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OPINION
East Oregonian
Wednesday, February 1, 2017
Founded October 16, 1875
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Publisher
DANIEL WATTENBURGER
Managing Editor
TIM TRAINOR
Opinion Page Editor
MARISSA WILLIAMS
Regional Advertising Director
MARCY ROSENBERG
Circulation Manager
JANNA HEIMGARTNER
Business Office Manager
MIKE JENSEN
Production Manager
OUR VIEW
World is united
against Trump’s
Muslim ban
It hasn’t even been two weeks
since Donald Trump has been
president, but it feels like a century.
A majority of our readership
voted for the man, hoping he could
fix a broken political system. But by
now it is clear that Trump plans to
destroy that system — not fix it —
and the great American experiment
hangs in the balance.
And we shouldn’t be surprised.
Trump the president has proven
to be the same man as Trump the
candidate. At every campaign stop
he proposed policies of cruelty
and ignorance, and on that he has
delivered in spades. Consider recent
actions as campaign promises kept.
The result has been worldwide
chaos, panic and anger — most
recently and publicly in response
to Trump’s ban on refugees fleeing
from some of the most dangerous
places on the planet.
Trump’s order barring Muslims
from those seven nations — and
giving refugee priority to Christians
— is un-American, unconstitutional
and immoral.
But it’s not just us saying that.
Here are some of the various people
who have spoken publicly against
the policy. We hope you add your
voice to the chorus.
“The sickness or, you can say
the sin, that Jesus condemns most
is hypocrisy, which is precisely
what is happening when someone
claims to be a Christian but does
not live according to the teaching
of Christ. You cannot be a Christian
without living like a Christian ...
You cannot be a Christian without
practicing the Beatitudes. You
cannot be a Christian without doing
what Jesus teaches us in Matthew
25 ... It’s hypocrisy to call yourself a
Christian and chase away a refugee
or someone seeking help, someone
who is hungry or thirsty, toss out
someone who is in need of my
help.”
— Pope Francis
“(Trump’s plan) goes against
everything we stand for and believe
in.”
— Former vice president Dick
Cheney
“In my conversations with
officials here in Washington this
week, I’ve made it clear that Apple
believes deeply in the importance
of immigration — both to our
company and to our nation’s future.
Apple would not exist without
immigration, let alone thrive and
innovate the way we do.”
— Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s
chief executive, in a memo to staff
“It is an inhumane act against
people fleeing war zones.”
— Doctors Without Borders
“Foreigners from those seven
nations have killed zero Americans
in terrorist attacks on U.S. soil
between 1975 and the end of 2015.”
— Alex Nowrasteh,
immigration policy analyst at the
libertarian Cato Institute
“Such a hasty process risks
harmful results. We fear this
executive order will become a self-
inflicted wound in the fight against
terrorism.”
— Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
and Lindsey Graham, R- S.C.
“(The executive order is) akin to
President Trump taking a wrecking
ball to the Statue of Liberty.”
— Jen Smyers, Church World
Service
“It’s a horrible idea and I really
I feel for all the people who are
affected, families are being torn
apart and I worry in the big picture
what this means to the security of the
world. It’s going about it completely
opposite. You want to solve terror,
you want to solve crime, this is not
the way to do it.”
— Steve Kerr, NBA basketball
coach
“While not explicitly a religious
test, it comes close to one which
is inconsistent with our American
character.”
— Sen. Lamar Alexander,
R-Tenn.
“Discrimination on nationality
alone is forbidden under human
rights law. The U.S. ban is also
mean-spirited, and wastes resources
needed for proper counter-
terrorism.”
— Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein,
United Nations human rights chief
“It’s a deep and tragic irony that
Donald Trump is slamming the
door in the faces of refugees right
before International Holocaust
Remembrance Day. The entire
refugee convention came out of
the Holocaust and the failure of the
international community to protect
Jews and survivors.”
