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Supreme Court Partially Revives Travel Ban, Will Hear Appeal (bloomberg.com)
From a report: The U.S. Supreme Court partially revived President Donald Trump's travel ban and said the justices will hear arguments in the fall. The justices said the ban can apply for now only to people who don't have a "credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States." From a NYT report: Mr. Trump's revised executive order, issued in March, limited travel from six mostly Muslim countries for 90 days and suspended the nation's refugee program for 120 days. The time was needed, the order said, to address gaps in the government's screening and vetting procedures. [...] The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, recently blocked both the limits on travel and the suspension of the refugee program. It ruled on statutory rather than constitutional grounds, saying Mr. Trump had exceeded the authority granted him by Congress. The court agreed to review both cases, and said it would hear arguments in October, noting that the government had not asked it to act faster.
Want an idea what the ruling will be? Look at any previous SCOTUS ruling on the Executive power to control the boarders. Hint, they have always sided with the Executive.
The partial ruling is really about standing. If you don't have standing to sue, the courts won't hear your case. This means that they've already decided anyone whose visa application isn't affecting someone already in the United Stated doesn't have standing. Many of the Democrat States involved tried to make this a general injunction by claiming they had standing related to anyone who was visiting their State and thus might pay a tax or visit a conference they sponsored or whatever.
This tosses much of that and already makes it much more difficult to sustain the injunction in general, but rather just for specific individuals who can demonstrate they have a connection already to the United States. It signals a little how they'll deal with the unprecedented idea that the lower court judges have issued national injunctions rather than for specific individuals who sued. i.e. It ain't gonna fly and neither are the vast majority of people trying to avoid the ban. For the rest, we'll apparently have to wait for the next term.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
You'll rarely see a clearer statute anywhere:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/us...
8 USC Sec 1182(f) Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by President
Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.
Do constitutional protections extend to non-citizens living outside the borders of the US?
The ramifications of this ruling will have an enormous impact potentially making the "long-arm" of US law even longer.
We need to be very careful about extending the US constitution beyond the scope of US citizens and US borders.
The appeals courts exceeded jurisprudence in citing his campaign speeches as some how changing the clear language of the Executive orders. What he said as a candidate during a campaign cannot be taken as indicating his intent once elected when the wording of executive orders issued is clear in it's limitations and specifics. The first ban did have a problem in the exception it provided for persecuted religious minorities from those nations made it a defacto ban on the religion from those countries.
But the second ban removed that exception, making it a blanket ban on citizens from those countries regardless of faith.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Whether you like it or not, the ability to wholesale black entire regions from traveling to the US is actually the least cruel, least invasive and least destructive way of preemptively handling potential problems from foreign sources. If they don't arrive here...
1. We don't have to surveil them.
2. We don't have to even have a debate about indefinite detention or torture.
3. We have less of a reason to worry about who is talking to who.
Japan effectively blocks immigration and most travel from Islamic countries. Maybe you think that's wrong, but at the same time, Japan has never had to have some of the post-9/11 debates we've had that have warped our national morals and values.
(As a side note, "you might be a neocon if..." you think it's deplorable to screen like this, but think shipping a man off to Syria to be "evaluated" is sound, moral foreign policy)
The Supreme Court has already ruled on this exact issue.\
Except no, the Supreme Court has not already ruled on this exact issue. That's why they're taking the case, because they haven't ruled on it.
Haven't you read the lower court opinions, which go into great detail summarizing what the Supreme Court has ruled in the past?
The president absolutely has the authority to limit or stop any immigration, from any class of people, for literally any reason. Even if his stated reason was to explicitly block Muslims.
And that is what the President explicitly does not have the authority to do.
And that is the question before the court: is this travel ban in fact actually designed to block Muslims per se?
In a way it is surprising because there has been little dissent among the lower courts.
I suspect this is because the lower courts have placed themselves in the ridiculous position of declaring that a order enacted under one President would be Constitutional while that very same order enacted under another President would be Unconstitutional.
Further, That an order enacted by a President would be Constitutional until it is discovered that the President made that order with a pejorative mindset.
Either the executive can make this kind of order or they cannot. The legality cannot be dependent on the motivation.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
However, the USA seems so divided on whether to be a robber baron libertarian 'paradise' of God-fearing Christians or an Orwellian liberal state where everyone thinks what the state tells them is correct to think., that sometimes I think secession might be the way to go.
