Donald Trump’s executive order on visa ban isn’t as new

President Donald Trump’s executive order banning travelers and refugees from seven mainly Muslim countries is only the latest twist of dark threads that have long been present in America.

The executive order is not unprecedented. It is evolutionary. The countries affected by Trump’s executive order – Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen – have been singled out under American immigration law since the days following 9/11.

Trump’s executive order only lists Syria by name. It denotes to the other countries in reference to a 2015 Obama-era law, 8 U.S.C. 1187(a)(12). (And the list thus has nothing to do with any of Trump’s business interests. He did not create it, nor is he the first American president to omit Saudi Arabia from post-9/11 scrutiny.)

There were no mass dissent memos filed by State Department employees over any of those steps.

While the idealized stories of individual refugees heard this weekend are deeply emotional, left undiscussed was the fact that compared to other nations, the United States is quite stingy in the number of people it accepts.