Cassidy letter: Immigration order

In the face of the hysteria that greeted President Trump’s recent executive order on immigration, I feel that one very basic fact needs to be made apparent:

Trump did not ban Muslim immigration.

What he attempted to do was block the entry of refugees for 120 days, block Syrian refugees indefinitely, and ban immigration from seven countries that were already identified as “countries of concern” under the Obama administration. To claim that this is discriminatory because those seven countries are majority Muslim is to ignore the 42 other majority Muslim countries that have not been affected by the executive order in any way. After all, you would think that a ban on Muslim immigration would include Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country.

Anyone who calls Trump’s executive order on immigration a “Muslim ban” is either uninformed or lying. Don’t believe them.

This story was originally published February 19, 2017 at 6:08 PM with the headline "Cassidy letter: Immigration order."