President Donald Trump's new executive order restricting immigration from six majority Muslim countries and drastically cutting the U.S. refugee program poses an "existential threat" to America, says James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute in Washington D.C.
"[It is] a false, dangerous, cruel, arbitrary, and bigoted assault on Muslims and the very idea of America as an open, welcoming society," Zogby wrote in a column published Sunday in The Huffington Post.
"While immigrants and refugees from the six countries included in the ban are not responsible for terrorism in the U.S., that hasn't stopped administration spokespersons from using them as scapegoats to justify their proposed policies.
"The order, itself, is designed to set up Muslims as a 'bogeyman' in order to win support for Trump's efforts to overhaul of the entire immigration/refugee program."
Zogby said that just as the "bogeyman" of the Mexican rapist and drug dealer was used to justify the wall and planned mass deportations, "Muslim terrorists are being used to validate gutting the refugee program and limiting admission of 'undesirables' from North Africa, and Southwest and South Asia."
"When all is said and done, it's not refugees and immigrants, Latinos or Muslims, who pose an existential threat to the American idea. That threat comes from this Administration and its policies," he said.
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