Greater than a month into US President Donald Trump’s second time period, his brutal crackdown on immigration and asylum seekers has already harmed numerous individuals. Regulation enforcement has carried out mass raids throughout the USA, rounding up individuals. Tens of hundreds have been deported, and the pathway to asylum has been blocked for tens of hundreds extra.
Within the face of this onslaught, individuals have mobilised en masse to guard weak teams on the native and nationwide ranges. One piece of laws may make a distinction on this battle: the Nationwide Origin-Primarily based Antidiscrimination for Nonimmigrants (NO BAN) Act, launched to the US Congress on February 6 by Consultant Judy Chu and Senator Chris Coons. The invoice would create much-needed limitations and accountability for any president intent on categorically banning refugees, asylum seekers, or individuals of specified faiths or nationalities from coming into the US.
Why is that this wanted at present? As a result of there may be rising worry that Trump is setting the stage for a resurrection of the infamous Muslim and African bans of his first time period.
Eight years in the past, as a freshly inaugurated president, Trump issued an govt order to satisfy his marketing campaign promise of enacting a “whole and full shutdown of Muslims coming into the USA.” Inside hours of the decree, hundreds of travellers from predominantly Muslim nations had been detained for hours at airports throughout the nation, as federal brokers struggled to decipher who may enter and who could be barred.
Tons of of households had been separated, and Trump subsequently expanded the ban to incorporate Tanzania, Sudan, Myanmar, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan and Nigeria – dubbed the “African ban”. Individuals fleeing struggle, hunger and different humanitarian disasters had been thus reduce off from searching for shelter within the US.
Over 40,000 individuals had been denied visas because of the Muslim and African bans, which prompted a 94 % drop in Muslim refugee admissions between January and November 2017.
The traumatic impacts of the Muslim and African bans, at the moment rescinded, nonetheless linger years later: households separated, individuals disadvantaged of vital medical therapy, journey and visa price bills misplaced, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim hate.
Amongst these affected is Maral Tabrizi, who was denied her household’s assist when she most wanted it. When Maral was pregnant in 2018, her mother and father utilized for vacationer visas to witness the start of their first grandchild. Her father’s utility was held up in administrative processing, and whereas they waited, the Muslim ban was accredited by the Supreme Courtroom, and each mother and father’ visas had been refused.
Maral was disadvantaged of her mother and father’ assist throughout being pregnant and postpartum. With a connective tissue dysfunction making every day duties extremely painful, Maral discovered it unattainable to return to work as rapidly as she had hoped. She suffered from postpartum despair because of the ache and disappointment this prompted and was on antidepressants for greater than a 12 months. Her mother and father can even by no means be capable of meet her father-in-law, who died whereas they had been ready to return go to the US.
Maral was a plaintiff in class-action litigation which sought to pressure the federal government to rethink the visa functions of people affected by the bans. Our organisation, Muslim Advocates, co-counsels the case. On account of the lawsuit, a court docket ordered the federal government to offer almost 25,000 people affected by the bans with a fee-waived visa reconsideration course of, the implementation of which is ongoing at present.
Nevertheless, President Trump is poised to enact a doubtlessly broader journey ban and his administration may goal people with authorized standing for questioning and monitoring just because they’re residents of banned nations or as a result of his administration considers them “hostile”.
For this reason since 2019, Muslim Advocates and our companions within the No Muslim Ban Ever coalition have championed Consultant Chu’s and Senator Coons’s NO BAN Act. If handed, this laws would prolong to faith the nondiscrimination provisions beneath immigration regulation that already cowl race, intercourse, and nationality. It could additionally require that any journey restriction imposed beneath Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) part 212(f) be primarily based on particular and credible details, and in a method that narrowly addresses a compelling authorities curiosity. It could require the secretaries of the US Division of State and US Homeland Safety to offer discover to Congress earlier than any such journey restriction, and a briefing inside 48 hours.
With out the constraints of the NO BAN Act, presidents will proceed to abuse their energy by closing our borders arbitrarily or primarily based on thinly veiled spiritual or racial hate. Simply final 12 months, then-President Joe Biden used the identical INA 212(f) authority to close down the border, in a believable violation of US immigration regulation. And Trump invoked 212(f) when he closed the southern border in January. The NO BAN Act constrains such cruelty and presents a substitute for the hate and racism fuelling it.
In a world replete with humanitarian disasters, our selections at present can imply the distinction between life and loss of life for untold numbers of individuals. Again in 2017, the No Muslim Ban Ever coalition fashioned from the motion that confirmed up at airports, as individuals from all walks of life converged to protest the primary Muslim ban. Immediately, lawmakers must also take a daring stance for our nation’s highest aspirations of non secular freedom and refuge from tyrannical leaders and move the NO BAN Act.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
