Iranian MIT student goes home over break, denied return for spring semester
petitions.whitehouse.gov
petitions.whitehouse.gov
-
While it's been easy to think about many possible negative outcomes in the proceeding days, weeks, months, another subtle aspect of this policy's ramifications is how it weakens trust and faith in the concept of stability for future American policy — the likelihood of future government actions, executed with little to no foresight, warning, or serious consideration, with serious consequences. How this effects this country's current reputation as a place to study, travel, find work, and start families + settle down can't be understated.
It's possible we may get some useful legal precedents, though, if some of this ends up in the courts. A good number of conservative judges are already skeptical of both excessive executive delegation and federal-government overreach, and were making moves in that direction during Obama's administration. Will Trump cause some liberal judges who have traditionally had differing views to wake up to the danger of such an executive, without an equal-or-greater number of conservative judges suddenly having a change of heart in the opposite direction? And will good test cases arise, with standing, etc.? Maybe, maybe not, but it's possible.
Not like they made it easy before but still we can expect similar responses to the proposed 20% border tax with Mexico.
Edit Some people seem to think US citizens cannot visit Iran. From the horse's mouth:
Cuba's been for a long time the only country the US won't allow its citizens to visit (head, meet desk); North Korea is, so far as I know, the only country that actively prevents US citizens from visiting, although that may be a misrepresentation of the facts on the ground.
Anyway, http://uncorneredmarket.com/american-travel-iran/ has more information.
TL;DR: Visa applications take longer (but still usually <30 days) and you must be accompanied by a guide at all times, but other than that you're free to travel around.
It's worth noting that this is considerably looser than North Korea, where you not only have a guide, but can only go to the places that have been agreed in advance and your guides permit you to go to.
The typical experience for Americans who have applied for visas to visit North Korea is a very long wait, with only gaining approval (sometimes after years of applications), only to have the approval revoked sometimes as late as hours before their flights depart. Some people report having had their travel visas revoked three or four times before finally being granted entrance.
"Not blocked" doesn't seem like the right term for whatever that is.
I think it is easy to underestimate the ugliness and disorder such a reckless executive order can unleash unless you start to think about the details or put yourself in the shoes of the people affected.
NBC News reports[0]:
The Trump administration also has yet to issue guidance to airports and airlines on how to implement the executive order. "Nobody has any idea what is going on," a senior Homeland Security official told NBC News.
As James Gleick put it on Twitter[1]:
And how was it communicated to Customs and Border Protection? Or have they just gone rogue?
And then there is the gross conflict-of-interest reflected in this map:
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-trump-immigration-ba...
The event marks a horrible landmark. It's the first time I can point to the tangible harmful impact of Trump's executive policy on actual people. Up to this point, it has been possible for supporters and apologists to waive away his vague or careless remarks during the campaign as political rhetoric, jokes, or leverage for future negotiation. Now we start to see the mean (in every sense of the word) instinct that informed them and the harm they can do.
[0] http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/trump-travel-restrictions-...
[1] https://twitter.com/JamesGleick/status/825380079526146048
And the opposition and the media are so deep in Saud pockets, they can't even call Bush out for it.
See https://www.airforcetimes.com/story/military/2016/08/08/us-a...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/visa-waiver-libya-somali...
These countries were already hard for US citizens to do business in (hence no Trump holidings). I don't think Trump cares much about money - he is interested in Power.
"Corruption" is a distraction. I also think the thing about his tax returns is the same.
> I don't think Trump cares much about money - he is interested in Power.
It's hard to know what his true interests are. But based on his actions, and his lack of desire for publicly stating his net worth or tax returns, I think he is very interested in maintaining not only his worth but also his companies'.
Trump is the first President in a long time that can directly be influenced by foreign governments through his business and property holdings.
I think that his tax returns are a huge distraction. When they leak, what will change? Everyone already knows he doesn't pay much tax. His fans see that as a good thing.
The only thing that could change out of it is if there is a line item "Russian bribes". But that's unlikely, especially since I tend to think his ties with Russia are philosophical, not financial.
1)piss everyone off except his core vote base
2) be forced out of office
3) launch a movie/book/tv show
4) profit
I don't think his original plan was to win the election.
(For real: I'm not from the US)
I agree with your comment though.
So, let's not pretend that he was constrained by some list from the Obama administration. It's an executive order, and President Trump owns the whole thing.
