While I covered some of this last September, in light of AL’s earlier post* I thought it was important to highlight some of this again. Specifically that the US has never cared about refugees it didn’t consider white and Christian.
When Allan Tarlish of the Jewish War Veterans of America wrote to Senator Robert Taft in 1939 asking for his assistance in getting European refugees fleeing the rise of NAZIism, including/specifically Jewish ones, into the US, he was politely and longwindedly told no.
Senator Taft’s attitudes and position mirrored that of US public opinion**:
US Jan 20 ’39: Should the US government permit 10,000 mostly Jewish refugee children to come in from Germany? pic.twitter.com/5cFs5RabQn
— Historical Opinion (@HistOpinion) November 17, 2015
US Jul ’38: What’s your attitude towards allowing German, Austrian & other political refugees to come into the US? pic.twitter.com/7hMfLbXWFE
— Historical Opinion (@HistOpinion) November 16, 2015
1938 poll: Should the US offer a haven for Jewish refugees from central Europe?https://t.co/NTYfrMSXo0 pic.twitter.com/GK3avawzc6
— Rabih Alameddine (@rabihalameddine) November 17, 2015
And some things seem to never change…
LITERALLY THE SAME WORDS pic.twitter.com/saTpAHfSP4
— Jack Mirkinson (@jackmirkinson) November 17, 2015
It was during this same time period as these polls were conducted, that the St. Louis sailed for Havana. The St. Louis carried almost a thousand Jewish refugees. The plan had been to make initial landfall in Cuba and then travel on to the US from there. The refugees had been issued Cuban entry documents that were invalidated a week before their arrival. When all but 29 were refused entry into Cuba, they turned North and headed up the coast of the US as some of the refugees had relatives living in and/or citizens of the United States and almost all had applied for US entry prior to sailing from Hamburg. Here too the St. Louis was turned away and with no port to make call turned east back across the Atlantic to Europe. The official problem was the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1924, which Senator Sessions has stated he’d like to see reinstated.
Quotas established in the US Immigration and Nationality Act of 1924 strictly limited the number of immigrants who could be admitted to the United States each year. In 1939, the annual combined German-Austrian immigration quota was 27,370 and was quickly filled. In fact, there was a waiting list of at least several years. US officials could only have granted visas to the St. Louis passengers by denying them to the thousands of German Jews placed further up on the waiting list. Public opinion in the United States, although ostensibly sympathetic to the plight of refugees and critical of Hitler’s policies, continued to favor immigration restrictions.
But there was another reason these refugees were turned away, US popular opinion and leadership, including FDR, were afraid these refugees might be NAZI spies or a fifth column. And this belief persisted well into WW II.
World War II prompted the largest displacement of human beings the world has ever seen—although today’s refugee crisis is starting to approach its unprecedented scale. But even with millions of European Jews displaced from their homes, the United States had a poor track record offering asylum. Most notoriously, in June 1939, the German ocean liner St. Louis and its 937 passengers, almost all Jewish, were turned away from the port of Miami, forcing the ship to return to Europe; more than a quarter died in the Holocaust.
Government officials from the State Department to the FBI to President Franklin Roosevelt himself argued that refugees posed a serious threat to national security. Yet today, historians believe that Bahr’s case was practically unique—and the concern about refugee spies was blown far out of proportion.
The US’s immigration policy for receiving the stateless, displaced victims of WW II and the Holocaust was much better. A lot of this seems to be a combination of Soldiers who had seen the camps and suffering in the European Theater combined with the impact that visiting the displaced persons camps had on congressional delegations. Unfortunately, the lessons regarding resisting and fighting authoritarianism and providing compassion and aid to its victims that the WW II generation learned in blood have less and less impact 72 years later. And, as is always the case in the US, hard learned and hard earned progress is immediately followed be a concerted attempt to return to the regressive attitudes, beliefs, and policies that existed before the progress occurred.
ETA: I just want to add that given the history of how the US failed to act in regard to Jewish and other refugees fleeing the NAZIs, any Jewish American organization that does not go to the mattresses in opposition over the attempt to close off access to the US for anyone fleeing ISIL should be shunned and should close up shop. Those Jewish Americans who fail to stand up for Syrians and Iraqis and others fleeing the horrors of ISIL, regardless of their religion, should be ashamed of themselves and are a shonda for the goyim.
* I don’t have much to say about the International Holocaust Day Proclamation as I have no idea who actually wrote it. I’m not even sure the first sentence is even a sentence. I have no idea, and unless there is a leak I doubt we’ll ever know, if any of the three prominent Jewish Americans that the President has surrounded himself with – his daughter and son in law and his chief policy advisor (Stephen Miller) – saw this or had input into its drafting.
**Hat tip to David Matthews at Fusion for collecting all of these in one place so I didn’t have to go tracking them all down again.
rikyrah
Thanks for this
nelle
My white, Christian father was denied entry in 1923. He was 11. Obviously, a communist spy from Russia, right? Thankfully, Canada opened its doors. By the way, this was after the Reds had taken his brother, put the whole family under house arrest. As a 10 year old, he had to have a guard for the trip to the outhouse.
debbie
…guilty consciences. Because somewhere deep down inside, they knew that back when they said no, they were wrong.
That letter from Taft is something else. Amazing the pretzels people will turn themselves into in order to rationalize their bigotry. Just like today’s proclamation.
BillinGlendaleCA
@debbie: The godfathers of conservative ideology have been Taft-Goldwater-Reagan-Bush-Trump.
japa21
For too many people, the last line of our National Anthem is a joke. This is hardly the “home of the brave”.
And again, this shows how much some people lie when they call themselves Christian.
oklahomo
Every time I read of this shameful period all I can do is go all Reverend Wright, “God damn America .”
debbie
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I did not know that about Taft. His descendant, Bob Taft, who was governor of Ohio about 20 years ago, was the embodiment of milquetoast.
cosima
My former mother in law was an Eastern European WWII refugee. She was approximately 10 when she arrived in the US, and I have no idea how she made it in, as she would never ever discuss it with anyone in the family.
Chet Murthy
Adam, OT but …. by some chance do you have thoughts on the recently-revealed arrests of FSB officials for treason in Russia?
I watched a Maddow segment (http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-favor-for-unpopular-russia-raises-questions-of-motive-863845443847) and …. am feeling quite troubled. I suppose many of our country(wo)men are also.
debbie
@cosima:
A schoolmate’s mother survived Dachau. Her husband was one of the soldiers who liberated the camp. She was one of the kindest mothers I knew. She never talked about her experiences, but she gave testimony as part of Spielberg’s Shoah Project.
Comrade Scrutinizer
Nazi Germany’s initial plan for ridding the Reich of the Jews was forced emigration. Ironically, the refusal of other countries to accept huge numbers of emigres led to the Nazi government considering a more permanent solution to their problem. Martin Gilbert writes:
Adam L Silverman
@rikyrah: You’re welcome, though I wish I didn’t have to write it.
Ohio Mom
I get very tired of my co-religionists harping on the six million and overlooking the five million (gentile) others. It’s a peculiar and ironic sort of Holocaust denialism.
That said, Holocaust Remembrance Day is a *Jewish* holiday, so leaving out any mention of the Jewish people’s experience is strange to say the least.
But why expect anything better from the Trump administration?
Adam L Silverman
@nelle: Obviously. What do you and your family know about the 2016 election? Or emails?//
Feebog
We seem to have learned nothing as a nation. Not compassion, not humanity, not decency or morality. And a couple of years later, after Pearl Harbor we were imprisoning our own citizens because of their ancestry. I truly wonder if that is next.
BillinGlendaleCA
@debbie: Sen. Taft was known as “Mr. Republican”, not milktoast at all.
cosima
@debbie: It is interesting the legacy that springs from those experiences. My mother in law was very kind, but also very broken in many ways. My daughter’s partner (soon to be husband, maybe) is Jewish, but very removed from religion, community, history. My friend here in Scotland is quite active in the (very small, now) Jewish community, and has been speaking in secondary schools this week about these issues. She was brought up in a very religious household, and attended a Jewish school in Glasgow until going to uni. However, it’s not been until now, when she sees so many parallels, that she’s become passionate about politics and human rights — for everyone.
