Trump's Travel Ban: Repeating History | Teen Ink

Trump's Travel Ban: Repeating History

April 27, 2017
By Ryu134 BRONZE, Rancho Palos Verdes, California
Ryu134 BRONZE, Rancho Palos Verdes, California
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

  “To help address the risk to our nation”, that is how Trump’s administration described the recent travel ban that has been implemented in America. But strangely a similar thing was said 75 years ago on February 19th, the day when Executive Order 9066 was signed which put Japanese-American citizens into concentration camps for their “Safety”. But in reality, it was just a sad excuse to discriminate against those who appeared like the enemy by taking away most of their land, money, and belongings and putting them into tiny shacks to live for two and a half years.

Trump's so-called travel ban affects 6 countries which are all Muslim majority. This travel ban is nothing more than a blatant act of racism against Muslim people. Labeling a majority as terrorists for the actions of a select few simply makes no sense and only makes a mockery out of America. But Trump did not stop there, he even banned the entrance of people from those countries who hold Green Cards. This just shows how Trump does not believe in even our own country's policies of immigration. But perhaps the most ridiculous part of this travel ban is the fact that a total of 0 Americans have been killed by immigrants from those six countries. Why ban people from entering if they haven’t done anything in the past to harm us? With all of this, we can see that there are very few reasons as to why this travel ban is in anyway beneficial to our great United States of America.

 

But perhaps the saddest thing to come from this travel ban is what happened to Iraqi translators for the US military. Iraqi translators are people who live in Iraq but help the US military against Al-Qaeda, Isis, and much more terrorist organizations and are also headhunted by these organizations. These translators are heroic people who risk there’s and their family’s lives to help out the US military by translating the local language and also giving them tips on local terrorist activity. These people help out the US government in return for a visa to the United States. But now with these travel bans in place, they are being turned back to their country. But sadly since they helped out the US government, they are hated in their country and cannot return there.

 

So how can us, just regular everyday citizens help fight this atrocious act of racism? Simple, call up your local representative of your district. All you have to do is simply go to callgov and look up your local representative’s contact information and inform them how you feel about Trump’s travel plan. We are the United States of America and if we all come together and unite under one idea and if enough people follow through, then perhaps you could change this country. So don’t let politicians tell us lies about how the travel ban is for our security, as we know in reality, that this law is un-American.
 


The author's comments:

I was inspired to write this piece after I saw the Travel Ban that President Trump proposed. It was a racially discriminatory ban put in place out of fear. This reminded me of the Japanese Internment Camps which were put into place during WWII as the government feared them since they were like the enemy. To this day this Internment of Japanese American citizens smears the American ideals and is a part of our American history that we do not want to face.


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