If you poll this issue, you'll find at least 80% of Americans don't care how inconvenient our immigration policy is for those countries affected. And a very large majority wants no immigration whatsoever from any of those nations affected nor from any of their neighbors save Israel. Probably a majority of Hillary voters would approve if they could be reassured it would go no further than that.
Democrats (who voted 89% for Hillary) are strongly in support.
Overall 59% of Americans believe immigrants make the country stronger: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/15/americans-vi...
Most polls are quite vague approximations, when they aren't just lying with statistics. And you can easily frame them in all kinds of ways by how one asks the questions and how they present an issue.
But, of course, none of your comment answers the questions I posed. I'm less interested in litigating abstractions and more in the specifics. Care to take a whack at addressing them?
The polls about The Donald losing were also heavily reported: http://www.politicususa.com/2016/10/26/polls-shatter-myth-pr...
In any case, unlike you, I'm more interested in abstractions based on large historical body of evidence (for not trusting pollsters in general) than in specifics (evaluating a particular poll, especially in hot political and partisan issues, which presupposes that I can trust what those that created it say, that is not only trusting the methodology as they describe it, but also that they followed it -- and we obviously have no way of knowing the latter).
How did you verify the poll? Because this is not some scientific paper where one can retract the steps and redo the numbers. Just trusting the methodology reported (a meagre page with a 10-mile high view of the procedure and no specifics in the case of Pew Research Center, for example?) and having faith that no poll and/or research center would ever misreport or falsify?
Maybe my mistrust is wrong, but I don't see the trust as being any better, especially with so many off the mark polls that been shown in practice to be so (the actually verifiable and falsifiable ones, like the ones on voting preferences).
We're 6 days in. At this point, can anyone really assure them of that?
American immigration policy towards Israelis is essentially the same as towards anyone else. My (Jewish Israeli) coworker from grad-school wanted to work for Google in Mountain View, but the company couldn't swing him a visa. He stayed at Technion to do a PhD.
He now says that he doesn't want to come to the USA with Trump in power.
You tell me how a Jewish Israeli computer scientist poses a threat to the United States. And if you think you can, be aware that I'm such a person, on top of being American, so you had better explain to me how I'm a foreign threat to my own home country.
And what about the people I know without second passports? Should a certain friend refuse to visit China with her parents because Trump might decide to ban her (with an American passport!) from returning home over some spat about trade policy?
The Department of Homeland Security should have refused this order.
Trump can't do that. That would take something way beyond an executive order.
I moved to the US ~a year ago, now as a permanent resident. Debating on what to do if things continue going down along the current course.
However, my view on that is a bit different - if he can avoid, working on his own for his own future instead of a big corp is the way to go.
PS: goog emp.
As I understood it, he had gone through the interview process and been offered a specific role in Mountain View, for which they then couldn't get the visa. This was back in 2015, so no Trump craziness yet then, just the ordinary bureaucratic stuff.
And just to express my butthurt, Israelis don't even get visa-free tourism to the United States.
That said, it looks like it's past now. Good luck to your friend.
America is a nation and only those that further the aims of the existing nation should come. Even then it should be very few of those because America is already full.
We can't build enough space to live and infrastructure for the people that are already here. And our natural environment is already threatened by overdevelopment.
And just try driving in any major prosperous city at rush hour or riding the subway. Or renting an apartment in SF or NY. We can't expand housing or infrastructure in those cities and we're admitting millions of foreigners overfilling them even further.
The Hart-Celler Act abolished the national origins quota system that had structured American immigration policy since the 1920s, replacing it with a preference system that focused on immigrants' skills and family relationships with citizens or residents of the U.S.
http://library.uwb.edu/Static/USimmigration/1965_immigration...
Executive Orders are there to fill in the implementation details that congress leaves out.. they can't override laws entirely.
Media might not be covering their response more? But, I don't know what they could do in Congress.
So far, their actions have been rather dismal. For instance, they've voted for most if not all of Trump's cabinet appointments.
In all the discussions I heard so far on Facebook and media I noticed a lot blame, name-calling, despair and so on. But I haven't seen enough solid self-reflections. Specifically focusing on why did the Democrats stay home that day. Without it we will have another Trump and then another ...
In the US the "blue map" does really matter except psychologically since everyone votes in a specific state, but the predictions from the media probably didn't help.