Mike in NC
I’m reading “Heydrich: The Face of Evil” by Mario Dederichs. Similar future title I imagine of a biography of Trump.
Adam L Silverman
@oklahomo: Unfortunately Sundays, and specifically Sunday mornings, are still some of the most segregated hours in the US. Amazing to see a bunch of white people, with no understanding of African American Protestantism, freak out about an edited out of context two sentences from a sermon and yet yawn, if that, when Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell blamed 9-11 on what they believe are the sexual and lifestyle sins of Americans. Reverend Wright was condemning the US for failing to live up to its stated ideals, Reverends Robertson and Falwell were telling Americans they deserved to be attacked because of buttsex.
Yarrow
Since one of the tags is Foreign Affairs, this seems somewhat relevant. It’s amazing how universal that number is.
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: President Taft also had some anti-Semitic issues as well. Some of this is when they lived.
debbie
@Ohio Mom:
I agree with you. It’s like that extra one million made all the difference.
Adam L Silverman
@Chet Murthy: No worries. I took last night off to take my Mom to see Hidden Figures, which I highly recommend. I already knew the history, but excellently written and acted. Though I do want to see an outtake to see if Jim Parsons cracked everyone up by walking up to the door of Kevin Costner’s office and doing “knock, knock, knock – Kevin Costner, knock, knock, knock – Kevin Costner, knock, knock, knock – Kevin Costner.
I saw the Maddow reporting last night and a large amount of the reporting it was based on yesterday. This includes stuff in Russian translated with the help of Chrome’s translate program. Here’s my take:
There are only four ways he could have been burned:
1) The Russians themselves tumbled to having a mole in an internal CI sweep.
2) The Obama Administration, which had access to the sources and methods in regards to Russian interference in the US election, burned him.
3) The US IC burned him.
4) The Trump Administration, which had access to the sources and methods in regards to Russian interference in the US election, burned him.
I think we can eliminate 2 and 3. I do not know how good Russian CI is, especially as one of the other people rolled up and charged with treason was the FSB officer in charge of Russian CI.
oklahomo
@Adam L Silverman: Look how long it took the Baptists to admit that their justifications for slavery were wrong. And most of the religious nuts I know around me have only one use for Jews: they need enough to serve as bait to start the End of Days. Just horrifying.
Adam L Silverman
@Feebog: We have broad, sweeping, grand ideals as an inheritance. And too often they have been wasted on small minded, cruel, petty inheritors.
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
For sure. “Trials of the Diaspora” is a history of anti-Semitism in England and reading it confirmed that benign anti-Semitism is far worse than the rabid variety.
Adam L Silverman
@BillinGlendaleCA: He was Senator McConnell before Senator McConnell was Senator McConnell. Don’t think too hard about that sentence or you’ll get a nosebleed and a migraine…
Adam L Silverman
@Mike in NC: I think the subtitle will be “: The Spray Tan of Evil”, but same basic idea.
More seriously, I think evil gives him too much credit. What he appears to be is all appetite/Id with no self control, no socialization/acculturation to social norms, rules, and laws (social bonding), and never having to actually pay a real price for failure. And I have my suspicions that he was, at least, emotionally abused growing up.
PhoenixRising
My kid got to meet a Terezin survivor who talked about the hope they held onto knowing the Americans were going to come eventually.
They held onto hope that the Americans were coming, and it helped them survive.
I have rarely been so ashamed of my country.
Calming Influence
I’m feeling like the myth of america, the “your tired, your poor” that we grew up with, needs shoring up right now. And much of it isn’t really myth, just gloss. Ignoring cherry trees, Washington ordered prisoners of war to be treated with care and kindness. The (forgive me) “Japs” and the “Jerries” were the torturers in WW2, never the “Yanks”.
I’m not ignoring history, or forgiving it. But the myth of America I grew up with makes me abhor the things that Trump and the Republicans are apparently comfortable with doing. So I would prefer that the same sort of generalized myth that I grew up with continue to be be the starting point for learning the whole history of America. We’re always the good guys, because we always stand up for the little guys. Instill that, and we’re halfway there.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: The only difference is that Taft wanted the big chair in the oval, I’m not sure the Turtle does.
oklahomo
@Adam L Silverman: The banality of evil. The real evil ones are the lurkers using him as a shiny object while they loot the joint and get their repression on.
NotMax
Sort of topically related – Monday at 12:30 p.m. Eastern time, TCM is airing Hotel Berlin.
Made (and released) while the end of WW2 in Europe was determinable but not quite in sight, it is an unusual, even gutsy move from Hollywood as it concerns only Germans who also are well aware that the end is nigh and does not present them all as the usual total embodiment of evil of films from that era. Indeed, reference is made to the atrocities of the concentration camps, and this was before those were liberated and their horrors documented.
Peter Lorre as an alcoholic doctor is particularly noteworthy among many well known acting names in the film.
Adam L Silverman
@Ohio Mom: Actually its 12 million non-Jews. Gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally, developmentally, and physically disabled, Eastern Europeans, and a variety of resistors from within Germany and the states and societies they dominated. This does not count battlefield deaths and deaths as a result of combat at sea or in the air.
chris
@nelle: Sadly, Canada also refused the St. Louis in 1939. Still unforgivable, to my mind.
Adam L Silverman
@oklahomo: Yep and yep. More’s the pity.
Ohio Mom
Somewhat off-topic but essayist Calvin Trillin likes to point out that the changes to US immigration law in 1965, which opened up our borders considerably, is what led to the explosion in ethnic restaurants.
Going into business cooking the food your mom cooked for you was a way of earning a living newcomers could get started in fairly easily. We owe a lot of good eating to that law.
RareSanity
Awesome post Adam…great historical perspective.
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: By the late 19th and early 20th Centuries the British stuff was often the bizarre flip side: philo-Semitism. Where stereotypical Jewish traits were lauded rather than condemned. I’ve seen speculation that this may actually be where the President is at. He’s not an anti-Semite, rather he’s a traditional philo-Semite – he see’s Jewish Americans and Jews in general in regard to their stereotypes of financial and legal and scholarly and medical acumen and seeks to leverage it for his own benefit. When he gives it any thought at all.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Ohio Mom:
A taco truck on every corner!
BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman:
I remain unconvinced that there’s much of that going on.
Spanky
@PhoenixRising:
Don’t be. The Americans came, after everything that went before that Adam documents above.
When the chips are down, we’ve always done the right thing. True, sometimes almost by accident.
WASF. We Always Shall Fight.
(Edited for lysdexia)
Adam L Silverman
@PhoenixRising: That hope, going forward, is more than likely going to be a false one. More’s the pity.
When Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, the 33rd Battalion of the Georgian army was in deployed in Iraq. Specifically it was assigned to my brigade combat team as part of the Multi-National Coalition. Because the Bush 43 Administration had winked winked, nudge nudged the Georgians into the coalition by providing resources (including funding) and intimated the US would support Georgia’s entry into NATO and the EU, the Georgians reckoned that since they’d come to help us, we would now come to help them. My BCT Commander’s job was to facilitate moving them out of his Area of Responsibility and back to Georgia. On their way out I remember some of them asking if we were coming to help them. That they’d come to help us, so we were coming to help them fight the Russians, right? The Russians didn’t stand a chance, because the Georgians new ally, the US, would come and help them.
I get ashamed every time I think about this, let alone recount it.
PhoenixRising
@Adam L Silverman: you got his number.
He referred to ‘the guys in the little caps’ that are ‘who you want counting your money’ in an interview in the 1980s.
Stupidly, I assumed that the Israel-At-AnyPrice AIPAC American Jews who have started to skew GOP would find that as repugnant as I did. Wrong.
BruceJ
Yesterday the Smithsonian ran an item in their newletter about the Know-Nothings….
Adam L Silverman
@oklahomo: Yep. Though the stupidity of what seems to be the objectives just boggles the mind. If you collapse the post WW II and Cold War orders. Destroy every trade agreement the US is involved with and completely trash what little safety net we have, there will be no economy to gorge on. If the dollar is worth nothing, then their wealth will not exist. If they think they are going to survive the collapse they’re trying to bring about, they are beyond delusional.
