Trump Says He Will Prioritize Persecuted Christian Immigrants For Legal Status

[DonViejo]

Source: LawNewz


by Rachel Stockman | 4:16 pm, January 27th, 2017

In an interview with Christian Broadcasting Network News’ the Brody File, President Donald Trump said he would give persecuted Christians priority when it comes to seeking refugee status in the United States. This comes as Trump is expected to sign an executive order that blocks Syrian refugees from coming into the U.S. altogethers and bars all refugees from the rest of the world for at least 120 days. It’s not clear if the Christians would somehow be exempt from his order.

Here is a portion of the transcript from CBN NEWS/THE BRODY FILE:

DAVID BRODY: “Persecuted Christians, we’ve talked about this, the refugees overseas. The refugee program, or the refugee changes you’re looking to make. As it relates to persecuted Christians, do you see them as kind of a priority here?”

PRESIDENT TRUMP: “Yes.”

DAVID BRODY: “You do?”

PRESIDENT TRUMP: “They’ve been horribly treated. Do you know if you were a Christian in Syria it was impossible, at least very tough to get into the United States? If you were a Muslim you could come in, but if you were a Christian, it was almost impossible and the reason that was so unfair, everybody was persecuted in all fairness, but they were chopping off the heads of everybody but more so the Christians. And I thought it was very, very unfair. So we are going to help them.”

Read more: http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/trump-will-prioritize-persecuted-christians-for-legal-status-report/

[sakabatou]

1. Meanwhile, other persecuted religions shall be given the shaft

[Xipe Totec]

2. Hand that man some more rope. He's doing brilliantly so-far. nt

[Bernardo de La Paz]

6. Unfortunately we have come to that point. . nt

[Vilis Veritas]

3. This is starting to sound like Doug Coe and

the Family have siezed control of the government.

[MindPilot]

14. I think you have correctly analyzed the situation. n/t

[Wellstone ruled]

4. Wow,becoming more and more evident

that Trump flunk History at what ever School he attended . What a Idiot. Let's insult billions in the meantime.

[Rhiannon12866]

32. I've had the exact same thought numerous times in the past week...

Didn't this man ever attend a history class anywhere?? It's usually a required subject...

[Bernardo de La Paz]

5. Trump will violate the First Amendment by promoting one religion over others, atheists, & agnostics.

[truthisfreedom]

7. Shh... Don't tell the terrorists!

[dalton99a]

12. Exactly.

[Angry Dragon]

8. christians again asking for special treatment

[mahatmakanejeeves]

9. Congress Shall Make No Law.... I did this yesterday.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141677978#post5

[elmac]

16. Even repugs of old got it

[bucolic_frolic]

10. Did he say they don't have to pay income taxes either?

[Paladin]

11. Establishment of religion, motherfucker.

This is what happens when you get a dimwit president who could care less about the Bill Of Rights---with the exception of the 2nd Amendment, of course.

[elleng]

19. Right.

Amendment I. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

[safeinOhio]

13. Get ready for a flood of

Christian Palestinians.

[integralmatrix]

15. Hateful hypocrites

These evangelicals are hateful hypocrites

[BlueMTexpat]

17. Per Wiki ...

The overwhelming majority of Syrian immigrants to the U.S. from 1880 to 1960 were Christian, a minority were Jewish, whereas Muslim Syrians arrived in the United States chiefly after 1965. According to the United States 2000 Census, there were 142,897 Americans of Syrian ancestry, about 12% of the Arab population in the United States

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Americans

While it is true that the most recent immigrants from Syria are overwhelmingly Muslim, this can be explained by the fact that most Christians immigrated to the US MUCH earlier. It also can be explained by the fact that some more recent Syrian Christians choose to be resettled in countries other than the US.

But the fact is that Syrian Christians have indeed been admitted to the US as recently as 2016.

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/13210-syrian-refugees-admitted-year-through-october-675-99-are

During the Jan.-Oct. period in 2015, 1,705 Syrian refugees were admitted, of whom 1,664 (97.5 percent) were Muslims and 29 (1.7 percent) were Christians.

Meanwhile the surge of Syrian refugee admissions initiated by the administration last February has continued into the new fiscal year, now one month-old: A total of 1,297 were resettled during October – a 593 percent increase over the 187 admitted in October 2015.

October’s arrivals were once again dominated by Sunni Muslims, accounting for 1,263 (97.3 percent) of the total. Another seven were Shi’a Muslims and 12 were other Muslims. The rest of the October intake comprised 15 (1.1 percent) Christians – eight Orthodox, four Catholics and three refugees self-described simply as Christians.