No need for secession. The solution is already in the Constitution, and it's called federalism. The federal government is supposed to have an extremely limited role in the governing of the country: courts, national defense & foreign affairs. That's pretty much it. Everything else can be handled by the states. Some people will say "What about regulating interstate commerce?" but what they don't realize is that the intention of the interstate commerce clause was to ensure free trade between the states, not to allow the federal government to impose onerous restrictions.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
And even if he did say these things after becoming President, it still creates the ridiculous situation where the order is Constitutional if he kept his mouth shut, but later, after having expressed those opinion, it would suddenly be Unconstitutional.
The mindset of the executive has no bearing on the Constitutionality of the order. the actually LANGUAGE of the order is what must be judged.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
INAL But intent does actually have a legal weight. This is actually well documented. You should have been aware of that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legislative_intent
Yes this is a reference to the legislative branch, however, there are cross implications.
If they can't make rules that last for 90 or 120 days, then "government screening and vetting procedures" are irrelevant because they can't make rules to screen anyone out after that either. The courts (some of them anyway) were effectively saying the State Department no longer had the authority to decide who gets a travel visa and who doesn't.
Despite the noise that the vocal minority is making over this, I think you will find that most folks, if asked (assuming no one could find out the answer) would support a completed ban on Muslims in the country.
Naturally, most folks are simply afraid of being a racist or other "ist" word.
Honestly, I do not know understand why it is an issue to dislike someone because they are Muslim. It's not like disliking a person because they are brown, or black or whatever color.
Islam is a religion and an ideology. It is reasonable to not like a person based on what they choose to believe?
Everyone keeps repeating this notion that Islam is the religion of peace, but that it total bullshit. The backbone of Islam is based on submission. The word Islam means submit!
I work with several guys from Morocco. Naturally, they are all Muslim. They are seem like "normal" guys to me. I once asked one of my colleagues, hey... man, I heard that the Quran says that it is OK to hit your wife if she is disobedient or disrespectful.
His answer... Of course! How else shall she learn? He went on to explain that of course, you could not cause damage or marks, but only enough that she gets the point and never more.
For all those people who say how great and peaceful Muslim people are... go to the middle east. Take your wife, or go alone if you are a woman. See how "peaceful" they are. I have lived in the middle east and I will not support or "tolerate" and religion that puts so little value on a human because of their sex. If I am "Racist" because I won't tolerate their hatred of women, then.. fine, I'm a racist.
And no... I will not be hiding behind AC.
An increase in workload in one area cannot be made without a decrease in workload in another. Without the freeze, the government staff are tied up doing their regular job of interviewing, reviewing, and granting/denying visa applications (if they weren't busy with this stuff, then their job is unnecessary and they should be let go). Presumably the freeze was needed to pause the workload and free up the personnel, so the procedures and processes could be audited, revised, and new systems implemented.
What you say could be possible if new workers were hired to do the auditing, revising, and implementing. But since they'd be new, they'd have to interview current INS staff first to get a clear picture of how the current procedures are (or aren't) working and find potential gaps in security. So you'd still need to lessen the workload of the current staff - either by freezing immigration for a period of time, or delaying visa application reviews thus stretching out wait times. It's likely better to just skip the interviews and let the people who've been working with the system all this time work on revising it.
Trump's contention that the current system is full of holes and is letting dangerous people into the country would mean he would favor the freeze over the slowdown as the more security-conscientious choice. I disagree with his contention. But I agree the President has the legal authority to make temporary changes to immigration like this. Obama implemented a similar freeze (or ban, to use your terminology) on Iraqi refugee immigration for 6 months, although that ban was based on specific intel.
That puts you in a situation where if the intent is undiscovered, then something that is presumably Unconstitutional would be found Constitutional.
To me this smacks of the logic used in Hate Crimes. Someone who is killed by reason of some prohibited "hate" is just as dead as someone killed for hate that is not "prohibited".
I believe the legislation/orders should stand on their own.
The only other possible scheme would be "disparate impact". I have problems with that in general, but with respect to a travel ban, then any ban that affects any country that has any overwhelming majority of a demographic could be found to have a disparate impact.