Iowa Old Lady
From The Nation magazine:
Gin & Tonic
@Adam L Silverman: The Ukrainians felt the same way about the Budapest Memorandum.
Timurid
My paternal grandparents came to this country as refugees from the Mexican Revolution, when they were still teenagers. The experience scarred them for life. They were ‘preppers’ before anyone had heard of the term. They built a bunker in their house and filled it with canned goods, guns, and gold. They had bugout bags and escape plans and money in offshore accounts. I can only imagine how they would be handling current events if they were still alive…
I’m not sure what legal obstacles they faced while immigrating. Having family in Texas probably helped… and they made it here before 1924. The family was originally from Texas. They were some of the first settlers of San Antonio back in the early 1700’s. One of my ancestors fought at the Alamo… for the rebels. They were expelled from Texas during the Civil War for being Unionists and had to go back to Mexico. The more things change…
Adam L Silverman
@BillinGlendaleCA: I still have not gotten a taco truck on my corner. Given that they are leaking the President may unilaterally lift sanctions on Russia, I’d be willing to settle for a blintz truck on the corner.
PhoenixRising
@Adam L Silverman: Jesus hopscotching Christ. That is awful.
I’ve had a longtime not-quite-grandparents-to-my-child connection to a Cambodian-American couple. They met at a US naval hospital. He was an officer in the Cambodian Navy who was in training at Annapolis in April 1975. She was a nurse who had been fast-tracked to work in the hospital by the Red Cross’s limited daily visa powers.
They chose her after she rolled into a refugee camp in Thailand in March ’75 with a truck full of injured Cambodian Republic soldiers and the weapons she had liberated from the military base when her father the general was summoned to the front to face the Khmer Rouge revolutionaries.
When my kid turns 19, I plan to tell her that ‘ya’ey’ [Khmer word for grandma] was robbing the only guy in the village with any gas left–at gunpoint–and packing her wounded to let the border guards steal the top layer of weapons, at her age. It’s a legacy.
They are deeply patriotic Americans who were refugees from a war-torn region where our soldiers were still under fire. Their presence makes our country more worthy of our reputation.
Adam L Silverman
@Spanky: And often after running through every wrong thing several times in the perverse belief that it just might work if I try really hard at being stupid one more time!
Mike in NC
@Adam L Silverman: Roger that.
Origuy
RIP John Hurt
Chet Murthy
@Adam L Silverman: Adam, thank you for this. I had no idea. I’d heard about the Baltic States and their contribution in Iraq (h/t Dr. Maddow) but had not learned of the Georgian contribution.
It seems important to cultivate a sense of shame for when we as a nation did not live up to our ideals. Because it can remind us to try harder next time.
[Of course, for some, it’s a reason to never reach that high again, but still ….]
Mary G
I think Trump probably thinks rich “white” Jews, like Jared Kushner, are good, but he doesn’t worry too much about what Bannon, for example, or his legion of deplorables thinks.
Adam L Silverman
Just added the following to the post up top:
Major Major Major Major
@Origuy: Aw man! RIP.
Adam L Silverman
@PhoenixRising: AIPAC is the lobbying arm of Likud. Its research arm is WINEP.
japa21
@Adam L Silverman: They are delusional, but they have history on their side. I think they believe that, after they have done most of their looting, the Dems will win, straighten things out to prevent a complete disaster, and they will get off free and clear. One of these times it isn’t going to happen.
Adam L Silverman
@BruceJ: I would not be surprised to find that Smithsonian Magazine quickly becomes unreadable, as it did under the Bush 43 Administration, in short order.
DaveInOz
This Twitter account brings it all home: https://twitter.com/Stl_Manifest
I’ve just been digitising some of my old vinyl records for my iPod and have just finished The Jazz Singer. What a different vision of America that was.
japa21
@Adam L Silverman: Although I agree with you, how many times has the same thing been said about Christian groups? Shame is a commodity sorely missing in our society.
geg6
@Iowa Old Lady:
This is true. I know it’s how I felt and feel. And my feeling is further buoyed by seeing some of my friends, most of whom were not very politically engaged, are now marching and calling and organizing and telling me they are sorry for lecturing me for being so shrill all these years. It’s pretty amazing to see.
HinTN
@Adam L Silverman:
In a nutshell.
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: That was my understanding. The difference, of course, was I wasn’t in a war zone with a Ukrainian battalion and didn’t have to try to maintain eye contact with them as they were expressing the false hope that the cavalry was coming.
Baud
@japa21:
Shaming, unfortunately, is fully in abundance.
Ohio Mom
@Adam L Silverman: You’re saying six million Jews and twelve million others, for a total of 18 million? I have never heard that number but no reason to disbelieve you. Wow. And I thought I was beyond astonishment on this subject.
I grew up in the Bronx, among many survivors, in the days when you weren’t supposed to talk about the concentration camps out loud. If anyone remembers the Neil Simon movie where the narrator demonstrates how people used to whisper “cancer” because it was too much of a horror to say aloud, that is how “he/she was in the camps” was whispered.
Along the way, I also internalized a lot of what is described in the post: a cold-eyed assessment of how big a gap there is between the US’s stated values and it’s actual behaviors when it came to Jews. i remember meeting cousins who ended up in Cuba for years because they couldn’t get into the US; my husband’s family had Mexican cousins for the same reason. And those were the lucky ones.
Still, all the men in my father’s generation willingly went off to fight for the US in World War II. The draft-dodging generations were those who emigrated earlier to get out of serving in the czar’s army, and those who went to college to avoid Vietnam.
Adam L Silverman
@PhoenixRising: Without a doubt. It is also the difference between patriots with a small “p” and the professional, and largely bogus, large “P” ones that have to shout it to the sky at all times.
japa21
@Baud: True that.
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
Never happening. That might give Palestinians ideas.
Adam L Silverman
@japa21: Next time requires a truth and reconciliation commission and prosecutions.
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: That’s kind of the impression I get. And of course something like Trump’s brand of pseudo-philo-semitism can easily be used by others in the commission of anti-semitic acts and policies.
japa21
@Adam L Silverman: It occurs to me that, just like patriotism, those that shout out to the skies how religious they are, are also frequently bogus.
SiubhanDuinne
@Origuy:
Oh, that news makes me very sad. He was the most amazing Caligula in I, Claudius back in time. Great actor. May he R.I.P.
Adam L Silverman
@japa21: I’ve lost count.
Yarrow
@Adam L Silverman: Speaking of this, in my household we’re having discussions about what to do from an economic point of view. Is it smart to have all the money in dollars? Is there a safer place?
I’m pretty sure my household isn’t the only one having this conversation. And it’s probably being done on a more global level too. The US has long been the world’s reserve currency. But with Trump talking about defaulting on US bonds “to get a good deal” then the economic powers in the world have to be sitting up and paying attention. How long before some other economy, some other currency is deemed safer? And which one will it be?
Major Major Major Major
@SiubhanDuinne: And he was a pretty great The Doctor too.
@Yarrow: Bitcoin, obviously.
rikyrah
Abed A. Ayoub @aayoub
Visas being denied immediately. Chaos at airports and in the air. #MuslimBan will apply to green card holders attempting to return tonight.
geg6
Trump’s Willing Executioners. I read the first volume, Hitler’s Wiiling Executioners many years ago and found it so disturbing I couldn’t finish it. I really don’t want that volume 2 to ever have to be published.
Adam L Silverman
@Ohio Mom: Yes. Its usually 6 million Jews, 6 million Eastern Europeans, 3 million Gypsies, and 3 million homosexuals. The disabled – mentally, developmentally, and/or physically -intellectuals, dissenters/resistors get rolled into the 12 million non-Jewish victims.
Yarrow
@Adam L Silverman:
Will that be in the new ICC in Beijing?
Timurid
@rikyrah:
Jesus F. Christ
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: Without a doubt. Benign neglect is still neglect.
