable national security risk, then he has the authority, as president, to ban them – for a little while, for a long while, or permanently. That’s just the way it is.

What the discredited establishment media is doing, then, is unnecessarily whipping up tensions and fanning the flames of division and opposition to Trump’s administration for the sake of opposition. They are even using former President Obama, giving a platform to a recently-departed ex-president to criticize the current president.

That’s rich, considering that Obama – and former presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan – all did the very same thing as Trump at one or more times during their administrations. (RELATED: Find out what the latest Trump administration actions are at Whitehouse.news)

As noted by the CRS brief:

• Ronald Reagan – Five times

• George H. W Bush – One time

• Bill Clinton – 12 times

• George W. Bush – Six times

• Barack Obama – 19 times

Where was the Left’s outrage then? What’s not mentioned in the brief is that Hillary Clinton’s State Department suspended all refugee applications from Iraq for six months in 2011, without a presidential action.

The current outrage over Trump’s action is part of an overall strategy to disrupt, de-legitimize and harangue his administration in perpetuity, for as long as he’s in office. It’s not based on fact or past presidential authority, but on media-generated hysteria.

J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for Natural News and News Target, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.

Sources:

ConservativeReview.com

Scribed.com

Boston.com

GoodGopher.com