Justice

How to Find Your Elected Officials' Response to the Travel Ban

January 30th 2017

Ever since President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday restricting travel from Muslim majority countries, Americans have been demanding to know where their elected officials stand on the issue.

JFK Protest of Trump Muslim BanLuminary Traveller - flickr.com

While the order has been was met with near-unanimous condemnation from Democrats, Republican responses have proven to be a mixed bag.

Now, there's a document that collects all the responses in one place.

A Google spreadsheet that began circulating on social media on Sunday afternoon aggregates the responses (or lack therefeof) for every every U.S. Senator, Governor, and Attorney General in one place. The spreadsheet, whose creator has thus far remained anonymous, also includes a link to the original statements.

Opposition is colored in white, silence is colored in yellow, and support is colored in red. The guide also provides contact information for the public representatives, and a script that can be used by those who oppose the ban.

john-mccainKevin Hagen/AP - apimages.com

Supporters of the ban claim that creating stricter border regulations serve to protect American citizens from the threat of global terrorism, and that the seven countries identified in the executive order were also subject to limitations under Obama. In December of 2015, Obama signed a law requiring citizens who had traveled to these "countries of concern" to present their Visa when entering a United States. These travelers had not been required to present a Visa before entering the county prior to the law.

However, critics point out that no Americans have been killed on U.S. soil by any citizen of the seven banned countries between 1975 and 2015.

Critics of the ban also argue that it could serve as recruitment propaganda by making the United States seem unfairly prejudiced against Muslims—a view shared by prominent Republican Senators John McCain, of Arizona, and Lindsay Graham, of South Carolina.

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