Michael Bersin
Sidi Mohammed ben Yusef – Mohammed V, Sultan of Morocco, a Muslim, saved the life of my mother and 250,000 other Jews during WWII.
Donald Trump and his supporters, as well as his enablers in Congress can go fuck themselves, their bigotry, and their cowardice.
Adam L Silverman
@japa21: Yep.
Woodrowfan
@Timurid: FYI, the 1924 Immigration Act did not restrict immigration from Latin America.
rikyrah
Trump Executive Order Could Block 500,000 Legal U.S. Residents From Returning to America From Trips
In banning newcomers from seven countries from entering the United States for the next 30 days, the president has used language that could affect those who are in the U.S. already on visas and green cards.
ProPublica, Jan. 27, 2017, 8:07 p.m.
Muslims and immigration activists at a prayer and rally against President Donald Trump’s immigration policies on Jan. 27, 2017, in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
When details leaked earlier this week about a spate of immigration-related executive orders from President Donald Trump, much public discussion focused on a 30-day ban on new visas for citizens from seven “terror-prone” countries.
But the order signed this afternoon by Trump is actually more severe, increasing the ban to 90 days. And its effects could extend well beyond preventing newcomers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, from entering the U.S., lawyers consulted by ProPublica said.
It’s also expected to have substantial effects on hundreds of thousands of people from these countries who already live in the U.S. under green cards or on temporary student or employee visas.
Since the order’s travel ban applies to all “aliens” — a term that encompasses anyone who isn’t an American citizen — it could bar those with current visas or even green cards from returning to the U.S. from trips abroad, said Stephen Legomsky, a former chief counsel to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services under President Obama.
“It’s extraordinarily cruel,” he said.
debbie
@SiubhanDuinne:
I still remember the way he pronounced “hos-tess” as Caligula. And his Quentin Crisp!
oklahomo
@Adam L Silverman: Didn’t we also leave some Iraqis in the lurch after the first Gulf War? Didn’t we encourage revolt, but then failed to back it up?
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@BillinGlendaleCA: and @Adam: Y’all do know that the Mr. Milquetoast Taft debbie referred to is the son of Senator Taft, right? Young Robert was indeed of the pale toast, never mind his conviction for undisclosed bribes while OH governor. Crooked as they come but easily overlooked in any crowd.
Woodrowfan
@Ohio Mom: no, it’s 6 million Jews, 5-6 million others, for 11-12 million total.
that does not include such victims are partisans killed by the Germans and their Allies.
(NOTE, I see the Holocaust Museum says estimates may be much high than the traditional 11-12 million, so I have to go back and look at their numbers)
rikyrah
Dept of State (Alt) @AltStateDpt
State Dept. site had Myths & Facts on Refugees, Migration & Humanitarian Assistance. Page is now gone. Will new admin re-post facts? #Resist
2:00 PM – 27 Jan 2017
HinTN
@oklahomo: Yes
Adam L Silverman
@Yarrow: On this I have no good advice. I’m not a financial analyst/specialist. I know the basics of macro and micro economics, fiscal and monetary policy, and have a decent understanding of econometrics, but what you’re asking is not in my area of expertise.
Lizzy L
This is eloquent. @Adam L Silverman: May it be shared with others?
rikyrah
“I think the media is the opposition party in many ways. I’m not talking about everybody, but a big portion of the media, the dishonesty, total deceit and deception. It makes them certainly partially the opposition party, absolutely. I think they’re much more capable than the opposition party. The opposition party is losing badly.”
— President Trump, in an interview with CBN.
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: Well, his love of ‘Jewish’ things can blind him from anti-Semitic policies pushed by others because it causes a lack of introspection.
Chet Murthy
@oklahomo: And after the second Iraq war, natch. Ditto in Afghanistan.
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
No words. I am scared to death (and, no, I am not Muslim, nor any minority except female. But I am truly terrified of this lot).
Adam L Silverman
@rikyrah: There will be lawsuits brought by the families of green card holders by Monday to get their relatives back into the country and home.
rikyrah
Joshua Silver@eyejosh
@ericgarland There is an urgent call now in the UK for a cross-party MI5 full Investigation of Russian subversion of the “brexit” Referendum
Yarrow
@Adam L Silverman: I didn’t really think it was your area of expertise. It was more wondering out loud in my comment as to where from here from an economic perspective.
BillinGlendaleCA
@japa21: I’ve said this in many contexts, especially the Shitgibbon’s saying how rich he is, that if you have to talk about it, you aren’t.
Adam L Silverman
@geg6: The Goldhagen thesis. I find it compelling and well reasoned, even if it is not a perfect explanation.
Adam L Silverman
@Yarrow: That will be the unconsidered ramifications of pulling the US out of the UN if they decide to do that.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: GOLD!
Timurid
They’ve already started the religious purges and the son of a bitch has only been President a week.
I have no words.
rikyrah
Jamil Smith Verified account
@JamilSmith
Alabama engaged in unconstitutional racial gerrymandering in at least 12 districts to preserve a GOP supermajority.
Baud
@Adam L Silverman: Wouldn’t Israel hate that? They would lose our veto.
SiubhanDuinne
@debbie:
Naked Civil Servant! Yes, for the ages.
Woodrowfan
State Department, full of old money, old family north-eastern WASPS, was notoriously anti-Semitic back before WWII and earlier. See ‘FDR and the Jews,’ by Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman
Major Major Major Major
@BillinGlendaleCA: We’ll compromise. GoldCoin.
rikyrah
John Nichols @NicholsUprising
Democracy wins one!
Federal court orders new legislative maps for #WI by November 2017 — a bold rejection of Republican gerrymandering!
Adam L Silverman
@rikyrah: Again, lawsuits will be filed all over the country first thing Monday morning to get these green card holders, H1B visa holders, student visa holders back into the US and back with their families here. It is going to be a complete and utter mess.
Yarrow
@rikyrah:
God, I hope they do this.
oklahomo
@Adam L Silverman: Wouldn’t one of the unintended consequences be that no one would be wielding a veto on behalf of Israel?
Yarrow
@Major Major Major Major: LOL. A lot of good bitcoin will do when the internet goes down and our electric grid is hacked and inoperable.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho: I did realize they were related, either son or grandson. They are, of course, also related to President Taft.
chris
@rikyrah: Sounds very much like they’ll begin rounding up the people in-country soon. This gets scarier by the minute.
SiubhanDuinne
@BillinGlendaleCA:
SG: I have the biggest hands.
Reality: You have small hands.
SG: I got the most votes.
Reality: Hillary got the most votes.
SG: I had the biggest crowds.
Reality: Obama ’09, Obama ’12, and Women’s March ’17 all had much bigger crowds than your inauguration.
rikyrah
Hey Kay:
Gabe Ortíz
✔
@TUSK81
This is more like it: All Democratic senators will oppose DeVos as education secretary
Baud
@Yarrow: I’ll take that if it stops Trump from tweeting.
amk
@Timurid: It’s first they came for the xxx people all over again. From the underbelly of soft bigotry to full blown xenophobia.
Adam L Silverman
@oklahomo: Yes, we encouraged the Shi’a to rise up and did little to back them when they actually did it. We’ve also left a lot of the Iraqis and Afghans who worked for us as translators and interpreters in the lurch. A lot of them, and their families, need to be brought here to the US for protective reasons as the work/service they’ve provided us over the past 14-16 years has placed them and their families in grave danger.
Baud
@rikyrah: So who can I hate now?
Peale
@rikyrah: the green card ban makes no sense. The EO was for future nonimmigrant visas. If they are cancelling immigrant visas already granted, that goes way outside the scope.
Baud
@Adam L Silverman: Maybe Trump is our karma.
Yarrow
@Adam L Silverman: I’ve been joking about it (mostly gallows humor, I guess) and I’ve seen others mention it as well. I’m sure it’s not just on liberal blogs that people recognize this is a real issue. I don’t think the Republicans and Trump do, or maybe they don’t think it would really happen, but I can’t see why it wouldn’t.
Baud
@Peale: It’s almost like they are incompetent.
