Donald Trump proposed an ideological test for immigrants, one that would allow in “only those who we expect to flourish in our country – and to embrace a tolerant American society.” Is it possible to implement a test like that
.. The practical reality is that you are dealing with people who, if they’re fairly sophisticated, are going to almost immediately learn what to say. So unless you intend to tie them to a polygraph, which is a notoriously uncertain device, you’re assuming that you are basically only going to catch the inexperienced or the stupid.
.. more and more extremist organizations are shifting to people who don’t come from a suspect country.
.. What you’re essentially saying is that if somebody is already sophisticated, educated, understands Western values, has money and comes from a country where they have no urgent reason to enter the U.S., they’re probably going to easily slip through. That is very odd criteria for a nation of immigrants. What do we do, change that plaque on the side of the Statue of Liberty?
.. in this campaign people keep using ISIS as a term for virtually all terrorism.
.. ISIS is actually a fairly small percentage of global terrorism, and it’s a fairly limited percentage of even Islamist extremist terrorism.
.. It then exploited the fact that Nouri al-Maliki, who came to office during the Bush administration, basically chose to promote both himself and Shiites at the expense of Sunnis in western Iraq and alienated so many of them that when what became ISIS invaded, there was very little resistance.
.. None of this had anything to do with the Obama administration. I think it is unfair to say that it somehow was a product of the Bush administration. The fact is that Saddam Hussein created the divided Iraq where the moment you remove the dictator, all of the divisions became critical.
.. Mr. Trump said that “we should have kept the oil in Iraq.” Could the United States have done that?
Under international law that would’ve been illegal by every possible standard.
You can’t go in to liberate a country and then somehow steal its most important resource. That frankly is not simply illegal under international law, it directly contradicts virtually every value we have as a country.
How Trump Remixed the Republican ‘Southern Strategy’
in July 2005, Republican National Committee (RNC) chair Ken Mehlman acknowledged the party’s “Southern Strategy” and directly apologized: “I am here as Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong.”
.. Manafort’s appointment, followed by the ousting of Corey Lewandowski in June, was widely seen as a move to professionalize Trump’s disorganized campaign staff just ahead of the convention. But along with credentials earned from working with top GOP politicians (and a raft of international dictators from the Philippines to Somalia), Manafort also brought decades of experience as an overseer of the Southern Strategy.
.. And it was Manafort who arranged for Ronald Reagan to kick off his post-convention presidential campaign at the Neshoba County Fair just outside of Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three young civil rights workers were brutally murdered in 1964.
.. Notably, all eight of the men who were convicted of involvement in these murders would have been free to attend Reagan’s speech. Seven were convicted in 1967, but the longest jail sentence any of them served was six years, and the person who orchestrated the murders—a Baptist preacher named Edgar Ray Killen—was not convicted until the case was reopened in 2005. As in much of the South, the inability of courts in Mississippi to seat juries that would carry out meaningful justice for the perpetrators of these murders is a good indication of racial attitudes that persisted even late into the 20th century.
.. He has characterized illegal immigrants rather than black Americans as a threat to white women’s safety. And he has redirected the Christian Right’s focus away from its preoccupation with a “godless Communism.” In its place, Trump has exploited the perception of Islam’s growing power abroad
Crazy About the Presidency
First I need to write out a pardon for Melania for her immigration violations before she has to clamber over the new wall in her stilettos. Who would have ever thought the problem with a nude photo portfolio of the next first lady would be a question about whether she had the right visa or not?
Gaps in Melania Trump’s immigration story raise questions
Instead, Trump’s description of her periodic renewals in Europe are more consistent with someone traveling on a B-1 Temporary Business Visitor or B-2 Tourist Visa, which typically last only up to six months and do not permit employment.
If someone were to enter the United States on one of those visas with the intention of working, it could constitute visa fraud
.. In order to avoid being sent back to Slovenia, she may have had to lie about the purpose of her trip.”
Visa fraud would call into question a green card application and subsequent citizenship application, said immigration lawyers — thus raising questions about Melania Trump’s legal status, even today, despite her marriage to a U.S. citizen.
.. Her personal website was taken down last month in the wake of reports that its biography section falsely credited her with earning a college degree.
.. Požar said he learned of these first jobs in America from two fashion agents, one in Italy and the other in Vienna, and that such trips abroad were common for Eastern European models but not “technically” legal.
.. To carry out the 1995 New York photo shoot legally, Trump would have required a working visa, likely an H-1B
.. Even Melania’s use of the H-1B program would stand in contrast to her husband’s position today. Trump, who has made his opposition to illegal immigration the centerpiece of his campaign, has also vowed to crack down on the use of H1-B visas as president. In March, he said he would “end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program. No exceptions.”