Where Does President Get Power to Ban Travel
Firm Votes to Restrict Future Travel Bans, Moving to Undo Trump'southward Legacy
The No Ban Human activity would adjourn the president'due south expansive ability to control immigration and bar restrictions on the basis of religion. Information technology faces steep obstacles in the Senate.
WASHINGTON — Pamela Raghebi of Seattle blames President Donald J. Trump's travel ban for keeping her separated from her husband, Afshin, a native of Iran, for three frustrating years.
"My world basically turned upside down," Ms. Raghebi said on Midweek in a phone interview, recalling how the blockade Mr. Trump imposed on travelers from predominantly Muslim countries had stranded her spouse overseas. "They scapegoated a whole civilization throughout the globe. That tin can't be allowed to happen again."
House Democrats moved on Wednesday to try to foreclose that from happening. Voting 218 to 208, more often than not along party lines, the House passed legislation known every bit the No Ban Act that would restrict the president's wide-ranging ability to command immigration past requiring that travel bans exist temporary and subject to congressional oversight. It as well would explicitly bar whatever such edict based on faith.
The House also approved, 217 to 207, entirely along party lines, a related measure that would require that certain immigrants be allowed access to a lawyer when they are detained at ports of entry, such as airports.
Republicans opposed both bills; but 1 of them, Representative Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, crossed party lines to back up the No Ban measure. They argued that controls on clearing should exist tightened, not relaxed, given the beat out of migration through the southwestern border.
"Are Democrats working to repair the crisis?" Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader, asked on the House floor Wed. "Are they working to stop the mass period of illegal migration? No."
The bills face an uncertain hereafter in an evenly split Senate, where a backlog of House-passed bills on immigration and other topics face up steep obstacles. Merely advocates say they send a clear message that America cannot get back to the days of Mr. Trump, who called during his presidential campaign for "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United states," and so strove to put those words into activeness once he took office.
"We cannot allow any president to abuse the power of his or her part," Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on the floor.
The measures were inspired past the harsh and abrupt steps Mr. Trump took at the start of his presidency to clamp down on the entry of foreigners into the country, which led to chaos at U.S. airports and a rush of legal challenges. In January 2017, he denied entry to citizens of vii majority-Muslim countries. Amid court challenges, Mr. Trump afterwards amended the ban, expanding it to include some countries that are not predominantly Muslim, such as N Korea.
President Biden, who reversed Mr. Trump'due south travel bans after taking office, is backing the legislation.
"Those bans were a stain on our national censor and are inconsistent with our long history of welcoming people of all faiths," said a formal argument of support issued by the White Business firm this week.
But the statement said the administration reserved the right to restrict travel from specific countries if necessary.
"The administration stands ready to work with the Congress to adopt a solution that protects against unfair religious discrimination while also ensuring the executive branch has the flexibility necessary to respond to serious threats to security and public health, and emergent international crises," the statement said.
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Representative Mary Gay Scanlon, Democrat of Pennsylvania, said she could never forget the hardship inflicted on travelers by Mr. Trump's bans, which she chosen "illegal and ill conceived," and discriminatory against Muslims.
"Families were separated," she said. "Many were denied the correct to counsel."
Withal, the legislation comes at a difficult political moment for Mr. Biden and Democrats on immigration.
Representative Guy Reschenthaler, Republican of Pennsylvania, argued on Tuesday that the No Ban Act would weaken national security, and that the requirement that travelers have admission to counsel "complicates the job of Border Patrol agents" and would cost millions of dollars.
The Congressional Budget Function estimates that the neb would cost $825 1000000 to implement over five years.
"This bill does nada to address the Biden border crisis," he said, using the label Republicans have adopted. Similar problems also existed under Mr. Trump.
The votes Wednesday are the latest steps the Democratic-led House has taken in contempo weeks to try to overhaul the nation's immigration arrangement.
Concluding month, the Firm voted to create a path to citizenship for an estimated four million undocumented immigrants.
In 1 neb, lawmakers moved to set up a permanent legal pathway for more than 2.5 million unauthorized immigrants, including those brought to the United States as children known as Dreamers, and others granted Temporary Protected Status for humanitarian reasons. Lawmakers also approved a measure that would eventually grant legal status to close to a million farmworkers and their families while updating a key agricultural visa plan.
While some Republicans there have pledged support for Dreamers in the past, their party is increasingly uniting behind a hard-line strategy to deny Mr. Biden the votes he needs to brand any new immigration police force and employ the bug at the border as a political weapon.
The Biden administration has come under criticism for its clearing positions from both the right and the left.
Mr. Biden angered Democrats across the country on Fri when White House officials said he would limit the number of refugees immune into the U.s.a. this year to the historically depression level set past the Trump assistants, reversing an earlier promise to welcome more than sixty,000 people fleeing war and persecution.
The move to cap the number at xv,000 prompted such an firsthand backlash from Democrats and human being rights activists that the White House later retreated and promised to announce an increased number by May 15.
Even though Mr. Biden reversed Mr. Trump'south travel ban, he has not approved an expedited waiver process to reunite separated spouses such as the Raghebis, said Avideh Moussavian, the legislative director at the National Clearing Police Center.
"The bodily work of undoing the impairment and the harm was non going to happen on Day 1," Ms. Moussavian said. "We take been urging the administration to ensure at that place's an efficient, expedited path for those applicants to have their cases reconsidered. People have been left on their own on navigating a system that at this signal they are justified in having little religion in."
Ms. Raghebi, who sued the Trump administration over Mr. Raghebi'south situation, said she was hopeful that her husband of x years would get habitation soon. She has been talking to him every twenty-four hours on the phone, and she wants him to meet a new grandchild in the family unit.
"In that location's so much near my husband that I miss," she said. "I become very anxious almost the future. If he tin come dwelling, I would have the most lovely birthday."
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