Adam L Silverman
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho: I’m aware that we’ve now referenced three different Tafts. Senator Robert Taft, who I referenced in the post. President Taft who I referenced in a comment. And Governor Taft who was mentioned in someone else’s comment.
Chet Murthy
@Yarrow: M^4 strikes me as being quite technically savvy. I cannot believe that s/he meant that “bitcoin obviously” in any way other than “chock full of sarcasm”.
Yarrow
@Baud: Silver lining!
rikyrah
Russian Charged With Treason Worked in Office Linked to Election Hacking
JAN. 27, 2017
MOSCOW — The authorities in Moscow are prosecuting at least one cybersecurity expert for treason, a prominent Russian criminal defense lawyer confirmed on Friday, while a Russian newspaper reported that the case is linked to hacking during the United States presidential election.
While surely touching a nerve in American politics, the developments in Moscow left a still muddled picture of what, exactly, a series of arrests by the security services here signifies.
But the virtually simultaneous appearance of at least four prominent news reports on the hacking and several related arrests, citing numerous anonymous sources, suggests that the normally opaque Russian government intends to reveal more information about the matter, though it is unclear why.
In the waning weeks of the Obama administration, American federal intelligence agencies released a report asserting the Russian government had hacked into the computers of the Democratic National Committee and the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, John D. Podesta, stealing and releasing to WikiLeaks emails intended to damage Mrs. Clinton and help President Trump win the election.
Gator90
@Ohio Mom: Of course non-Jewish victims of Nazism should not be excluded from consideration or remembrance. On the other hand, the notion of Jews as just one of many victimized groups does not sit well either. One hopes there would be an appropriate middle ground.
BillinGlendaleCA
@SiubhanDuinne: SG has also said he’s really rich and really smart; I know smart people and rich people, they don’t tell you how rich and/or how smart they are.
rikyrah
,Nearly 5 million U.S. jobs depend on Mexico
Well before the relationship seems to have reached a crisis point, Christopher Wilson, deputy director of the Mexico Institute, boiled down some fairly substantial numbers in his study. He noted that the two countries trade over a half-trillion dollars in goods and services each year — “more than a million dollars in bilateral commerce every minute.”
Breaking that down further, some 4.9 million jobs are at risk from frozen trade, which means one out of every 29 U.S. workers has a job supported by trade between the countries, he said. When looking state by state, the data referred to 2014 numbers that showed California most vulnerable with 556,000 jobs dependent on trade, while Texas was equally at risk with 382,000 jobs relying on that relationship.
Yarrow
@Chet Murthy: Hence my LOL. I was laughing along at it. While pointing out an obvious limitation with it. And some gallows humor of everything stopping functioning.
NotMax
@rikyrah
Sen. Franken released that info a couple of days ago.
Gin & Tonic
@BillinGlendaleCA: Funny story. My father was self-employed, and died relatively young, while he was still somewhat in business, but gradually enough that he had time to “settle his affairs” and liquidate his business before the end. I recall him talking with his friend, who was his broker/adviser, about the importance of having the weeks that he had to do this. Since he and his broker had lived in Europe before the war and left afterward, there was some agreement on portfolio strategy and the importance of physical assets. This was at a time when Americans could buy gold only in the form of Krugerrands. My father had some, which we sold after his death.
Some years later we came to learn that the broker died suddenly and unexpectedly. We learned this because his wife was spending her time calling everyone she thought he’d known to inquire about the location of the safety deposit box containing his Krugerrands. I don’t know if she ever found it.
Major Major Major Major
@Chet Murthy: @Yarrow: Yes yes, ’twas a joke. Everybody knows the real safety’s in dogecoin nowadays.
rikyrah
File this under:
TRUTH WILL ALWAYS BE STRANGER THAN FICTION:
GA GOP lawmaker recovering after being shot at adult cinema parking lot carrying thousands in cash
27 JAN 2017 AT 15:02 ET
A Georgia Republican lawmaker is in recovery after he was robbed and shot at an adult cinema parking lot while he was carrying thousands of dollars in cash.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that State Rep. Gerald Greene (R – Cuthbert) is now recuperating in his own home after being treated at a local hospital for a gunshot wound to the leg that he incurred during an armed robbery.
Greene claims that he had parked outside of the Foxes Cinema, an adult book and video store in Columbus, GA because he wanted to go into an adjacent liquor store.
Greene also claims that the thief — whom he described to police as “a male about 5 feet 5 inches tall who was wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt and black pants” — only took his iPhone and was apparently unaware he was carrying a sackful of cash.
As for the money itself, Greene says that it was collected donations to help victims of storms that had ravaged Southern Georgia over the past weekend.
No arrests in the shooting have been made, and police are still searching for the alleged perpetrator.
SiubhanDuinne
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Whatever his metric, however he keeps score, it comes down to “My pee-pee is bigger and longer and thicker and stronger than your pee-pee.”
chris
@Yarrow: If we get to that point money won’t do you any good, it’ll be worthless too. The other night somebody recommended trade goods like cigarettes and ammunition. If we get to that point YMMV.
Baud
@rikyrah: Both sides.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Adam L Silverman: It was a commenter here – I can’t recall who now – who told a story about seeing her therapist. The topic came up and the therapist said “They rounded up your people too, you know. We were the yellow star people and you were the pink triangle people.” The commenter said she replied “I know; it’s the world’s saddest bowl of lucky charms.” An eloquently clever comment about a horror.
Chet Murthy
@Major Major Major Major: No way, man. Ethereum! That’s the shit! I’m sure Vitalik has our best interests in mind, with his response to the DAO “hack”!
Adam L Silverman
@Lizzy L: Sure.
CaseyL
@Origuy: I just heard. He was an amazing actor – the kind that disappear into a part without altering his face or voice. I, Claudius was the first thing I saw him in, as Caligula; and Dr. Who the last. I think he’s best known for his scifi roles, particularly the jaw-dropping chest-bursting scene in the first Alien movie.
A good life, one of solid accomplishments.
BillinGlendaleCA
@SiubhanDuinne: Well, he talked about that in one of the GOP debates, my comment about talking about something and reality applies there as well.
Adam L Silverman
@rikyrah: Special Branch on line 1, Special Branch on Line 1. I highly recommend:
https://www.amazon.com/SpyCatcher-Candid-Autobiography-Intelligence-Officer/dp/0440201322
Major Major Major Major
@Chet Murthy: Oh god, Ethereum. Lol.
I do actually accept Bitcoin as payment for consulting though. Just as a transfer mechanism, I sell right away.
Lizzy L
@Adam L Silverman: TY.
OT but good to know, evidently lots of people, some of them actual US senators, are saying that ALL the Democratic Senators will vote NO on DeVos’s nomination.
Adam L Silverman
@oklahomo: Yes. I don’t think Israel actually has a lot of pull with the new Administration. Jared Kushner and Stephen Miller notwithstanding.
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
Speaking of.
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne
Shades of LBJ and “Jumbo.”
MomSense
Today of all days Dolt 45 decided to sign the refugee ban. I’m beyond furious. This is abhorrent.
Adam L Silverman
@chris: That will not go well or end well.
Timurid
@Adam L Silverman:
Yeah, it’s like a tin lining inside an EF-5, but Netanyahu is going to be crying tears of blood when he finally figures out how he didn’t think his clever plan all the way through.
Timurid
@MomSense:
Bonus points for starting a religious purge on Holocaust Remembrance Day…
Lizzy L
@Adam L Silverman: Terrific book. I also loved The Man Who Kept The Secrets, by Thomas Power, about Richard Helms. Oddly, I haven’t read Helms’s autobiography, though I know he wrote one. Maybe it’s time…
Villago Delenda Est
Their grandchildren betrayed them on 9 November. These vile wretches are utterly unworthy of the freedoms, the government, that these brave men and women fought, bled, and died for. Anyone who voted for Donald betrayed them. This betrayal is a criminal act.
Every last one of them needs to be held accountable for the crime they committed.
weaselone
@Adam L Silverman:
There shouldn’t fucking have to be.
