In this highly charged and politicized time, there are many Americans on the left who will oppose everything Donald Trump says or does out of principle. They will march, protest, call their representative, tweet, and even choreograph interpretative dances in order to clash with Trump. However, this does not mean that Donald Trump should make it so easy for them to oppose.
On January 27, 2017, seven days into his term as president of the United States, Donald Trump issued an executive order entitled “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States.” In this order, Trump suspended all immigrant and nonimmigrant entries into the United States from seven majority Muslim nations for 90 days. It also bars the entry of any refugee awaiting resettlement in the United States for 120 days.
As soon as President Trump announced this executive order, there were complaints from journalists, lawyers, immigrant and refugee advocacy groups, and the general public about the holes in reasoning and vagueness in this order.
Both the executive order and Trump’s announcement of the executive order referred to the September 11 attacks. Yet this executive order does not include any of the countries from which the radicalized Muslims who perpetrated the September 11 attacks originated like Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates, nor any other country whose citizens have actually killed Americans inside the United States since September 11, 2001 like Pakistan for the 2015 San Bernardino attack.
Not only was the written content of the executive order vague and rushed, the roll out of the executive order was a political and logistical nightmare. Some travelers who had previously been issued valid visas, including Iraqis who worked as interpreters for the US military and Iranian professors who have permanent residency, were detained in airports for several hours. A 78-year-old Iranian grandmother with diabetes who was trying to enter the United States in order to visit her children, most of whom have US citizenship, was asked to sign a document agreeing to withdraw her application for admission to the US without access to legal counsel. Another instance that disturbed many Americans involved a 5-year-old boy who is a US citizen but was travelling back from Iran with a family member and was detained alone for several hours without being allowed to see any of his relatives. Simply put, the optics surrounding the effects of this executive order are not good.
I could go on and on about the effects of this executive order, the debate between members of the press and the President’s surrogates about whether this is a ban, the leaks from the White House about the Justice Department, State Department, and the Department of Homeland Security not being properly informed about the details of the executive order. However, the most important takeaway from the rollout of the executive order is the incompetence and naivety of the Trump administration. John Maynard Keynes, the most notable macroeconomist of the 20th century once described the “silliness of the doctrinaire” as the death of good intentions. Once a person or a political party gets into power, they must adjust the rigidity of their beliefs in order to govern a wide range of people. If they do not, it can lead to chaos.
During his campaign, Donald Trump made many broad promises that were lacking in both detail and depth but were taken by his avid supporters as truths. However, Trump failed to realize that when actually making policy, it is not simple but complex. There must be contingence plans for dozens of cases. One broad stroke cannot cover all situations. Many federal judges addressed the Trump immigration policy in its first few days, temporary blocking some parts or the whole for various reasons until Homeland Security had to suspend it.
While I personally do not agree with many of the decisions made by the Trump administration, it saddens me to see the highest office in the land struggle to be taken seriously. If Donald Trump wants to actually be an effective president in his first 100 days in office or even his first term, he must quickly realize that holding office is much different that running for office and listen to experienced experts in public policy formation rather than the “Yes” men ideologues that got him into office. The campaign is over, now the hard work of governing must begin.
Here are some articles if you are interested in learning more:
Official (from the White House) Executive order referenced in article:
This link is an npr critic of the executive order:
http://www.npr.org/2017/01/31/512439121/trumps-executive-order-on-immigration-annotated
This link is for the British newspaper The Guardian and their coverage of some of those affected from the EO:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/31/people-detained-airports-trump-travel-ban
Article by Faith Marie Engle