Hopefully Trump will drive democratic midterm voter turn out.
That's the intention. The USA is more than a convenient incubator for foreigners. It's a nation responsible for its own future. Quite a lot of Americans don't want foreigners to make plans expecting that the USA will just always be there to fulfill their whims.
A little unpredictability goes a long way in changing your national reputation as an easily exploited doormat.
Also, why do you think immigrants are always going to be non-American? My father has lived here for nearly 40 years, pays taxes, pays into SS, and raised my family here. Is he just fulfilling his whims?
What I am trying to say is, if you believe USA is "an easily exploited doormat" you need to step out of the echo chamber and diversify your news sources.
But we do this shit all the time. The US' immigration system is byzantine at best.
We deport "illegals" who have lives in the US routinely whose lives are no less worthwhile; Obama did something similar to Cubans coming here right before leaving office, leaving those moving to the US with the expectation that "wet foot dry foot" policy would continue stranded at airports.
We're just all more sympathetic to the MIT student.
Maybe I'm just overly cavalier, but it feels no different from the arbitrariness I have experienced in the US immigration system where random officials may make decisions with no relationship to the law with no grounds for appeal.
This country already makes it ridiculously hard for skilled workers to move here; the optics sure do look shitty though.
I do feel truly sorry for the refugees though, they have nowhere to go back to and are truly in a world of hurt. It saddens me that every country I have called home is so callous to them.
Nobody chooses their birthplace, but these are the people that decided to make a change, and in a way that historically benefited the us.
(Honestly, what happens when any Trump property around the world gets attacked? They've got giant signs advertising that the president of the US cares about them, and they don't have anywhere near the protection that US soil does.)
I don't think so.
I don't want to speculate on how Trump might behave when it comes to his business now that he's the POTUS, but even without that, there are enough reasons for him to add Turkey to the list.
I think one of the few reasons it hasn't happened yet is probably because Incirlik base, but it's also been a long tension point between two countries.
Selfishly, I was hoping greencard holders would be exempt, and thinking we already go through thorough background check as part of the application, but it turned out futile.
Tax laws come to mind, for example, when Turkish government wanted extra tax money, they started going after American companies.
Edit: Added last para.
[1] http://presstv.com/Detail/2016/06/25/472171/erdogan-trump-to...
Though one could argue 3 generations later that act of immigration is not benefitting the US.
:D
It's too early to say what benefits the country will have after his presidency.
Barring employment and immigration to an ethnic group is absolutely disastrous for the country.
This is a temp 90-day ban on non-reciprocating countries (and countries of concern), which the FBI said they are not able to properly vet (because those countries will not provide background info on the applicant, and some other reasons). It only affects non-citizens such as visitors, students, or employment visas holders - from leaving the country and coming back, and there seems to be a waiver process to help them.
They already have something like a 7 month backlog of applicants to process. 90 days is going to give them a chance to catch up and look for ways to improve the situation... Such as getting the "Implementing Uniform Screening Standards for All Immigration Programs" part of the order up and running.
The EO affects ALL legal immigrants from these countries like H1B visa holders and Green Card holders too.
And immigrants shouldn't get special privileges that natural citizens cannot, especially special privileges conferred by foreign princes and potentates.
Being a citizen of a country typically means that you have certain rights and privileges in that country that non-citizens don't. That's about it. "Loyalty" doesn't enter the picture unless one is a hardcore nationalist.
Nah, I don't buy the idea, Is plain BS.
Most of these though, I feel, should not happen retroactively. In other words, if they are already naturalized citizens and now have two citizenships, they should remain so. US shouldn't go after all the generations who naturalized. It's fair if they require you renounce your former citizenship going forward.
The problem is it affects legal, permanent residents. And innocent people.
Trump is already busy throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
So your great-great-grandparents moved to America, killed most of the local population and now you think you own the place? The USA is made of immigrants.
The sad thing is, those with the most options, who pay the most taxes, will do just that. They'll take their expertise and productivity and contribute them somewhere else. And the racists will congratulate themselves on how smart they are while the country continues its crumbling slide into fascism.
I'm worried about this. My wife isn't from one of the banned countries, but who knows if that will remain the case in the future?
Don't tell me that they don't reject visa applications at their diplomatic missions and for reasons related to national security because that's what they do all the time in the ME.
