**** Elections thread *****

[BananaStand]

Is the 3 month period significant? Would you have a different opinion if it was shorter or longer?

I don't know how long it can, should, or would take to implement enhanced vetting procedures. There are people that do know, and they've asked for three months. It's not on you or me to question it.

Innocent until proven guilty (which is applied on an individual basis, not a regional basis) is something we stand for as an American ideal. Holding people who are not proven to be guilty of any wrong-doing as under the banner of "other people from there do wrong things" is not my understanding of American ideals.

Who are you talking about? Who is being "held"? Are you talking about people who got stranded in airports two weekends ago? If so, they were guilty of trying to enter the country illegally. And from what I've heard, the vast majority of these people were granted waivers and endured no real hardship. Once again, inconvenience, is not the same as injustice. The DHS secretary came out and admitted that the implementation was poor, and caused unnecessary complications. Governments are run by human beings, mistakes get made. They get fixed. None of that compromises our ideals.

It's kinda funny that I'd have less of an issue with the ban if it was for ALL countries.

Why? What happened to your American ideals. If someone wants to come here from Canada, Brazil, Germany, Kenya, India, Japan, or some other country with a friendly centralized government willing to verify the identity and history of a person, why shouldn't they be let in. A ban on all countries would be totally xenophobic, which is something I thought you had a really big problem with.

Do you have any real numbers to back this up?

Yes I do. http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/07/01/...-extremism-10/

130 people were killed in Nov 2015 in Paris. Jury seems to be out on the fake passport bit. Seem to be conflicting reports on whether the passport found was a fake belonging to the attacker, or a real one belonging to a victim. In either case though, it doesn't change where the attacker came from.

It is definitively cowardly to consider an entire region of people as "a threat to America" when there is 0 indication that they are wrong-doers aside from circumstantial association with "bad guys."
It is definitively cowardly to react to the actions of an individual by fearing more than one person.

You're ignoring the reasons why these 7 countries were named. It has nothing to do with any individual person. The entire government responsible for that country has given a gigantic middle finger to the efforts of our Intelligence services to screen incoming people.

The only issue I have is the word "extra." I think that having different levels of scrutiny for different areas is ethnic profiling, and goes completely against American justice..

Again, the variable factor here is not ethnic, its diplomatic.

I support equal standards for all applicants, regardless of who their neighbors are..

That's a nice ideal, but somewhat impractical in reality. I mean, we know where the Islamic state is. It's in the last two letters of their acronym. You don't think that warrants some extra attention for people coming from that region? I mean, if you were a cop who got a tip about a load of cocaine being smuggled on a flight....and you looked at the passenger list and saw 98 local yokels, and two columbian nationals....whose luggage are you searching first?

The part which is an abandonment of our ideals is the part where we set different standards for different people based on the actions of still other people.

This 'still other people' you're talking about are governments. Is it in our American ideals to let people be oppressed and live in starvation? Of course not. Are we going to lift sanctions on North Korea and send more aid to the country? Of course not. That would only enable the dictator over there to be even more of a dictator. Sometimes your ideals means choosing the lesser of two evils. It's not all gumdrops and rainbows.

Using diplomacy to persuade other people to help us achieve our goals is near the core of democracy, which is in line with American ideals, as I understand your scenario.

I don't see how this is on topic.

It's on topic because it's demonstrating an alternative method to help refugees, that is in line with American ideals. I don't see why maintaining american ideals means, specifically, that we have to bring them all here.

[Poopadoop]

It's not on you or me to question it.

Actually, it's on everyone to question things and not just take others' word. That's what it means to be an independent, autonomous person as opposed to a blind follower.