US six-country travel ban takes effect.

[Odin]

US President Donald Trump's ban on refugees and travelers from six mainly Muslim countries went into effect late Thursday, after a Supreme Court decision allowed it to go forward following a five-month battle with rights groups.

The Trump administration says the temporary ban is necessary to block terrorists from entering the country, but immigrant advocates charge that it illegally singles out Muslims.

The 90-day ban on visitors from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, and a 120-day ban on refugees, will allow exceptions for people with "close family relationships" in the United States.

But activists said the government has defined that too narrowly, excluding relationships with grandparents and grandchildren, aunts and uncles and others.

And many were concerned about a possibly chaotic rollout of enforcement of the ban, like that in January when it was first announced.

Immigration rights activists and lawyers were waiting to help arrivals at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport and other airports to be sure those from the six countries with valid US visas were allowed in after the ban went into effect at 8 pm Thursday Eastern time (0000 GMT Friday).

The Department of Homeland Security, which was heavily criticized for mishandling many arrivals when the ban was first attempted in January, promised a smooth rollout this time.

It stressed that anyone with a valid visa issued before the ban begins would still be admitted, and that all authorized refugees booked for travel before July 6 will also be allowed.

"We expect business as usual at the ports of entry starting at 8 pm tonight," said a DHS official. "Our people are well prepared for this."

The Trump administration insists the ban was necessary to protect the country from terror threats, and to give immigration authorities more time to tighten vetting of travelers and refugees.

"As recent events have shown, we are living in a very dangerous time, and the US government needs every available tool to prevent terrorists from entering the country and committing acts of bloodshed and violence," a senior administration official told reporters Thursday.

But implementing it, even with exceptions, was also claimed as a political victory by Trump, after federal appeals courts twice blocked his order saying it violated constitutional protections of religion and overshot his own presidential powers.

Immigrant rights groups and Democrats in Congress continued to label Trump's order "illegal" and said the exemptions provided in a Supreme Court ruling on Monday remained unfair.

According to guidelines issued by the State Department, people with "close family relationships" would be exempt from the ban. It defined that to include parents, spouses, children, sons- and daughters-in-law, siblings and step- and half-siblings.

But "close family" does not include grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, brothers-in-laws and sisters-in-law, fiances and any other "extended" family members, the guidelines say.

People with formal relationships with a US entity -- who have for instance been offered a job or been accepted to study or lecture at a university -- will also qualify for visas during the ban. But a hotel reservation, even if already paid for, does not qualify.

Even as travel officials across the US were making final preparations for putting the ban into place, opponents were preparing new legal maneuvers.

Late Thursday, Hawaii asked federal district Judge Derrick Watson to clarify the scope of the travel and refugee bans in the Pacific island state -- and who, specifically, the ban refers to when stating that only an immigrant's close family members can travel to the US.

"In Hawaii, 'close family' includes many of the people that the federal government decided on its own to exclude from that definition. Unfortunately, this severely limited definition may be in violation of the Supreme Court ruling," Attorney General Douglas Chin, said in a statement.

Democratic legislator Bennie Thompson blasted the government for a "lack of preparation and transparency" in putting the ban into place.

"Just hours before the president's unconstitutional and misguided travel ban takes partial effect tonight, administration officials briefing Congress were unwilling or unable to provide meaningful answers about how they determined whom the ban would affect," said Thompson, the senior Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee.

Rama Issa, executive director of the Arab American Association of New York, said the government is redefining what a family is.

"I was raised by my grandparents, so the idea of grandparents not being part of a family is very foreign to me," she said at Kennedy International, preparing to help arrivals after the ban takes effect.

"I'm engaged to get married. I have family who lives in Syria today -- not only my father, but my aunts and uncles who I would love to be at this wedding, and unfortunately are not going to be able to be here."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-rolls-...162422613.html

I remember when traveling was an adventure. When airports were places where families greeted their loved ones as they came home. I feel very fortunate to have had that experience. International travel sucks today. Countries must secure their borders. It is the most important issue of our time. The Saudis don't allow their citizens to commit terrorist acts against the West these days, as they once did. It's much easy to build mosques in other countries and radicalize their populations to attack America and other Western countries. One of the countries on Trump's list is likely to be the origin point of the next 9/11 terrorists. His ban doesn't go nearly far enough, but it's a start. He better come up with some great new vetting procedures, with as much work as it was to get this going.

[N1019]

This is more about war than terrorism. The list is almost identical to the 2001 "seven countries in five years" list released by Gen Wesley Clark in 2007.

[Egyptian]

Ban Egypt also please.

[Odin]

In another setback for President Donald Trump, a federal judge in Hawaii has further weakened his already diluted travel ban by vastly expanding the list of family relationships with U.S. citizens that visa applicants can use to get into the U.S.

The ruling is the latest piece of pushback in the fierce fight set off by the ban Trump first attempted in January. It will culminate with arguments in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in October.

The current rules aren’t so much an outright ban as a tightening of already-tough visa policies affecting citizens from six Muslim-majority countries: Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Iran and Yemen. People from those countries who already have visas will be allowed into the country. Only narrow categories of people, including those with relatives named in Thursday’s ruling, will be considered for new visas.

U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson on Thursday ordered the government not to enforce the ban on grandparents, grandchildren, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and cousins of people in the United States.

“Common sense, for instance, dictates that close family members be defined to include grandparents,” Watson said in his ruling. “Indeed grandparents are the epitome of close family members.”

Watson also ruled that the government may not exclude refugees who have formal assurance and promise of placement services from a resettlement agency in the U.S.

The U.S. Supreme Court, which last month allowed a scaled-back version of the ban to go into effect before it hears the case in October, exempted visa applicants from the ban if they can prove a “bona fide” relationship with a U.S. citizen or entity.

The Trump administration defined “bona fide” relationship as those who had a parent, spouse, fiance, son, daughter, son-in-law, daughter-in-law or sibling already in the U.S.

The case came back to Watson when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that he had the authority to interpret the Supreme Court’s order and block any violation of it.

Watson’s Thursday ruling broadened the definition of what counts as a “bona fide” relationship to include grandparents and the rest of the wider list of relatives.

Hawaii Attorney General Douglas S. Chin, who represents the state as the plaintiff in the case said the court made clear “that the U.S. government may not ignore the scope of the partial travel ban as it sees fit.”

“Family members have been separated and real people have suffered enough,” Chin said in a statement.

The Supreme Court ruled that workers who accepted jobs from American companies, students who enrolled at a U.S. university or lecturers invited to address a U.S. audience would also be exempt.

A relationship created for purposes of avoiding the travel ban would not be acceptable, the justices said.

Trump proposed a blanket ban on Muslims during his campaign, but limited it to a handful of countries when he issued his initial travel ban in January, promoting it as a necessary tool for national security and fighting terrorism.

It set off massive protests at airports around the country and immediately sparked a sprawling, ongoing legal fight.

Courts blocked that first ban as well as a second the Trump administration had retooled, until the Supreme Court partially reinstated it at the end of June.

It’s unclear how significantly the new rules have affected or will affect travel. In most of the countries singled out, few people have the means for leisure travel. Those that do already face intensive screenings before being issued visas.

http://www.snopes.com/2017/07/14/tru...el-ban-hawaii/

That sucks.