Is 90 days a hard limit, or could another order introduce a further 90 days?
The only recently new things is a guys in Washington recklessly driving car while DUI that is being officially called terrorist.
Next coming: jaywalking might be terrorism too.
Greencard holders will require additional screening at an embassy/consulate before they are allowed entering to usa.
https://www.google.com/amp/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/id...
Protests will be banned, people will be put in prison, violence will be quashed by even more violent means
- whitehouse.gov
https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007392
You need to speak up now, or one does not know where this will end.
Yep, and we are already all the way up to "arresting 6 journalists covering public protests against the unpopular ruler"
Who matters? Not the US public: von Clownstick & co know it will be forgetten in a month or three, and by the next election (if there is another election) enough red meat can be thrown to the know-nothing base to "win" again.
Who matters: other wealthy nation governments. That's it. And none of them, however loudly they profess civilised values, will risk a hair on their precious bankers' heads to protect distant low-status nonwhite humans. That's a plain fact.
We all know what ought to happen: civilised nations should band together and just say no to America. An escalating series of sanctions, starting with trade, going via targeted military cooperation downgrades, and ending with cancelling all visas to US citizens. Some nations have strong leverage over America, eg. Australia threatening access to Pine Gap would make the US tremble.
None of this can or will happen, and we will plunge into the abyss. WWI and II were prequels. RIP homo sapiens. You will be little missed by our once-glorious planet's other sentient beings.
I think this is a very important point and pose a threat to democracy. I submitted a new word addition request in Merriam Webster's open dictionary and Oxford: demagogocracy - government by the demagogues
I never stated their were equivalent, but the silence pre-Trump about immigration issues was deafening.
But yes, the current situation is several orders of magnitude worse, if you simply measure the number of people affected. Therefore, people's will be much more vocal.
The actual 120 day ban is bad enough, there's no reason to lie about it. People with green cards/existing visas need to be re-approved, they're not "banned". There's no intention AFAICT to keep people who should be in the US out of the US.
FFS people, Trump needs actual opposition, not knee-jerk virtue signaling, hyperbole, and hashtag protests!
You can say that, but I don't believe it. And you're not going to shut down my legitimate outrage and distress by pretending like it's not sincere.
A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order, and it sounds like the administration is backpedaling as well, but it's important to note that in the mean time some people with a (previously) legal right to enter the US were turned away because of Trump's recent executive order.
https://www.propublica.org/article/cleveland-clinic-doctor-f...
I guess the tl;dr for that article is “She’s not going to be able to get a visa for at least 90 days”
Careers are sometimes fragile and international flights are expensive. It's not as if none of this idiocy matters.
> FFS people, Trump needs actual opposition, not knee-jerk virtue signaling, hyperbole, and hashtag protests!
This is a deeply stupid comment.
The only opposition yesterday worth anything was the ACLU lawsuit, and it was the only thing that actually made any concrete difference in the lives of the people affected.
The rest was just people engaging in fantasy politics in the streets, who got what they wanted by appearing to care in front of their peers—without actually changing, literally, anything at all but their own perception of themselves.
Everything beyond the ACLU lawsuit was either pointless virtue signaling or flat out lies (c.f. #MuslimBan hashtag). But sure, carry on protesting and virtue signaling, we all enjoy Trump running roughshod over the US while idiots live out their fantasy of political action and #Resistance on HN and Twitter.
It's weird, Trump really has a lot of people "off their game" as it were, and it saddens me because the guy's kind of an idiot. I'd like to see people I respect get their shit together and mount and effective opposition.
Short of talking to them (like I'm doing here), I'm not really sure what else you would expect me to do given my goals.
I am personally not politically active, I don't blog, tweet, or any of that stuff. I rarely even comment on HN.
So yeah: I just want to see the middle/left mount effective opposition. If you don't value my comments, ignore them. :)
What else would I expect you to do? I'd expect you to stop complaining about imaginary slights and insulting people for talking about things that they dislike.
What do you think I should do? You haven't given me any suggestions, just virtually shouted at me for being such a lying asshole. So I should... what? You said the ACLU mounted the only effective opposition, maybe I should donate to them? Well, I did already. Hmm, if I were virtue signaling, wouldn't I put that front and center on everything I write? Hey everybody, look at how virtuous I am, I donated to the ACLU!
