The ugly:
To go back to the “countries of concern”, the order says:
I hereby proclaim that the immigrant and nonimmigrant entry into the United States of aliens from countries referred to in section 217(a)(12) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1187(a)(12), would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, and I hereby suspend entry into the United States, as immigrants and nonimmigrants, of such persons for 90 days from the date of this order (excluding those foreign nationals traveling on diplomatic visas, North Atlantic Treaty Organization visas, C-2 visas for travel to the United Nations, and G-1, G-2, G-3, and G-4 visas).
As the text is written, this appears to block the return of those who are already living in the United States, as permanent residents or under a long-term visa, and who have temporarily travelled abroad, as well as preventing any such immigrants from taking a trip in the next 90 days. One imagines that this was a drafting error only and will be straightened out shortly, but it’s already being treated as fact. And even a drafting error is not much of a consolation, as that speaks to a more general incompetence of the administration, which had better start drafting/proposing legislation to Congress rather than just creating executive orders.
And that’s my biggest concern, quite honestly. I just can’t imagine the administration sticking to a ban on existing immigrants re-entering the U.S., but it’s clear that that the whole process isn’t well-enough thought out, and I fear that rather than a brief pause to improve vetting measures, it becomes something nonworkable, or even just useless, if the moratorium ends and produces just the same process as before, but with, in the meantime, a worse public image.
UPDATE: Apparently, it’s even uglier that it at first seemed. CNN reports that the White House did indeed intend for the moratorium to apply to Green Card holders. The situation is still chaotic and it’s not clear what the administration’s intended outcome is here. But, yeah: ugly.
UPDATE 2: Now the Trump administration has issued a clarification, defining it to be “in the national interest” for green card holders with citizenship in one of these countries to be able to travel. Was this prompted by the protests and the court rulings? Was this always intended? Was this just a big screw up? Who knows?
Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABombed_out_vehicles_Aleppo.jpg; By Voice of America News: Scott Bobb reports from Aleppo, Syria [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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