I am Pro Reform

Hi Guys, thanks for coming back to read more. It's taken a bit to distill my thoughts down to a 1 topic, easy to follow post. One post has turned into 3. Check back in for the other 2, 'What  Actually Happens When I contact my Senator?' & 'Trump vs. Obama, Charted.'

Ive been thinking about the "Muslim Ban." Here's where I've landed on it. I am pro reform. I am for the tuning up process of reform in our government. Before you stop reading, hear me out, (or go post your thoughts in the comments and come back and finish reading;).

 I call Bull on anyone who is pro police reform and anti immigration reform. Just as you can be pro police and pro reform, You can be pro immigrants AND pro reform. Being for one and not the other is like changing the locks on your doors and leaving all your windows open.

Like so many of our buerocratic systems, this is a broken system. I completely agree that this reform was rolled out shoddily. Here's Paul Ryan agreeing too: At 10:27, The rollout could have been much better . Please get out there and protest. Hold the government accountable to doing a better job. These are people's lives they're screwing with... But let's make immigration in this country work better.

I worked at a refugee resource center for a short time. There is horror story after horror story of people being denied visas illogically and people who should have never gotten a visa, getting into the U.S.. There is already hardcore vetting in place but it needs to be tightened and improved.

A former colleague of mine and her husband and 3 children immigrated to the U.S. from Palestine. After enduring years of abuse by her husband, she courageously divorced him. He stayed in the US harassing her and her children for years, never paying child support. Finally he returned to Palestine, after having multiple warrants in 2 states for his arrest due to violating his restraining order, physically abusing her and her children, and owing more than 200k in child support. He was able to return to the U.S. in 2014, using false documents. This isn't hearsay.  This isn't meant to scare you, this is anecdotal evidence that our immigration system needs improvement.

Did you know that currently (or at least before 1/27/17) any immigrant entering the U.S. directly from Afghanistan has NU as their first name on all of their official documents? NU stands for Name Unknown. It doesn't matter if this individual has all of the documents to prove their identity, it doesn't matter if they served 10 years fighting terrorists alongside our military, they are dehumanized into NU. Does this sound like a system that's working!?

One of the reasons it took me so dang long to get out this post (aside from it being flu season and somehow also head cold season) was because I read the immigration executive order in its entirety. I didn't skim it. I read it and processed it and thought about it. You can too; executive-order-protecting-nation-foreign-terrorist-entry-united-states. There is a lot of good in this order, like the increase of budget and training to international Fellows programs so more staff can process refugees. Also data collection available for public viewing for terrorist related acts due to immigrants (I have a minor obsession with data collection).

One of my favorites was country reciprocation. The U.S. will now charge the same amount to obtain Visas and treat potential immigrants similarly to how each country treats a U.S. citizen when they try to get a Visa. What's confusing to me is that there is also emphasis on uniformity, that all immigration programs would have the same screening processes. Does this mean we screen the Swiss the same yet less than we do the Chinese? I'm confused and so are the people whose job it is to enforce this EO.

I pray that the Trump administration learns from the egg on their face from this unclear executive order and takes the time to more carefully craft future orders. In the meantime I am shallowly grateful that Melissa McCarthy has reached the zenith of her skill, playing Sean Spicer. I just peed my pants I laughed so hard.

Leave your thoughts! 😘