Last week I heard a panel on President Trump’s recent travel ban, which banned people from 7 countries from immigrating to the United States. Currently, the ban is being blocked by federal judges, until they make a decision on the action. One symptom of the ban is that it enables people to be targeted for eviction from the country, based on any kind of crime that a person may have committed. The panel suggested that the ban is a result of a symptom known as ‘islamaphobia’, which has been developing over the past decade.

The major issue that I have with the ban is that it prevents ALL people from leaving and going to/from these countries, whereas those who are militant, or terrorists are only a tiny tiny fraction of the total number of people. People from these countries have very important impacts in the United States, and some are citizens of the United States who would be trapped from seeing their families because they still live back in those countries. If these people go back to one of those seven countries, they may be unable to get back to the United States, where they work or go to school.

The panel then went on to discuss what Cornell is doing and has done to protect and educate students that are impacted by this ban. Cornell has filed an AMICAS brief saying the order is unconstitutional, and has worked directly with those students to educate them in the proper manner.

The main observations I had from this discussion were that executive orders can carry a lot of weight, yet the judiciary system can quickly activate its checks and balances to block an executive order. It is good to see the countries checks and balances working as they were intended.