Black Community News News and Commentary for Christians
While everyone was focused on the U.S. Supreme Court affirming the Trump administration’s authority to exercise its power to suspend (temporarily or permanently) immigration from several Middle Eastern and African countries, there was other news related to the security of the country.
The Washington Times reported that the U.S. Department of State announced it will withhold certain visas for countries that refuse to take back their citizens the U.S. ordered deported.
State Department officials said the sanctions begin Wednesday, halting issuance of at least some categories of visas to would-be travelers from Cambodia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Eritrea.
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The law allows for all visas to be halted to any country that refuses cooperation, but the department decided to impose less-draconian penalties in each of the four cases.
Actions, or in this case, inaction, have consequences. If countries don’t agree to take back their people, our country can and will penalize them, something the previous administration reportedly was reluctant to do.
Rosemary Jenks, government relations manager at NumbersUSA, which advocates for stricter immigration controls, said it was a start.
“The law says that we have the authority to halt visas from recalcitrant countries, and we should halt visas. We should stop the issuance of visas to countries that don’t take back their criminals. Period. Full stop,” she said.
I’m glad the Trump administration is finally using this provision of the law, but they should be following it to the letter and blocking all visas,” Ms. Jenks said.
The Washington Times noted that a Supreme Court ruling (Zadvydas v. Davis) — issued the year Muslim terrorists murdered close to 3,000 Americans on their own soil — that the government can’t indefinitely detain foreign criminals whose countries refuse to take them back
In some cases, the results are tragic…In one high-profile case, Haiti refused repatriation of Jean Jacques, a man who had served time in the U.S. for attempted murder. Within months of his release, he killed a young woman in Connecticut after a drug dispute with her boyfriend.
Another illegal immigrant, Thong Vang, was released from prison in 2014 after serving time for rape convictions, but his home country of Laos refused to take him back. He ended up back in a California prison last year and shot two guards, police said.
Photo credit: elmoree (Creative Commons) – Some rights reserved
