Eight years after the first iteration of United States president Donald Trump’s travel ban, Muslims around the world wait with bated breath after learning the same restrictions may be enforced again. While still in the midst of healing from 2017’s myriad of executive orders and presidential proclamations, the rumoured new ban, which supposedly targets more Muslim majority countries, threatens to repeat the terror they endured.
Media reports have stated that the new ban may be broader, including the likes of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The original ban already prohibited over 42,000 people from entering the US, separating thousands of families, stopping thousands from continuing their education, and suspending thousands of refugees in limbo. But, there was one other outcome. A less immediate and viscerally felt one, but one that has had and will continue to have lasting implications for the future of immigrants and Muslims in America.
It is the growing perception of Muslims and immigrants as savages, threats, and terrorists. And the travel ban gives this view a legal leg to stand on, which for many, makes the discrimination thousands face morally acceptable.
The nationalities of terror
Trump’s exclusionary politics are nothing new. A staple of his most recent campaign was providing his followers with common enemies to which they could attribute their issues. Troubles to do with the economy, inflation, and security were all conflated to the increased presence of immigrants in the country. And to further facilitate the movement of his loyalist’s ire to their ultimate marginalised destination, he dubbed immigrants criminals, corroborating such claims with unsubstantiated evidence.
This last point reveals a layer of Trump’s tactics that is also used in his travel ban. While it is simple, the depth of its implications is rarely understood. Namely, it is the bolstering of racist and exclusionary rhetoric by its connection to the legal realm. When Trump links migrants to legally defined criminal activities, he invokes a logical fallacy, an appeal to the law.
This fallacy references people’s strong affinity for the law; their tendency to believe that something is morally correct or morally wrong based on whether it is legal or not, without the need for justification. The conflation of migrant to criminal evokes a reaction by which certain people are willing to forego other considerations, including the devastation of deportation, in favour of a black and white conclusion that starkly defines their “enemy”. Even when so-called evidence is shown to be false, and proof indicating the falsity of Trump’s claims is presented, right-wing loyalists will not take notice. Possibly due to the presence of authority bias, due to which followers accept Trump’s words without any critical analysis, as it comes from the mouth of someone they believe to be an authority figure, and thus one with a greater understanding. Or maybe it’s due to the echo-chamber the US president has created through his repeated cries of fake news to any and all who oppose his views.
Whatever the case may be, such was the effect of Trump’s travel ban as well. By codifying the “threat” that foreigners from the listed countries present, a degree of legitimacy is attributed to otherwise solely racist beliefs. Citizens of those countries are painted as terrorists, section by section.
Section 1 of the initial executive order, which stated that the US cannot admit those “who would place violent ideologies over American law” and those “who engage in acts of bigotry or hated,” defined people from the listed countries as barbaric and savage.
Section 2 of the revised presidential proclamation stated that the performance review of the foreign governments, which included a national security and public-safety risk assessment, determined that Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, Yemen, and Iraq did not meet the baseline. This reinforced the idea that these countries, six of which have Muslim majority populations, were prevalent threats.
And yet, according to a policy analysis released by Cato, there have been 237 foreign-born terrorists who committed or planned attacks on the US since 1975, which killed 3046 people. The vast majority of these deaths took place on 9/11. Regardless, the statistics show that the annual chance to be killed by a foreign-born terrorist is about one in nearly 4.6 million.
But, that data is separated from reality. The reality in which thousands were left stranded and separated from loved ones. However, for some, that reality was a morally correct necessity.
That is one of the two groups indirectly affected by the first travel ban. Trump’s supporters whose unfounded fears were no longer mere thoughts in their head or words spewed behind a podium. Now, it had been given physical form on a legal document.
Also read: What could a new Trump travel ban mean for students?
Social construction
Thus, for many in the US, the threat was real, the allegations were true. The listed countries were sending their terrorists. And the relevant authorities needed to sniff them out, as was outlined in section 4 of the initial ban, which detailed screening procedures that would include an evaluation of the applicants “likelihood of becoming a positively contributing member of society” and an assessment of whether the “applicant has the intent to commit criminal or terrorist acts.” It is clauses such as this that serve to infantilise foreigners and their countries of origin, all while exalting the US and the section of its population who do not understand that legal documents are nothing more than the will of the authority who created it.
But, many do not understand the social construction of law and believe the narrative the travel ban creates. Such is evident with Trump’s re-election. And with new restrictions on the horizon, it seems that Afghanistan and Pakistan will be the latest to be labelled.
However, there is damage being done to the US as well, albeit a modicum of what foreigners are enduring. There is a growing group, the other of the aforementioned indirectly affected two, that sees the US for the monster it is becoming. Trump and his orders are a scourge on America’s reputation. And the world is taking notice.
The US has been added to the CIVICUS Monitor Watchlist, defining the country as one in which civil liberties are limited. This puts the US alongside other countries on the watchlist including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Italy, Serbia, and Pakistan. Specifically, the US has been labelled “narrowed” in regards to civil rights, which means that there are some attempts to violate these rights by the government.
The attempted deportation of anti-Israeli protesters, referenced by CIVICUS, is another indication of the America’s deteriorating civil rights. And the protests it spawned showcases the growing divide within the country.
If Trump establishes another travel ban, this partition will wide. Right wing and anti-immigration support are already growing throughout the world, but the legal nature of orders like the previous travel ban expediate the process by transforming the perverse rhetoric found within it to something more accepted due to the fallacies people have regarding law.
Not only will people from the countries included on the supposed second ban be barred from the US, barred from their own families, and barred from an education, but they will also be the target of the hate and fear festering in America.
Also read: New Trump travel ban could bar Afghans, Pakistanis soon