Schneider 1
Perry Schneider
March 18, 2017
English 2089
Professor Proud
Trump’s Immigration Plan
Newly elected President Donald Trump has taken office and been on top
of making critical moves and executive orders. The biggest executive order that
he has put into place is the immigration ban. This essay is going to include both
the liberal and conservative points of view as well as my own opinion. The main
purpose of this executive order is to reduce the number of homeland terrorists
and terrorist attacks in the United States. This immigration ban will and has
already affected many people, here it the United States and all over the world.
President Trump’s executive order has caused great controversy within the
United States. The order originally had banned all travel coming from seven
predominately Islamic countries including Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia,
Sudan, and Libya. Many airports here in the United States and across the world
have erupted in protest following the decision. One member of The Associated
Press stated this about the immigration ban, “Trump’s order sparked an
Schneider 2
immediate backlash and sowed chaos and outrage, with travelers detained at
airports, panicked families searching for relatives and protesters marching
against the sweeping measure — parts of which were blocked by several federal
courts.” (The Associated Press) This immigration ban has had an enormous
impact on refugees and people trying to flee their home countries due to ISIS.
The Islamic State has gained many followers in the years following this
immigration ban, which has caused many problems for hundreds of thousands of
citizens in many middle eastern countries. But the biggest problem with this ban
is many of the terrorists that have previously attacked the United States are not
from any of the countries that fall under his executive order. Take for instance the
911 hijackers that flew three American Airlines 747’s into the Pentagon and the
World Trade Center. “But after sifting through databases, media reports, court
documents, and other sources, Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration expert at the
libertarian Cato Institute, has arrived at a striking finding: Nationals of the seven
countries singled out by Trump have killed zero people in terrorist attacks on U.S.
soil between 1975 and 2015. Six Iranians, six Sudanese, two Somalis, two Iraqis,
and one Yemeni have been convicted of attempting or executing terrorist attacks
on U.S. soil during that time period according to Nowrasteh’s research. Alex
Nowrasteh is an immigration expert at the libertarian Cato Institute. (Nowrasteh
focused on plots against the U.S. homeland, which presumably Trump cares
most about, rather than other terrorism-related offenses, like supporting a foreign
terrorist group or trying to join a jihadist organization overseas.) Zero Libyans and
Schneider 3
zero Syrians have been convicted of doing the same.” (Friedman) With this data,
it is evident that this executive order has some serious flaws. Another big ordeal
surrounding this immigration ban is that individual states are disobeying the 120-
day ban and letting immigrants into their airports. Michel Martin, A radio host
form a local Seattle radio station stated “Washington State had a federal judge
issue a temporary restraining order on the ban allowing immigrants complete
access to entering the country from all seven of the banned countries. This
temporary block is completely justifiable by law and is being greatly supported by
major tech companies like Amazon, whose headquarters reside in Washington.
The reason they are in favor of this temporary block is quite simple, they hire