I apologize if my comments seem overly directed at you personally; that was not my intent and I should have made a top-level comment. You're a good guy and perhaps I've misunderstood how effective your approach will be over time.
Best, Erich
It is certainly a heck of a lot more effective than making pointlessly cynical comments like yours from behind a computer monitor.
This is false. U.S. visas (regardless of type) are different from those issued by other nations. A US visa does not give someone the right to enter the United States, it gives them the right to go to a port of entry (like an airport) and ask for permission to enter the United States.
Trump's order added additional scrutiny for border agents for people with visas from the seven countries. Many (most?) of those people were admitted, and the ACLU suit forced border agents to keep people "in limbo" in the US while that determination was made (vs. sending them back and forcing them to get a new visa—IMO, this is the right decision and I'm happy the courts made it).
But your specific assertion, that they had a legal right to enter the US is false. At best, they had a reasonable expectation that once they arrived, they would be let in without any difficulty or delay.
And what most people don't realize is that without grad students, most research will be severely impacted. So if this continues at the rate it's going, we begin to lose foreign grad students to other countries.
I hope this ends well, but I have my doubts.
Of course they realize it. White nationalism is building its own epistemology - we already have alternative facts, and soon we will have "American science" [0]. Eviscerating the liberal/globalist scientific/academic community isn't some sad unintended side effect, it's the core of what an electoral majority of this country believes with all its heart we should be doing with gusto.
EDIT: Link looks like it is currently broken for me too.
I want to sign it, but don't want it to be used against the petition later if someone in the administration says it is a 'fake petition' because x% of outside the US jurisdiction signed it.
I can't say I'm not proud of the Netherlands, but in this context... isn't this a big source of much evil? Us versus them? Ours vs. not ours?
I thought excessive chauvinism is what led to Trump at first place?
I have no idea how you equate him saying "Canadians will welcome you" with chauvanism. And if you're referring to Justin getting his shirt off, that isn't what chauvanism means. (He is actually the exact opposite of the definition of chauvanism).
He didn't say that, I quoted what he said. There is no need to be proud of anything, like a nationality would make someone "more virtuous" and people from other nationalities would be defacto "less virtuous". That's chauvinism.
I was quoting what Justin said. I see you were talking about the OP instead.
>like a nationality would make someone "more virtuous" and people from other nationalities would be defacto "less virtuous"
Being part of a nation that welcomes people seems a good reason to be proud.
McCullom reassures Canadian women: low risk for sexual assaults by Syrian refugees[1]
Canada completely rocks when it comes to immigration policy and is exactly how globalism in the US should be: welcome everyone, from anywhere—no papers, no problem! We're all people after all.
Undocumented workers specifically are a problem not because we don't want immigration - but because they are at risk of abuse by their employer.
Eh, technically, yes. But like anti-sodomy laws in many states in the US, they are rarely applied. Canada does not have a problem with immigration, "legal" or otherwise, no matter what the "laws" say.
Open borders is a human rights issue and Canada is on the right side of history. They do not preference their own citizens over other people, just because of where they were born or what nationality they are. Canada is compassionate to all people and a model for the United States.
> Undocumented workers specifically are a problem not because we don't want immigration - but because they are at risk of abuse by their employer.
Agreed, that's why I suggested undocumented immigrants just forge their papers; that's how it's done in the US and at least in California, works pretty well and tends to keep employers more honest.
Ideally Canada should just automatically give any undocumented worker (and their family) whatever papers/status necessary to make their de facto immigration to Canada legal, so they can stop being abused by their employer (and anyone else). Perhaps by setting up a center or something that undocumented workers can go to to get legal sanction. (California does something similar—anyone can get a valid drivers license here without any gov't papers.)
In fact, Canada not already just giving undocumented workers full rights and legal papers could reasonably be considered to be a human rights violation, since by not doing so, they are enabling inevitable abuse by Canadian employers. Same with visa grants, Canada IMO should just abolish visas entirely and let anyone who can get to Canada in, with full papers on arrival. It's probably some shit arrangement with the US gov't that's preventing them from doing so, now that I think about it.
I'm sure that over time, Canada will repeal all laws preventing foreigners from immigrating to Canada, establishing quotas, wait-lists, or anything else that takes away anyone's right to immigrate to Canada if they want to. Maybe even faster now that Trump is pissing everyone off in the US.