Adam L Silverman
@Peale: The EO wasn’t worded well. It simply stated aliens. From the reporting I’ve seen, they’ve not been running any of these things through the DOJ office that is supposed to review them, let alone past Congress, to prevent doing stupid things, unconstitutional things, illegal things. The two people writing them, based on reporting, Bannon and Miller, are not legal specialists and despite Miller working for Senator Sessions, don’t seem to really understand how anything works that isn’t ideologically driven.
chris
@Adam L Silverman: I can’t really imagine it happening but I couldn’t imagine this outcome of the election either. Given everything that’s happened in just the last week anything, however repugnant, now seems possible.
SiubhanDuinne
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Oh yes, IIRC it was in one of the GOP debates with L’il Marco. I suspect he’s been obsessed with the size of his … hands … since he was a young man. Probably about the time he went into business on his own, essentially competing with his father. Of all the people who have written biographies of Dolt 45 (h/t NotMax), I wish one of them could be a trained psychologist/psychiatrist/psychotherapist.
Ethics, schmethics.
Adam L Silverman
@Yarrow: For the people around the President who are pushing this, as well as the group of folks in Congress, this is all about belief, specifically their ideology and political doctrine. It isn’t about reality or real world ramifications or good policy.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Adam L Silverman: Yup. President the bigot, his son “Mr. Republican” Senator Taft, the President’s grandson and “Mr. Republican’s” son convicted former OH governor. Quite the line, local to me. Taft trivia: when I was quite young, a cousin to Senator Taft died in an explosion in his bomb shelter. It occurred a mile or two from my father’s house, and was kind of a local event of some notoriety.
MomSense
@Timurid:
There’s no way they didn’t do this deliberately. I bet Bannon is super pleased with himself.
Baud
@Adam L Silverman: They do things for the headlines than walk a lot of it back, at least partly.
oklahomo
@Adam L Silverman: It blows my mind, that with Bannon and the Pepe-pukes and the alt-right behind Trump, that any Israeli party/person/organization would endorse Trump over Hillary.
Lizzy L
With regard to Muslims with green cards not being allowed to return home: a friend of mine just wrote in a comment on FB:
Shit. Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit.
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: One day someone is going to dig up part of that woman’s backyard to put in a pool or a flower bed and find a strong box full of krugerrands.
SiubhanDuinne
@Lizzy L:
Oh god.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: 22 LR and other ammo, booze, food, medical supplies, women. Pretty much standard post apocalyptic currency. You may have to fight with the mutant twinkies and cockroaches for the women though…
Major Major Major Major
Hmm, apparently not only is Melania on Mexican Vanity Fair this week (awkward!), in her photoshoot she is eating diamond jewelry, which is an SNL skit from a year ago.
@Adam L Silverman: How heteronormative.
Mike in NC
@Villago Delenda Est: Around here lots of surviving WW2 vets supported Trump simply because he was a wealthy white guy.
Timurid
@Lizzy L:
That might get reversed (for the moment), but some of those people are going to decide ‘to hell with this, I’m getting out while the getting’s good.’
Totally unintentional, I’m sure. Totally.
amygdala
Thanks for this, Adam.
Right after 9/11, Nisei (second-generation Japanese-Americans) who had been in the camps spoke out in support of Muslims in the US who were being persecuted. The Nisei, like Holocaust survivors, are fewer in number now, but George Takei, at least, is still speaking out.
I’m depressed and outraged by today’s executive order. Extreme vetting, my ass. This is bigotry and xenophobia, plain and simple. Horrible day for America.
MomSense
@Lizzy L:
No no no no. Not in our name.
Gin & Tonic
@Lizzy L: Is that any people, or people from the affected countries? My son (a native-born USian) and his GF (not) are currently out of the country, slated to fly back on Sunday.
NotMax
@MomSense
Bannon, et al. probably super pissed that today isn’t also March 1 so Dolt 45 could work that in to his comments..
SiubhanDuinne
@Timurid:
Government by Whim.
Seanly
RE: the Allies and Jews (as well as other concentration camp victims), the Allies KNEW EXACTLY WHAT THE NAZIS WERE DOING AS EARLY AS 1942. They didn’t care. Blah blah blah, bombing the camps would show Nazis we had intel or kill the victims. But I think they just weren’t so different from the Nazis in attitudes towards Jews, gays, Roma, etc.
Mary G
@rikyrah: Now we will have to have a pink hijab march. This is appalling.
ETA: @efgoldman: Iraqis/Kurds after GHWB’s Persian Gulf war. That movie “Three Kings.”
Mike in NC
US Government has a long history of betraying foreign allies: South Vietnamese, Cambodians (Hmong), Lebanese, Iraqis, Afghans, Kurds, etc.
Ohio Mom
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho: I remember Bob and his awfully skinny wife Hope. You have to wonder if he would have gotten anywhere in life if he’d had a different last name.
To all of those who mixed up various Tafts: I don’t think you should bad, there were a lot of them. I’ve lived in Phio for forty years and I still don’t have all of them straight.
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne
“Dammit, I said no mayo! That’s it. Somebody get me a pen. I’m outlawing the stuff as of now.”
SiubhanDuinne
@NotMax:
I am probably missing an important cultural reference, but the only thing March 1 means to me is Saint David’s Day (patron saint of Wales). What are you referencing?
Mike J
http://www.philebrity.com/blog/2017/1/27/in-the-grandest-metaphor-of-the-week-an-actual-gop-ghost-train-left-30th-street-station-this-morning
Baud
MoJo
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: Yep. Lots of people of all ethnicities, religions, and nationality stepped up and did the right thing. Often at great risk to themselves.
debbie
@Seanly:
They knew in the 1930s but chose to defer to the banks who didn’t want to endanger losing any of the money they’d loaned Germany.
Adam L Silverman
@Lizzy L: I’ve got this one in the cue:
https://www.amazon.com/Devils-Chessboard-Dulles-Americas-Government/dp/0062276174/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485571976&sr=1-1&keywords=the+devil%27s+chessboard
Lizzy L
@Gin & Tonic: I believe it is people with green cards who are from countries on the list. Details unclear. Your son is native born so not in jeopardy. Depending on her country of origin, his GF might be stopped. I don’t know more than that.
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne
Click the link in the comment.
Adam L Silverman
@weaselone: No there shouldn’t be. But there will be.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mary G:
I would definitely participate.
Appalling and sickening. I’m not only embarrassed to be an American right now, I’m embarrassed to claim membership in the human race.
I’ll get over it, though, and march proudly in all the pink I can lay hands on.
SiubhanDuinne
@NotMax:
Oink. Gotcha.
Adam L Silverman
@chris: This is where my statement about holding the line will have to be put into play. If they start a registry for Muslims, it is a requirement for all Americans of good conscience who are not Muslim to sign up. If they come and try to take people, it is a requirement of all Americans of good conscience who are not part of the group they are trying to round up to physically put themselves in the way to prevent it. They may accomplish these things, but they should be made to pay a great price to do so.
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
Steeplejack, please pick up the white courtesy phone!
HRA
@Lizzy L:
I am really amazed at not allowing people with green cards to come home. I had a green card when my parents and I came to the US from Canada. I thought it said permanent resident status.
There has to be a way to get around it by maybe flying to Canada or Mexico, have a friend or relative pick them up and come home.
Lizzy L
@Adam L Silverman: That looks VERY interesting. I just clicked over to my local library website and put a HOLD on it. Thnx.
Adam L Silverman
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho: Apparently he failed to understand the point of a bomb shelter is to protect one from explosions. Not to give one a place to go to experience one. This is why you always read the operating instructions!
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: Yep.
Baud
@HRA: Right. The EO should be unlawful with respect to green card holders. I don’t think the president has the authority to rescind that status en masse.
Lizzy L
@HRA: You think they haven’t thought of that? I don’t know about Mexico, but you need a passport now to travel to or from Canada, and you still have to go through Customs. They’d stop you.
Bupalos
So I’m not sure I get it. You’re arguing that trumps eo and the frog people’s xenophobia is as american as apple pie because…
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@NotMax: LOL. Homophones will burn us every time.
BillinGlendaleCA
@amygdala: There was a protest in LA’s J-town last night.