—Mark Hetfield, president and
CEO of HIAS, which was formed
in 1881 to help Jews fleeing ethnic
cleansing in Eastern Europe
“Regardless of whether or how
you worship, where you come
from or who you love, everyone’s
individual experience is what makes
us stronger as a whole. Those values
are being threatened by the recent
executive order in the U.S. banning
refugees, as well as visitors, from
seven Muslim-majority countries.
This is a policy we don’t support.”
— Mark Parker, Nike CEO
“(The executive order is) a clear
insult to the Islamic world ... and
a great gift to extremists and their
supporters.”
— Iran Ministry of Foreign
Affairs
“This 90-day ban ... is
unacceptable and I urge the
administration to halt enforcement
of this order until a more thoughtful
and deliberate policy can be
reinstated.”
— Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Penn.
“Citizens exercising their
Constitutional right to assemble,
organize, and have their voices
heard by their elected officials is
exactly what we expect to see when
American values are at stake.”
— Former President Barack
Obama
“If we send a signal to the Middle
East that the U.S. sees all Muslims
as jihadis, the terrorist recruiters
win by telling kids that America is
banning Muslims and that this is
America versus one religion.”
— Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb.
“We have no evidence that would
support a belief that the Obama
administration was discriminating
against Christian populations.
(World Relief is against) any
measure that would discriminate
against the most vulnerable people
in the world based on ethnicity,
country of origin, religion, gender or
gender identity. Our commitment is
to serve vulnerable people without
regard to those factors, or any
others.”
— Rev. Scott Arbeiter, president
of World Relief, humanitarian
arm of the National Association of
Evangelicals
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board of publisher
Kathryn Brown, managing editor Daniel Wattenburger, and opinion page editor Tim Trainor.
Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not
necessarily that of the East Oregonian.
OTHER VIEWS
President Trump,
meet my family
After imprisonment in a Yugoslav
he New York Times has
concentration camp, he made it to
periodically, to its shame,
Italy and then France, but he couldn’t
succumbed to the kind of
get a work permit, and he thought that
xenophobic fearmongering that
neither he nor any children he might
President Donald Trump is now trying
later have would ever be fully accepted
to make American policy.
in France.
In 1875, The Times sternly warned
So he dreamed of traveling to
that too many Irish and German
immigrants (like the Trumps) could
Nicholas America, which he had heard would
“deprive Americans by birth and
Kristof be open to all. He explored a fake
marriage to an American woman to
descent of the small share they yet
Comment
get a visa, but that fell through. Finally
retain” in New York City.
he met an American woman working
In 1941, The Times cautioned
in Paris who convinced her family back in
in a front-page article that European Jews
Portland, Oregon, to sponsor him, along with
desperately seeking American visas might be
their church, the First Presbyterian Church of
Nazi spies. In 1942, as Japanese-Americans
Portland.
were being interned, The Times cheerfully
As Krzysztofowicz stood on the deck
suggested that the detainees were happily
of the ship Marseille, approaching New
undertaking an “adventure.”
York Harbor in 1952, a
We make bad decisions
white-haired woman from
when we fear immigrants
Boston chatted with him
we “otherize.” That’s why
and quoted the famous lines
Americans burned Irish
from the Statue of Liberty,
Catholics alive, banned
“Give me your tired, your
Chinese for decades,
poor, your huddled masses
denied visas to Anne
yearning to breathe free
Frank’s family and interned
….” Krzysztofowicz spoke
Japanese-Americans. And
little English and didn’t
yes, The New York Times
understand, so she wrote
sometimes participated in
them down for him and
such madness.
handed him the paper, saying, “Keep it as a
But we will not be part of that today.
souvenir, young man.”
Trump signed an executive order on
Then as she was walking away, she
Friday that suspends refugee programs and
corrected herself: “young American.”
targets Muslims from certain countries. It’s
Krzysztofowicz kept that scrap of paper
hypocritical for Trump to be today’s avatar of
and marveled that he — a refugee who had
hostility to immigrants, since his own family
repeatedly faced death in the Old Country for
suffered from anti-German sentiment and
not belonging — now somehow counted as
pretended to be Swedish. But I’m indignant
an American even before he had set foot on
for a more personal reason — and I’m getting
American soil, even before he had learned
to that.