That comes after last fiscal year saw a total of 12,587 Syrian refugees admitted, of whom 12,363 (98.2 percent) were Sunnis, and 68 (0.5 percent) were Christians, according to State Department Refugee Processing Center data.

The rest of the Syrian refugees admitted during FY2016 were 103 other Muslims, 20 Shi’a Muslims, 24 Yazidis, eight refugees with religion given as “other,” and one with “no religion.”

As usual, Trump is talking right out of his a**, using his own alternative facts.

[Igel]

33. And yet if the numbers were racially skewed in the same way,

I suspect there'd be a hue and a cry over them.

"In a country that's 10% black, out of more than 10 000 refugees only 0.5% of the refugees admitted were black." Meaning the numbers are 1/20 of what you'd expect if the selection were random.

That's what's feeding this, as a 5-second Google search showed: http://www.newsweek.com/us-bars-christian-not-muslim-refugees-syria-497494

As the article points out, "bars" is not the right word, but it is the take-away for people who read quickly and without thinking much. There's rather a lot of that kind of wooly-brained thinking.

Instead we get people saying that "the numbers are low mostly because all the Christians already immigrated." That sort of dodges the question. I guess we could argue that the reason for fewer Xian refugees is that they don't pass the vetting process, that it's really a bunch of false-flag operations that incites anti-Muslim hysteria with the Orthodox Xians blowing themselves up while shouting "Allahu akbar", but thankfully I haven't heard that sort of rubbish, at least not recently. What's left for thinking-mill grist falls into two categories. Either the numbers are skewed in a patently discriminatory manner because of random chance (something we firmly believe really can't happen if it's in the US and require a lot of proof to even consider as an option). Or the process leading to the skewed results is structurally discriminatory in some way. If the latter, we seem to be saying that applying some sort of affirmative action to remedy the effects of discrimination embedded in the process is morally and constitutionally unacceptable, which leads to a rather direct contradiction with the application of principles domestically and internationally. In the US, that kind of remedy is required; abroad, it's forbidden. Why? Because.


As for "not legal," the extent to which Constitutional provisions apply to non-US citizens that aren't in the US is a question. Habeas corpus apparently doesn't quite apply in the same way, for example.

[elleng]

18. Amendment I.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

[progree]

20. "If you were a Muslim you could come in, but if you were a Christian, it was almost impossible"

So, what percentage of Muslim applicants were accepted, and what percentage of Christian applicants were accepted?

I'm sure Trump has good hard data backing up his assertion, as always

[Fred Sanders]

22. Trump of course just told another lie about the difficulty of Christian refugee applicants. Sad.

[Igel]

34. According to news reports from

September 2016, out of a refugee population that's supposedly around 10% Xian, 99.5% of those accepted were Muslims and 0.5% were Xians.

The population arguably isn't that randomly selected, because under Assad there was and still is less religious persecution, and the areas under Assad control are more likely in some unquantified I'm-speaking-out-of-my-butt way are probably more Xian than the hinterland infected with ISISosis and Nusritis. (It's an argument we adduce in talking about Bush/Iraq, not Syria. We disliked overthrowing Hussein and the consequences there matter, we rather like overthrowing Assad and prefer to avoid the matter of consequences.)

At the same time, the religious persecution in ISIS/an-Nusra areas is more intense than in Iraq.

So while the refugee population arguably isn't randomly selected, it's hard to know if it's skewed to a greater percentage or lesser percentage of Xian refugees (as compared to that estimate of Syria's being 10% Xian).

[progree]

35. Thanks for the info nt

[winstars]

21. "they were chopping off the heads of everybody but more so the Christians" This is our President???

[Saviolo]

23. More sabre rattling towards China?

Heck, this was a plotline in The West Wing episode "Shibboleth." China has a history of oppressing Christian groups just for being Christian.

Also, unsurprisingly, many Muslim majority countries like Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, and Somalia are also oppressive of Christian groups. Where have I heard those countries before? Oh, right, they're all on Trump's Immigration Ban list. Certainly there are other countries that oppress Christians (Pakistan and Afghanistan for instance) that don't appear on his list, but what effect will the list have on refugees coming from those countries?

I guess I haven't really finished thinking this out, yet. I don't want to see any group of refugees given precedence over another based on religion, only based on the danger they are subjected to in their homeland. I don't know, I've got some pieces here, and I don't really know how to put them together.

