U.S. President Donald Trump's immigration order was so boorish, purposely hostile and ill-conceived that it has obscured an inconvenient truth for many of those who oppose it: The United States was refusing entry to many Muslims long before he took office.
In a statement Sunday night, Trump said his choice of seven countries — Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen — matched those singled out by the Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act, which was passed under U.S. President Barack Obama. Far short of a ban — and far from stranding green card holders and dual citizens at the border — that legislation required dual citizens of those countries and anyone who traveled there to apply for a visa to enter the U.S. But the fact remains that these countries were first formally singled out as potential threats under Obama, not Trump.
Trump was hammered for keeping other nations off his list despite the similar threats posed by them. For example, Saudi Arabia, whose citizens perpetrated the 9/11 attacks, or Tunisia, which, on a per capita basis, provides the Islamic State with more fighters than any other country in the world. That, too, is in keeping with U.S. practice before he took office. Just look at visitor visa rejection statistics. In 2016, Saudi Arabia had a 4 percent refusal rate for U.S. non-immigrant B visas, compared with an average of 31.4 percent for all countries not included in the visa waiver program; Tunisia's rejection rate was 16 percent.