Like ending slavery, fully unrestricted open borders can't come soon enough. Future generations will judge us accordingly that we did not do so sooner, and at least Canada is on the right side of history, even if their laws have to catch up a bit to their hearts.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/23/canada-syrian-...
Or even if a member of your immigrate family has Autism, from anywhere in the world, due to the financial burden to the healthcare system.
Where is the outrage over THAT? But of course platitudes are dished out that give the appearance of openness. That is obviously the only thing that matters in these cases, for the leaders to give the public a warm, fuzzy, general statement whilst doing the exact opposite.
There is a huge amount of sanctimonious talk coming out of other leaders and the public at the moment. People do not seem to be aware just how restrictive most country's immigration policies are. This is all getting lost in the Trump hate.
As far as I understand, there is no legal requirement for the White House to even entertain the petitions.[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_the_People_(petitioning_sys...
The far reaching and long term consequences the US will experience from this executive order are staggering.
I wish you the best of good fortune in everything back home.
This is the time to follow the "no quarter given" tactics of the NRA - they get their members to show up at any legislation anywhere that even smells of Gun control and raise a massive ruckus - similarly the time to protest is NOW before Trump rolls out the really evil stuff.
EDIT: I just signed the petition, and with email verification, and it's not showing up. Anyone else having that problem?
We're in for a 4 year marathon of trying to save our country from Trump, and the first thing to do is to estimate what has more of an effect.
Comments and upvotes here are more likely to do some good than signing that petition.
Conversely von Clownstick finds it remarkably easy to forgive nations he personally has no business with: http://www.smh.com.au/world/donald-trumps-muslim-ban-exclude...
[0] http://www.timesofisrael.com/khamenei-calls-death-to-america...
[1] "Saying 'Death to America' is easy. We need to express 'Death to America' with action. Saying it is easy."
"The beautiful cry of 'Death to America' unites our nation."
(Wikiquote)
Good luck with this petition! Let's fight for an open world.
Seriously though, I take your point and this is a reminder that if we ignore vocal minorities spouting hate, eventually they may grow big enough to take control. If you see this type of behavior in your own backyard then please vote even if you don't think it will matter.
Remember Hitler and his gangs?
I won't be surprised if a new executive order orders muslims to a camp nearest to them.
God help America!
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/11/politics/popular-vote-turn...
And yes, a minority voted for Hillary too. Is that supposed to be some sort of gotcha?
I've thought about the utility of making flagging (for uncivil, unsubstantive comments) the only way to dim comments. I think people want to be able to express agreement and disagreement separate from whether they think the comment is worthwhile or not, though admittedly the disagreement part is harder to distinguish honestly. In that case seeing the vote count would be useful. I don't know. It's hard to predict how community behavior would change as a result, and whether it would be for the better.
That's democracy; that is America or else there is no America. All Americans must own this problem, not say that it's not their fault.
For one thing, it didn't come from nowhere; Trump's policies merely put in action what many in his party have advocated for years. Yet many smart people I know overlooked it and continued to vote Republican.
Geek philosophy (let's pick Yoda this time) applies to Hillary and Donald voters: Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. Attack the policies, not the voters, not the president. Convincing will happen with compelling arguments that demonstrate these policies are flawed.
This is a bit of propaganda commonly employed by the racist right (I'm not saying you are racist or a member of that group, but IMHO that's the origin of the concept).
In some sense everybody is a minority and no President every has been elected by a majority (a plurality at best), so taking the word "minority" literally is not meaningful. What is meant by "minorities" is groups that are abused by larger groups due to their overwhelming lack of political power. The people who voted for Trump were never slaves, didn't suffer segregation, weren't lynched, aren't suspected of being illegal, and generally are not excluded from power or opportunity due to their race or ethnicity.
Look at any group of powerful people, from Fortune 500 CEOs to members of Congress and Presidents to Silicon Valley leaders to leaders in academia, the military, actors, chefs, coders or almost any other field - look at any college campus - you don't say, 'wow, there sure aren't many white guys there'. White-skinned people make up 66% of the US population; black-skinned are ~12%, Latino ~16%. Those aren't comparable situations.
That doesn't mean that Trump voters don't have legitimate concerns, but they aren't at all a "minority" in the common meaning of the word.
