On January 27, President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning nationals from seven Muslim majority countries – popularly referred to as the Muslim ban. This is a thinly-veiled xenophobic reaction that takes advantage of the growing racial prejudice and hysteria over economic uncertainty in our country. The Asian-American community must strongly oppose this policy because it is discriminatory, ineffective and redundant, in addition to being another example of stereotype-based exclusionary practice. Our community must also stand with human rights instead of taking civil rights away from people based on their race, religion, or national origin especially since it wasn’t too long ago when we ourselves were targeted.
The executive order for the Muslim ban is chillingly reminiscent of Executive Order 9066 that led to the creation of Japanese internment camps in 1942. In the wake of anti-Japanese sentiment after Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed 9066, which resulted in the incarceration of about 120,000 people in internment camps across the U.S. Two-thirds of them were U.S. citizens. February marks the 75th anniversary of EO 9066. The demonization of Muslims does nothing other than hurt our country. It conflates the term Muslim with terrorist, just as being Japanese-American was conflated with being an enemy of the state. We need to strongly oppose this gross injustice where once again the federal government is casting a dangerous and inaccurate stereotype on an entire community.
The ban builds on a history of discrimination and civil rights abuses that the U.S. government has previously eschewed utilizing “otherness” based on race, national origin, and religion. Early on, the Naturalization Act of 1790, excluded all nonwhites from citizenship, including Asians, enslaved Africans, and Native Americans. Later, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 denied citizenship to Chinese already in the U.S. and severely restricted immigration into the country. It also went a step further into degrading Asian-Americans to a second class citizen status by prohibiting Chinese from marrying white or black American citizens.
Race-based exclusion from entering the U.S. dates back to the Scott Act of 1888 which barred Chinese from returning home after leaving the country, even if they had residency permits. Subsequently, the Immigration Acts of 1917 and 1924 further extended the ban to include immigration from almost all Asian countries. These laws further institutionalized race-based discrimination that allowed immigration from Europe while banning ‘Asiatic’ immigrants – more than 28 million European (white) immigrants arrived in the U.S. between 1880 and World War II.
The Muslim ban is a flawed and ineffective policy for several reasons. First, no Americans have ever been killed by nationals from any of the seven countries on Trump’s list. Since 9/11, more Americans have died in homegrown terrorist and white-nationalist attacks than at the hands of attacks orchestrated by immigrants. Second, scapegoating an entire group of people based on the actions of a few bad actors is unjust. Jihadist terrorists are a very small radicalized minority in a world of over a billion and a half peace-loving followers of the Muslim faith. Third, notably absent from the list are any Muslim-majority countries such as Saudi Arabia with whom Trump has business ties. This further underscores that the ban is an act of political theater, and once again Trump is putting his interests ahead of the nation’s. Finally, the ban is inherently redundant. Refugees and immigrants coming to the U.S. have already undergone very extensive background checks since the U.S. has one of the most restrictive immigration processes in the world.
The CATO Institute estimates that the odds of a Muslim immigrant or refugee committing a terror attack are less than 1 in 3.6 million. Hence this ill-conceived executive order is another example of paranoia and prejudice overriding reason. Continuing a legacy of race-based discrimination and xenophobia is a disturbing failure of political leadership. We in the Asian American community cannot let history repeat itself!
Evan Low is a state Assemblymember representing San Jose and the Silicon Valley. He is a member of the California Asian Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus.