For instance, if a ban was placed on nation for reasons of their international conduct, but that nation has a majority of Buddhists, then you could say it was an illegal ban on Buddhists as it has a disparate impact on Buddhists.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The circuit courts used a wild stretch of the imagination to conflate a ban based on national origin with a ban based on religion. Trump said something during his campaign and the courts used that to infer that this ban was somehow based on religious background? This, despite the fact that there are more than a billion Muslims from dozens of countries all over the world who were unaffected and there was no exception for non-Muslims?
They are supposed to rule on the law itself. The President has the power or he doesn't. Guessing what he might be thinking as the basis for a court ruling is ridiculous.
Countries affected by the travel ban:
Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Iran
Countries being bombed by the previous administration:
Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Sudan
People are claiming that the current president does not have the legal authority to ban people from these countries from entering the U.S., but nobody questioned the previous president's legal authority to kill them?
Intent is SOMETIMES a factor but it is not a core pillar. In other words, intent often changes the "degree" or "tone" of a ruling but doesn't change the actual ruling. In the case of "killing someone" intent can result in a reduced (or no) sentence but that doesn't mean "not guilty". Sometimes intent doesn't matter at all. If I steal $1,000,000 to cure cancer it doesn't matter. I stole $1,000,000. Intent only matters if the intent is directly relevant to the issue at hand, which is a very complicated analysis.
I think it is a stretch to think that intent matters in this context. The Government grants people the right to enter the US that have no right to. Withholding that permission should not require a basis/intent in the same way that not donating money to charity doesn't require a proactive defense/intent. If anything LETTING PEOPLE IN should require an adequate basis (which there are many).
Additionally, when intent is a factor BOTH SIDES of the "INTENT" situation must be explored. Trump, correctly, states that this travel ban is intended to stop potential terrorists until a proper screening system can be developed. Just because "people" disagree that this is Trumps intent doesn't make it so. Imagine if an executive wanted to do a travel ban to protect the county in the future for the exact same purpose but now can't because of a bad judgement aimed not at the actual order but the person's "suspected intent".
Plus I think you are confusing motivations and intent. It is very clear what Trump's intent is: block people from certain countries and backgrounds from entering the USA. The question is if that the *motivation* for that intent is "to protect the country" or "to spite certain cultures" and the Supreme Court should care less about the motivation and maybe think about if the intent matters.
Federal law states people cannot be denied entry to the United States purely on the basis of their nationality.
That's complete rubbish. Federal law actively discriminates against people who are not US citizens and furthermore even divides non-US citizens up based on nationality: Canadian's don't need to be fingerprinted and photographed not do they need an ESTA online visa, Europeans and a few other nationalities get fingerprinted, photographed and have to apply for an online ESTA visa, other nationalities have to have full visas. Hence if two people turn up at the border with the identical paperwork one might be admitted and the other denied based solely on their nationality.
As a non-US citizen, I've no problem with this - every country does the same - but let's not pretend that there is no discrimination based solely on nationality because it is frequently the grounds on which most discrimination is made and for very sensible reasons.
You're confusing motive and intent, intent factors heavily into our legal system. Intent is: "What was this order trying to accomplish?"
The legality depends on what specific actions are being taken, not on intended or anticipated future consequences.
For example: Passing what turns out to be a ban on guns is still a 2nd amendment violation, if it prevents or impedes a single citizen acquiring a firearm, even if the intended affect of the bill is to save lives and reduce violence by making guns harder to obtain, and complete ban was not in the mind of the authors.
Intent is used only to help disambiguate what specific actions are being taken when interpreting the meaning of the bill. When possible the courts Must pick the interpretation of the intent of all laws or orders in a manner that the result is constitutional and/or legal, if it is possible for there to be a constitutional and legal intent of the law or order.
That is.... the courts are there to interpret the laws and orders. The Courts are NOT there to second-guess decisions of the executive or elected officials.
The only time they can strike down an order is by showing there's no possible legal basis, and there's no possible lawful/constitutional interpretation of the rule, law, or order. And even then, the Judiciary is just one branch of government with very limited power over other branches other than some specific limited checks and balances --- E.G. There can't "really" be a dispute between the president and the courts, since the Executive technically has the authority to proceed against their orders.
the only words that matter though are the ones written on the E.O.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same