Presumptive President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team and close advisers have indicated that they plan to conduct a “shock and awe” reversal of many key Trump administration policies. Among these is the “Muslim ban” that limited visas of applicants from certain countries.
President Trump was always loose with rhetoric and his Democratic opponents equally so, albeit for different reasons. Trump had little patience for either precision or politeness, while Democrats sought to delegitimize programs more by pinning upon them polarizing catchphrases than by winning arguments on their merits. The so-called Muslim ban was a case in point.
Its root was in Executive Order 13769, the formal title of which was an “Executive Order Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States.” While partisan groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Friends Service Committee bestowed the “Muslim ban” moniker to the order, using an unfortunate phrase Trump uttered during his campaign in 2015, the logic behind the ban in the executive order was more nuanced.
There is often a background check that accompanies visa applications. Some countries cooperate with it, but others do not. The ban, which actually only affected certain categories of visas and was by no means comprehensive, applied only to those countries uncooperative with U.S. queries. It also reiterated that the State Department should adhere to reciprocity in the determination of its visa policies toward various countries.
Initially, the countries affected by the executive order — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen — were all majority Muslim, but by no means were the majority of Muslim countries subject to the ban. Indeed, 48 countries have majority Muslim populations, and so, Trump’s initial ban affected less than 15% of them. Nor did the ban include the top six countries by Muslim population, the combined Muslim population of which exceeded 1 billion persons out of the world’s total population of 1.8 billion Muslims.
It was for this reason that various court stays and challenges to Trump’s executive orders (and their subsequent permutations) ultimately failed at the Supreme Court. Nor is it even remotely accurate to say anymore that the ban applies only to majority Muslim countries. In September 2017, Trump added non-Muslim North Korea and Venezuela to the list, as well as Chad, which does have a slight Muslim majority.
After bilateral negotiations and reforms in Iraq, Sudan, and Chad, the U.S. government removed those countries from the list, once again suggesting national security and counterterrorism cooperation rather than religious animus to be the basis of the list, Trump’s campaign rhetoric notwithstanding.
By committing to lift the president’s order, Biden’s team is signaling that it prioritizes polemics above reality and that it is willing to sacrifice national security to satiate angry liberals whose understanding of the ban is guided more by their own movement’s political branding than by accuracy.
In effect, Biden proposes to give a free pass to governments such as Iran that openly acknowledge in their own press that they approach U.S. visas with a remarkable lack of sincerity. Indeed, rather than even the playing field by returning listed countries to the treatment afforded to others, lifting the order would mean giving a free pass to some of the world’s worst regimes that resist adhering to the counterterrorism protections and procedures to which the vast majority of European, Asian, African, and Latin American allies adhere. It would create precedent to demand that other lists, such as the state sponsor of terrorism list or even those sanctioned under the Magnitsky Act, not violate arbitrary religious quotas.
Biden may reverse what his team deems a “Muslim ban” for political reasons, but rather than signal an end to Trumpism, Biden will instead show that he puts politics above unity and prefers to appease a radical fringe within his own electoral coalition rather than to prioritize national security. Senators posture, but presidents should be above that. Biden may soon be sworn in as our nation’s 46th president, but he shows that he continues to think more like a senator than a president.
Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.