I agree that it is a trap to only blame Trump voters. Some 43% of eligible voters did not vote at all. Some Democrats didn't vote either because they thought it was a sure thing Trump would not win, or due to their own disaffection with a politically flawed candidate (without any respect to what degree this is deserved). And also the general political dialog in the country is fairly abysmal. Many things have conspired to bring us to this point.
I think Democrats, liberals, progressive, moderates, are all best off focusing on policy disputes rather than personal ones.
Unfortunately the best I can do as a single voter in a non-swing state is continuing to petition my representatives. Even then you face futility by having to deal with someone like our esteemed Senator Cory Gardner (R), who goes on CBS to claim that all the people calling and writing his office are "paid protesters".
It seems like a GOP talking point is that they can completely ignore political opposition and democracy. It's just wishful thinking on their part.
Don't stop; it's not futile; the U.S. is a democracy and Gardner, if he wants to be re-elected, will need to pay attention to his constituents.
Or, I have a better idea: point the finger at the people who cast the votes.
Edit: I get it. This doesn't help. The thing is, I don't know how to fix it. It looks like we're just fucked. I'm thinking and trying to come up with a fix but it's not working yet. And in the mean time, when someone tries to blame me for this mess I didn't cause and argued against, I'm going to push back.
2 necessary skills, that everybody can improve, are:
- empathic listening (always using the most generous interpretation of the other person's argument, and then walking back from there to your own opinion, to find common ground)
- problem-solving (look at the big picture, find the problem, and think of a good solution)
> And in the mean time, when someone tries to blame me for this mess I didn't cause and argued against, I'm going to push back.
There's nothing to push back against. This is just political conflict, and it's resolved the same way as any other conflict. If someone calls you crazy, and you reply: "well clearly I'm not crazy!" you may feel right but it's not effective communication.
- Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion
- Rapoport's Rules: https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/03/28/daniel-dennett-rapo...
- The Principle of Charity: http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html
I'm not exculpating the ethno-nationalist forces (leaders or followers). They are dangerous and wrong (and their more moderate fellow travellers have allowed, for ignoble motives, nasty stuff to fester now for decades).
But when you have a rising class allocating ever rising shares of the world's wealth to itself, resentments will build. The Gates & Thiels of this world are fairly invulnerable and can buy themselves more fiercely guarded and gilded palaces to hide in (ever higher as the oceans rise). But for the rest, you would think even self-interest (let alone ethics) would have encouraged them to use their wealth and power to argue for a fairer polity. They didn't, and it's too late now: here comes the backlash with dizzying speed. It looks to me like we're beyond reason and are headed for widening violence and wars. I hope I'm wrong.
I just can't understand the short-term thinking of many here. The political system is volatile. You have growing radical fringes on both sides of the spectrum, increasingly more organized, more hysterical, and less factual.
Blaming "the other side" achieves what? Put your egos aside and look at the big picture. How do you avoid total dislocation of the country?
This was all predictable. All this is, is an escalation of political conflict between the left and right. How do you resolve conflict? Not by yelling at the other side, or telling them "they're responsible for their votes". You resolve conflict through competent communication. Most people don't want to do that, since it's easier to attack.
We cant give up on those who love to learn and want better lives for themselves and their families.
This is just such depressing madness.
http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/28/14427086/federal-court-hal...
Does anybody know how they figure this out? Do a bunch of signatures from people who have no rights in the US invalidate the petition?
The previous administration used them as a PR device. They aren't binding. Who knows if it is even intentional that it still works.
No. Citizens used it to petition the White House and it worked as designed until recently.
How many got pretty unserious blow off responses?
I work at a company where we have several Iranian researchers working as interns, and they are doing excellent work.
If the US doesn't want Iranian engineers and scientists, then I'm sure Canada will be glad to have them.
[1] When I was in high school Iranian students of 9th grade age who immigrated to Canada would immediately be placed in our 12th grade math classes-and they would still get top marks.
@daxorid shared his view - which wasn't inflammatory. The comment was downvoted, then flagged before I could reply.
Terrifying, how? This is what Trump promised, and the reason we voted for him. Half of us are quite happy to see campaign promises actually implemented.
HN is acting as if this was capricious and unplanned. In fact, it's what half of us wanted.
@daxorid voted for a political party that you disagree with. If they can't share their views openly and honestly we won't learn from their perspective.
