If Trump can threaten my rights, he can do the same for any of us

[babylonsister]

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/26/opinions/trump-abandoning-americas-principles-aslan/index.html

If Trump can threaten my rights, he can do the same for any of us
By Reza Aslan

Updated 2:54 AM ET, Fri January 27, 2017


(CNN)When I was 7, my family fled a violent revolution in Iran that had transformed our country from an oppressive secular dictatorship to an even more oppressive religious one. We arrived in the United States with nothing but a single suitcase each. We had no money, no jobs and no place to live but a cramped, one-room motel we could barely afford.

This was during the Iranian hostage crisis -- 444 days in which Americans were held captive in the US Embassy in Tehran. People would routinely shout at us on the street, call us terrorists, tell us to "go back home."

It didn't matter that we had no home; we had abandoned everything and everyone we knew for an uncertain life in a foreign land precisely because we were fleeing the same repressive regime that our neighbors were so frightened of. What mattered was that we looked different. We seemed different. And so we became the enemy.

And yet we knew that no matter what happened, we had the law on our side. That was, after all, the entire reason we had come to the United States. While many of our friends and family members in Iran fled to France, Germany and the United Kingdom, we chose America because we knew what America meant. We knew what it stood for. We were certain we could weather any attack on our faith or ethnicity because the US Constitution -- which we had heard so much about in Iran -- would be our shield against the fears and prejudice of our neighbors.

Today, the man whose job it is to enforce that Constitution is taking yet another step toward abandoning the principles upon which it was written. Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order that will effectively bar citizens of a number of Muslim countries -- including Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Somalia and Syria -- from entering the United States. The reported plan would be a first step in Trump's repeated promise of a ban on all Muslim immigrants.

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I also fully understood the promise my country was making to me: that I, like so many millions who have made America their home, would have the same opportunity as everyone else to seek, not just a better life, but a life worth living; that my parents dream of giving me the opportunity to flourish would not be trampled upon by bigotry and fear, but would be protected by the law.

My family made the most of that promise. It wasn't easy, but my father got an advanced degree and started his own business. My mother took odd jobs and scrimped and saved. I was sent to a private university where I thrived. I now have an American family of my own.

I am not just an example of the American success story. I am America. And if the President of the United States can threaten my rights as a citizen, then he can do the same for any one of us.