Baud
@efgoldman: They were our opposition. Don’t see why they can’t be Trump’s.
Adam L Silverman
@Lizzy L: The demarches will being immediately from these governments to the US Embassies in all of these countries. It is not the responsibility of the states that these people were visiting or transiting through to now have to deal with this given that their US credentials – green cards, visas – are still good and active. By tomorrow the cables back to the State Department will be numerous. If the Administration doesn’t adjust this by Monday, the Courts will deal with it starting on Monday.
MomSense
@Adam L Silverman:
I’m thinking it would be a good idea to go say hello to the Imam at the nearest mosque, sign up to receive their newsletter and establish connections now.
amk
@rikyrah: Yet another lie. But for the butt kissing msm, this asshole would have been buried years ago.
Major Major Major Major
@Lizzy L: You need a passport for all border crossings now, IIRC.
@Baud: I actually looked it up yesterday, and from my read, the feds can deport somebody/strip green card status from somebody who’s been convicted of a crime of moral… turpitude or something.
Mary G
@HRA: The border patrol fingerprinted, cracked smartphones, photographed and then denied entry to Canadians attempting to attend the Womens’ March on 1.21.2017. If they are denying entry at airports, they will be doing it at the border as well.
Motherfuckers.
Chris Murphy of CT just tweeted this with a picture of the dead three-year-old refugee on the beach:
Peale
@Lizzy L: on the plus side, I think those with visas will have better luck than refugees who applications were summarily dismissed from actually winning in court. And no, I don’t see even a trump dominated Supreme Court going for summary cancelling permanent residence of immigrants. Kennedy has at least some class.
chris
@Adam L Silverman: Indeed. Thank you for that phrase “hold the line.” It stuck.
Davis X. Machina
@Adam L Silverman: Courts, huh? “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!”
How many infantry battalions can your federal district court deploy?
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: Right. There is due process built into the law. I don’t believe the president can issue a blanket rescission of permanent residence status. If the EO is doing that, I believe it’s invalid.
HRA
@Lizzy L:
They recognize an enhanced driver’s license at the border, too.
Chet Murthy
@Timurid: I’m sure it was on purpose. Trump learned quite a while ago, that it wasn’t necessary to dog-whistle. In fact, that a klaxon was a much, much better way to reach his base. This is precisely that, it seems to me: a klaxon to his base that he’ll keep those dusky-hued masses out, even if it means bigfooting Holocaust Remembrance Day. B/c they know what it is, they know -precisely- what happened, and for him to, on such a day, slam the door on refugees, well, it just doubles the deliciousness.
Davis X. Machina
@Baud: The president has all the authority he can take, until someone stops him.
Who might that be?
Baud
@Davis X. Machina: Please. In this case, the court’s will strike it down and Trump will comply. He is, at bottom, a coward.
HRA
@Mary G:
That was the border at Quebec. They allowed the Canadian to enter here in Buffalo for the Womans March.
Baud
@efgoldman: You’re a mensch, asshole.
NotMax
@Davis X. Machina
Merrick Garland?
chris
@Baud: There’s nobody left at the State Department to tell him that. They all quit.
Major Major Major Major
@Baud: You some sorta lawyer?
@Mary G: The border patrol incidents were before the inauguration, so it’s the agents behaving badly, not official policy such as it is.
Timurid
@Peale:
He’ll need more than one new Justice for that. One bit of good news is that compromising the Federal courts will be a slow process and one that can’t be easily sped up short of Pinochet-style tanks in the streets shenanigans… That being said, we might be one big terrorist attack away from that kind of bullshit.
Davis X. Machina
@Baud: What countervailing force does the court system have? A couple hundred federal marshals?
Baud
@Davis X. Machina: They can hold the relevant agency official in charge in contempt. But it won’t come to that. The bigger problem with the court system is the potential for delay if Trump orders the lawyers to string it out.
Baud
@chris: I don’t think he’s asking anyways.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud:
I read that quickly at first; thought you said he’s a bottom.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: I’m just telling you what’s in the survivalist magazines…//
amygdala
@BillinGlendaleCA: Glad to hear this. Thanks.
Has Mnemosyne checked in? I hope her Mom’s ok.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major:
When I asked, he took the 5th.
Mary G
@Major Major Major Major: The new head guy who fought with the union of border patrol agents that supported Trump has already been forced out, so I doubt there will be much discipline of agents behaving badly.
Major Major Major Major
@amygdala: She did downstairs, says everything is hunky-dory and they’re even gonna make her mom quit smoking!
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: I wouldn’t hold that against him. I’d hold it against the top.
Lizzy L
@Adam L Silverman: I assume so.
Donations should go to CAIR (Council on Islamic Relations), to the ACLU, to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center — other suggestions?
Davis X. Machina
@Baud: It’s not Trump — it’s Bannon. I’m pretty sure litigating things is going to slow him down much.
Chet Murthy
@HRA: I’m sure they’d be stopped at the border crossing. And if any sizable number got across the border surreptitiously, I’m sure they’d be rounded up, charged with a crime, and expelled permanently.
Remember the Women’s March protestors who were refused entry.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: Unfortunately.
chris
@Baud: My impression too.
Peale
So rereading the order, yeah it looks like if you are an non citizen immigrant and we’re out of the country, you may have to sue your way in, or hope that in 90 days the entry suspension is lifted.
NotMax
@Baud
Phrasing!
Baud
@Davis X. Machina: Agency people aren’t going to take on the courts for Bannon’s sake. Any contumacy will require the president to be on board.
Mary G
I know there are a couple other people here who live in CA 49. Darrell Issa is having a telephone town hall meeting Monday. Sign up on his FB page. He’s too big of a chicken to show up in person.
Adam L Silverman
@Seanly: Give this a read:
https://www.amazon.com/U-S-Intelligence-Nazis-Richard-Breitman/dp/0521617944/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485573506&sr=1-1&keywords=US+Intelligence+and+the+nazis
I know both Goda and Breitman and have hosted them as Holocaust Memorial Day keynote speakers when I was at USAWC.
BillinGlendaleCA
@efgoldman:
…eh, eh, ya won’t get fooled again.
Adam L Silverman
@Lizzy L: You’re welcome.
Gin & Tonic
So,
Dick Fucking Cheney gets it.
BillinGlendaleCA
@efgoldman:
No. They’ve already put out a statement that spelled the PM of the UK’s name wrong.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: We probably will though.
amygdala
@Major Major Major Major: Thank you. That’s a relief, all around!
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Well, the country did reelect the guy who said that.
Adam L Silverman
@MomSense: I recommended to a synagogue I was doing a security consult for that they needed to get all the synagogues, churches, mosques, Hindu, Buddhist, and Sikh temples and other religious congregations together and set up a security consortium to share information and look out for each other. There is safety in numbers and the time to establish those numbers is now.
chris
@BillinGlendaleCA: And Richard Trumka’s name as well.
MomSense
@efgoldman:
I did happen to notice and I think one of the lawyers involved in the Emoluments suit noticed, too. I’m not sure I have the energy to look it up right now but he ended his tweet with “see you in court”
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: No, if I remember correctly its KellyAnne’s husband as the nominee.
Davis X. Machina
@Baud: The president — or more accurately Bannon — is on board — or wil be when they explain what contumacy is to Trump….
Bannon’s the problem — the guy’s a Leninist, and is on record as wanting to burn it all down.
Pinksnapdragon
@chris: Don’t you wonder whether this EO had something to do with their departures?
MomSense
@Adam L Silverman:
I agree. Good time for some of the interfaith councils to join forces. We’ve already had a vandalism incident at the Ahram Halal Market in Portland.
Baud
@Davis X. Machina: We’ll see. Like I said, I think Trump is fundamentally a coward.
schrodingers_cat
Where has this happened? I am not finding anything in either news reports or the twitter feed of the immigration attorney I follow.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: The reporting is that they are not running this stuff past the DOJ office that reviews these to make sure there aren’t any issues – either contradicting statutory law or creating other problems unforeseen by the drafters.
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: When VP Cheney is the voice of reason, we’re in big, big trouble.