Based on a tiny sample of GOP friends, they agree with @daxorid. Those friends voted for Trump based on campaign promises and they're happy that he's following-through those promises. For me this was a sort of "oh shit" moment. What else did he promise?? WP has a list: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-promi...
Half of the country is excited by that list. The other half is not.
I ask because I understand ban is for admission of refugees and travellers from seven countries. Not nationalities.
I was able to find this, from an unnamed "senior administration official" [0]:
> Green card holders in the U.S. will have to meet with a consular officer before departing the country, the official said.
That's a fairly large inconvenience, especially for those not living in a city with a consular office. And it doesn't address the situation of green card holders who are currently abroad and need waivers. Presumedly they could visit a US embassy or consular office in their country, but that's going to be difficult for someone in, say, Iran.
0: http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/316670-trump-ref...
I'm pretty sure the answer is "No".
Here in Australia, the picture is similar. The Governor General (queen's representative) is the ceremonial head of state and can dissolve government prompting new elections, but can't direct government to a certain course of action. Dissolving government is done when it's blocked, and almost always at the request of the current head of government. However, if the Queen tried to start influencing local politics, the GG would be renamed 'president' and she'd be cut out of the picture.
Basically, the Queen maintains her power by not pissing off whichever rabble is currently in power in the parliaments of any of her countries.
The GG... can dissolve government
Basically, the Queen maintains her power
She has the power to divide her time among several palaces, have lots of servants waiting on her night and day, have Prime Ministers and Presidents lining up to dine and chat with her, have the Royal Air Force fly her in luxury wherever she wants to go, etc, etc, etc... basically more power than you or I will likely ever have. She has all the power she needs.
But in terms of her formal legal/political power – on paper she has enormous power, but she only retains that power because 99.999% of the time she does whatever the politicans tell her to do. (If she ever started refusing to obey them, they would take all that power away from her very quickly.)
However, in the very rare circumstance of a constitutional crisis, she does actually have some real political power. Consider something like the 1975 situation in Australia – if something similar were to happen in the UK, she would have real power to decide what course of action to take.
There has been a lot of speculation about the legality of this event and it would be a very brave Prime Minister who would allow things to go this far again without calling an election and an even braver GG who would not politely point out to the Prime Minister that he was behaving like an idiot, accept he'd lost control and let somebody else get on with running the country.
Basically the GG is there to keep parliament ticking over, and not descend into the madness of the last six years in the US where the chamber is eternally deadlocked (party 1 head of government against a party 2 chamber). It's bizarre how many ways the US has to stall its government (eg filibustering, debt limit, etc), and how few to ensure it keeps ticking along...
Curiously, they'd actually lose on the deal financially if they got rid of the royals - the UK government manages the royal estates because of a deal back in the day, and they bring in more money than they lose (before even getting to tourism). The estates would revert to the family in such an event, as I understand it.
Conversely, if Congressional Republicans wanted to stop Trump, they could pass legislation stripping him of much of the power Congress has delegated to him (and override any veto), they could pass a joint/concurrent resolution censuring his policies (and even calling for his resignation), they could begin impeachment proceedings, they could refuse to pass the budget until he gives in to their demands. (They may well not do any of these things – but if they don't, it is because they don't want to, not because they lack the power to.)
So I'm not convinced the US system and the UK system are fundamentally different here. Both give the executive utterly vast amounts of power. Both give the legislature the ability, by somewhat different routes, to remove the executive.
The difference is that a PM has no independent power; they don't just need a partisan majority in the Commons, they need the confidence of the majority of the Commons.
The President has independent power, and is not subordinate to the Congress the way the cabinet (including the PM) is to the Parliament in a Westminster system.
Turning to the US, under the US Constitution, Congress is arguably the most powerful branch, since Congress has the power of impeachment to remove the President and judges (including Supreme Court Justices), whereas neither the President nor the Supreme Court have any corresponding power to remove Members of Congress. Congress can impeach Trump but Trump can't impeach even the most insignificant Representative.
A demogogue without the support of the party establishment can't become PM of the UK.
Not yours, Trump.
it's not exactly easy to collect from former students defaulting on their loan repayment agreements at the moment either (if they're not in the UK)
(your argument about GBPEUR also makes no sense, if the euro increased in value that would make the UK cheaper for people holding euros...)