English. It was an inclusiveness that dazzled
Kirk W. Johnson, a former American aid
him, that kindled a love for America that he
official in Iraq, fears that the executive order
passed on to his son.
will bar military interpreters who have bled
That strand of hospitality represents the
for America and to whom we have promised
best of this country. The church sponsored
entry. He told me about one interpreter,
Krzysztofowicz even though he wasn’t a
nicknamed Homeboy, who ran through fire to
Presbyterian, even though he was Eastern
rescue a wounded American soldier, and then
European at a time when the Communist bloc
was himself shot. Homeboy survived, barely,
posed an existential threat to America. He
but lost his leg — and as he recovered, a
grenade was thrown at his home by insurgents could have been a spy or a terrorist.
But he wasn’t. After arriving in Oregon,
angry that he had helped Americans.
he decided that the name Krzysztofowicz was
After years of vetting, Homeboy was
unworkable for Americans, so he shortened it
approved for a visa for interpreters who
to Kristof. He was my dad.
helped the United States. Does Trump really
Recently I returned to the First Presbyterian
want to betray such people who risked more
Church to thank the congregation for taking
for America than Trump himself ever did?
a risk and sponsoring my father, who died in
Yet if fear and obliviousness have led us
2010. And the church, I’m delighted to say, is
periodically to target refugees, there’s also
moving to support a refugee family this year.
another thread that runs through American
Mr. President, please remember: This is
history. It’s reflected in the welcome received
a country built by refugees and immigrants,
by somebody I deeply admire: Wladyslaw
your ancestors and mine. When we bar them
Krzysztofowicz. And this is personal.
and vilify them, we shame our own roots.
Raised in what was then Romania and is
■
now Ukraine, Krzysztofowicz was jailed by
Nicholas Kristof grew up on a sheep and
the Gestapo for assisting an anti-Nazi spy for
the West. His aunt was murdered in Auschwitz cherry farm in Yamhill. Kristof, a columnist
for The New York Times since 2001, writes
for similar spying, but he was freed with a
op-ed columns that appear twice a week. He
bribe. When World War II was ending, he
won the Pulitzer Prize two times, in 1990 and
fled his home as it fell into the hands of the
2006.
Soviets.
T
Fear and
obliviousness
have led us to
periodically
target refugees.
YOUR VIEWS
Illegal aliens are a drain
on federal prison systems
One of the negative impacts of having
a significant foreign national population
residing in the United States, be they legally
or illegally present in the country, continues to
be crime.
The scope and impact of foreign national
crime on the U.S. citizens and residents of this
country continues to go almost unreported by
mainstream news sources online, on television
or in hard-copy newspapers.
Information on foreign national crime is
readily available to any mainstream news
source that has the ability to do a simple
search on the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons
inmates statistics website under the heading of
inmate citizenship.
A search of the bureau website reveals the
number and percentage of criminal aliens in
federal prisons on Dec. 24, 2016.
There were 41,216 criminal alien inmates
in the prison system. Alien inmates were 21.8
percent of the federal prison population; more
than two in every ten prisoners were criminal
aliens.
With 27,085 Mexican nationals being
incarcerated in the prison system, they were
the vast majority of criminal aliens in federal
prisons.
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons breaks
down the federal prison population into 13
types of offenses.
One of the top five offenses, the reason
inmates were incarcerated in federal prisons,
was for immigration crimes. There were
15,073 inmates in the BOP prison system
incarcerated for immigration crimes; they
were 8.5 percent of the federal prison
population.
The mainstream media’s ongoing failure
to exercise its due diligence in reporting on
foreign national crime means that elected and
non-elected governmental officials responsible
for law enforcement at a national, state and
local level will not be held accountable in
enforcing laws written to protect U.S. citizens
and residents from criminal aliens that have
and continue to invade our country.
David Olen Cross
Salem
LETTERS POLICY
The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues and
public policies for publication in the newspaper and on our website. Submitted letters
must be signed by the author and include the city of residence and a daytime phone
number. The phone number will not be published. Send letters to 211 S.E. Byers Ave.
Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.