Adam L Silverman
@BillinGlendaleCA: Or they were expecting the British adult actress/entertainer.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: I’m aware.
chris
@Pinksnapdragon: Yes, I do. The EO goes against everything America is supposed to stand for.
J R in WV
@japa21:
Matthew 6:5-6
So these Megachurches, and Prosperity Gospel Preachers, and TV ministries, are all breaking a commandment of Jesus, whom they claim to worship.
I was raised up first in Prebyterian Sunday School, but then in a Unitarian Fellowship, and so I have different perspectives on religion than lots of more traditional christians do.
Nothing makes me more angry and sad than hypocrites! And the Bible Belt is so chock full of them. As is the Republican party. Look at Mike Dence! Calling himself a christian, when he’s one of the biggest hypocrites there is wherever he is.\
Thanks Adam for writing this, I know it was hard. It is hard just to read, let alone ponder the wording for each sentence.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman:
@efgoldman: Obviously wishful thinking on the Shitgibbon’s part.
ETA: (After the meeting the Shitgibbon was heard to say: “She totally not hot”.)
chris
@Adam L Silverman: That’s what the Conservatives did here in Canada. They’d make a new rule and get shot down by the courts again and again. At one point the prime minister got into a public spat with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. It did not end well for him, she doesn’t take shit from anyone.
It’s part of the playbook, just look at the voter ID and gerrymandering cases that are losing or have lost in the courts.
Bupalos
I think the moralnof the story today is that if trump’s not on the front page, watch out…. Because trump IS GOING TO BE ON THE FRONT PAGE.
He’s not going to be IGNORED here. And yes, he will be throwing your rabbit into a stew-pot*
*I’m drunk, but I think I remember Daryl Hannah putting a rabbit in a stew pot in that movie.
The Thin Black Duke
@Bupalos: I think you mean Glenn Close.
Peale
I know that the tendency will be to shout about the religious discrimination aspect of it, and discuss the uncharitable way we treat refugees, but if it’s true that people with valid visas are having them denied now, I think we really do need to focus in on the fact that these were people who followed the rules. And basically the administration has deported them without due process when they followed the rules.
MomSense
@Adam L Silverman:
I think you’ll like this.
Wonder Woman is all of us right now.
Adam L Silverman
And we’ve got more Trump Administration plagiarism:
Adam L Silverman
@MomSense: Excellent!
Chris
@Seanly:
Yes. A lot of the World War Two mythology was constructed post 1945 and tends to whitewash a lot about the Greatest Generation. As pointed out above, plenty of WW2 vets went for Drumpf.
Chris
@Calming Influence:
The myth is important, indeed. What’s important is to remember that it IS a myth, and that living up to it takes constant effort and improvement. Conservatives do the opposite. Instead of treating the ideals as something to strive for, they treat it as a reality we achieved the moment the founding fathers signed the constitution. All the crap about American exceptionalism, about how this is the greatest country on Earth, about how anyone who says otherwise is a traitor trying to undermine us from the inside, it’s all about enshrining the myth at the expense of the reality.
That’s the danger of the myth.
HRA
I belong to a local Muslim site from the neighborhood where I finished growing up in the US. The news about the green card holders not being allowed back to the US has just come up there.
Although I am not a Muslim, I grew up knowing my Dad’s boyhood Muslim friends. I have to calm down and my medications do not allow me to have any alcohol. I really need it now.
Lizzy L
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/us/politics/trump-syrian-refugees.html?emc=edit_na_20170127&nl=breaking-news&nlid=20900995&ref=cta
Breaking news from the NYT.
Adam L Silverman
@Lizzy L: But they are countries where he has business interests.
Villago Delenda Est
@Seanly: The Vernichtungslagern were out of US/British bomber range (the only two powers who could actually help) until nearly the end of the war. There was little the Allies could to but prosecute the war to the best of their ability to end it as early as possible.
Villago Delenda Est
@Adam L Silverman: Exactly.
He is beyond reprehensible. If the Congress had any balls, they’d remove him from office for this alone.
Adam L Silverman
@Villago Delenda Est: As I recommended above, give this a read:
https://www.amazon.com/U-S-Intelligence-Nazis-Richard-Breitman/dp/0521617944/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485573506&sr=1-1&keywords=US+Intelligence+and+the+nazis
I know both Goda and Breitman and have hosted them as Holocaust Memorial Day keynote speakers when I was at USAWC.
Lizzy L
@Villago Delenda Est: YES.
Chris Murphy, (D-Connecticut) is pushing back hard, saying that these policies will strengthen ISIL. Haven’t seen any other reactions.
Omnes Omnibus
@The Thin Black Duke: Daryl Hannah did not put Glenn Close in a stew pot in that movie.
Lizzy L
@Lizzy L: Senator Warren is pushing back as well.
Peale
@Lizzy L: yeah. Honestly, I don’t give a fuck about ISIL. Discussing ISIL is the wrong approach. It makes it seem that Muslims are all potential radical zealots. We don’t care about ISIL. And our immigration policy isn’t set for their pleasure.
Peale
Seriously, running out the ISIL argument is almost as islamophobic as what Trump is doing. It kind of implies that Muslims are such that a few bad encounters with westerners not being nice or fair just throws them into off the deep end and the next thing you know…beheadings and hijackings. Don’t go that route. All it does is promote the idea that these particular immigrants are of special concern. They aren’t. Really. The people with work permits and student visas are following the rules and people who follow rules need our protection, not more fear raised about them.
PJ
@efgoldman: Someone who was 18 in 1945 would be 90 this year, so, yeah, I think the number of WWII veterans voting for Trump would be in the wee numbers.
Vhh
@Adam L Silverman: I am a scientist not a spook, and have no inside info, but I speak Russian, I have happily worked on [unclassifed] research with Russians in Russia and elsewhere, I know a fair bit of Russian history, and I am not a conspiracy theorist. I’ve read the “independent” Russian press account of the dramatically public Mikhailov arrest in Novaya Gazeta. My spidey sense suddenly told me that this is a Trump-sized diversion. The FSB has attacked prominent people with polonium and dioxin, has committed any number of murders with fake suicides or killers who then disappeared. All without really geting caught. They took Mikhailov [who may or may not be a double] in broad daylight to confuse, derail, or devalue potential US investigations. One scenario is that they now say “well, we hacked a few states, we just couldn’t resist, but the CIA turned our guy. So no harm done, Donnie boy,let’s lift the sanctions and get rich on oil. Those Dems are just sore losers.” There are other possibilities, but I bet they all aim at changing the subject away from serious effects on the election and [esp.] possible collusion. I would like to think that our IC beagles are able to sniff this out. What worries me is that the Trump crew, Ryan, and the Turtle might try to use this to emasculate the IC or cut the US inquiry short.
Adam L Silverman
@Vhh: Our CI guys know their business. As do Britain’s. Putin can pull whatever maskirovka he wants on this. It may work with the President and his immediate circle. It will not work with the professionals.
Raven Onthill
We have this heartbreaking series of tweets by the friend of a family of Syrian refugees.
https://twitter.com/jessica_goudeau/status/825173003285721088
It is time to remove him from office. Next we can get Pence, and Ryan.
Omnes Omnibus
@Raven Onthill: Hills would have stopped all this.
Peale
@Raven Onthill: neither pence nor Ryan seem to be noteworthy humanitarians.
NotMax
@Vhh
Recall the use of polonium and also ricin, but dioxin doesn’t ring a bell. Citation?
Raven Onthill
Dear @POTUS: on Holocaust Remembrance Day my synagogue told me the Syrian refugee family we’re sponsoring is not coming. Go fuck yourself. – Daniel Drezner
Vhh
@Adam L Silverman: That is what I think, too, in which case it is a sign of desperation on the Russian side. But how does the IC engage with politicians when the executive is the target, and Congress is controlled by the same party? I guess only via leaks to the media. I hope the WaPo and CNN have the guts for this, I would not count on the NYT.
Vhh
@NotMax: Yushenko, Ukraine, chloracne.
Miss Bianca
@Gin & Tonic: When Dick fuckin’ Cheney is on the side of the angels, you know the devils are very, very bad indeed…