[turbinetree]

24. Hey Dumpster...............

you want to know what persecution is all about you dick**** take a look at what your "christian principles" have done to the Indigenous People around the world and in this country>

Why don't you take your fascist self over to Pine Ridge, Standing Rock, for starters, then if that doesn't take much to have some empathy, then, if you can sit on your golden throne with a book and concentrate , I know it will be really hard for you, but since you like to brag about what you have accomplished in your life of vindictive petty of stiffing contractors, consumers, you name it you have done it, and even bragging about being a sexual predator, defrauding people, and now the entire country with your "new berlin wall" scheme of getting taxpayers to pay contractors billions and then we get charged at 11% annually for your scheme, plus the 20 to 40 billion for some wall and trade war with Mexico, the book is called:

Then come back and talk to us about how your "christian principles" are the best,-------------you really are a hypocrite

(and if you do read it there will be a test, only three questions, Are you a fascists? Are you still a fascist? Do you have fascist tendencies and are you a pathological liar?



AN INDIGENOUS PEOPLES' HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

http://www.beacon.org/An-Indigenous-Peoples-History-of-the-United-States-P1164.aspx

"2015 Recipient of the American Book Award

The first history of the United States told from the perspective of indigenous peoples

Today in the United States, there are more than five hundred federally recognized Indigenous nations comprising nearly three million people, descendants of the fifteen million Native people who once inhabited this land. The centuries-long genocidal program of the US settler-colonial regimen has largely been omitted from history. Now, for the first time, acclaimed historian and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz offers a history of the United States told from the perspective of Indigenous peoples and reveals how Native Americans, for centuries, actively resisted expansion of the US empire.

With growing support for movements such as the campaign to abolish Columbus Day and replace it with Indigenous Peoples’ Day and the Dakota Access Pipeline protest led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States is an essential resource providing historical threads that are crucial for understanding the present. In An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, Dunbar-Ortiz adroitly challenges the founding myth of the United States and shows how policy against the Indigenous peoples was colonialist and designed to seize the territories of the original inhabitants, displacing or eliminating them. And as Dunbar-Ortiz reveals, this policy was praised in popular culture, through writers like James Fenimore Cooper and Walt Whitman, and in the highest offices of government and the military. Shockingly, as the genocidal policy reached its zenith under President Andrew Jackson, its ruthlessness was best articulated by US Army general Thomas S. Jesup, who, in 1836, wrote of the Seminoles: “The country can be rid of them only by exterminating them.”

Spanning more than four hundred years, this classic bottom-up peoples’ history radically reframes US history and explodes the silences that have haunted our national narrative.

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States is a 2015 PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature."

[LiberalLovinLug]

25. so all some terrorist has to do is say he's a Christian to get fast-tracked into the country?

Brilliant.

[Hoyt]

28. Good point. Ain't hard to find a well worn Bible to walk around with.

[C_U_L8R]

26. Trump is a racist. Period.

Giving preference to one religion over all others is so antithetical to everything this country stands for. I could spit, it is so wrong. Donald J Trump is nothing but a racist asshole.

[HoneyBadger]

29. Historically, most refugee resettlement agencies in the US, are Christian

They always took non Christian refugees, but they would place them with Christian sponsors. That is screwed up!

[no_hypocrisy]

27. He can't.

1. Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The United States is not a Christian nation.
2. Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. Can't persecute a religion (Islam) by discrimination by default.
3. Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Can't discriminate on the basis of religion.

[Jake Stern]

30. Three easy peasy steps to get around Trump's EO:

1. Learn a few basic Christian prayers
2. Acquire a forged baptismal certificate
3. Claim you're oppressed

and you're on your way to the good ol' USA!

We about to see the number of Middle Eastern Christians rise exponentially.

[Cha]

31. Just want to remind everyone what registering non Christians looks like

Link to tweet

[jmowreader]

36. Been thinking about this...

Two problems, besides that it's an unconstitutional establishment of religion.

Problem 1 is the threshold for what Christians consider "persecution" is far lower than for what other religions consider it. A few years back (during the Shrub junta) there was a famous German family who sought asylum in the US because they weren't being allowed to homeschool their children in Germany. NO ONE is allowed to homeschool their children in Germany, but that's beside the point: their reading of the Bible said they had to homeschool, the government wasn't allowing them to, so they were being persecuted because of their faith.

Problem 2: gee guys, ya think maybe the terrorists might figure out claiming they're "persecuted Christians" will get them welcomed to the US with open arms?

[wishstar]

37. Christian Syrians with US immigrant status have been held up and sent back to Middle East too

see the post

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10028553252

[TomCADem]

38. Like Anti-Semitic Opposition to Jewish Refugees...

...during WW2. This is where America First was last used.

[Kashkakat v.2.0]

39. So have they identified Christianity and Muslim in the genetic code yet - otherwise how is this

going to be implemented. I mean on a pratical level, you know those wily rascals might forge documents that identify them as Christian when they're not. Might be easier just to go by hair/eye/skin color, no? .

(sarcasm, of course)