John Glenn's Thoughts: Opuscula Trump vs. Muslims: Nothing new Under the (U.S.) sun

DONALD TRUMP WANTS TO STOP Muslims from entering the United States.

People of all stripes are shocked.

How can anyone, how dare anyone, even suggest banning an entire people from entering the country based on religion?

It's been done before.

Back in 1939, a ship, the St. Louis ¹ carrying more than 900 Jews ² escaping nazi Germany attempted to land at its first destination, Cuba; when the Jews arrived with Cuban visas, they found the Cuban government, under Batista, had reneged and refused the Jews' entry. The ship's captain, Gustav Schroeder, pointed the ship north and sailed along the U.S. east coast, appealing to the U.S. to allow his passengers entry.

Influenced by the economic hardships of the Depression, ³ which exacerbated popular antisemitism^sic, isolationism, and xenophobia, the refugee policy of the US State Department and its stringent (and questionably legal) application of the 1924 Immigration Law made it difficult for refugees to obtain entry visas, despite the ongoing persecution of Jews in Germany.

Although several other European countries permitted limited Jewish immigration (for example Britain, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands) before 1938, many of these refugees disappeared as Nazi Germany conquered Europe. Latin America had also been a potential destination for refugees, although after 1938 these nations increasingly refused to admit further immigrants. A significant exception was Bolivia, which admitted around 30,000 from 1938-1941.

Beginning in 1940, the United States further restricted immigration by ordering US consuls to delay visa approvals on national security grounds. After the United States entered the World War II in December 1941, the trickle of immigration virtually dried up, just as the Nazi regime began systematically to murder the Jews of Europe. Despite many obstacles, however, more than 200,000 Jews found refuge in the United States from 1933 to 1945, most of them before the end of 1941.

In June 1939,⁴ then-president Franklin Roosevelt decided to refuse political asylum to more than 900 passengers aboard the German ocean liner St. Louis. The passengers, nearly all of them Jewish refugees, had the lights of Miami in sight when the United States government refused them permission to disembark. Roosevelt did not respond to pleas for help. The ship returned to Europe, and the Holocaust claimed more than a third of those who returned to the Continent.

Efforts by some Americans⁵ to rescue children failed: the Wagner-Rogers bill, an effort to admit 20,000 endangered Jewish refugee children, was not supported by the Senate in 1939 and 1940. Widespread racial prejudices among Americans—including antisemitic ^sic attitudes held by the US State Department officials—played a part in the failure to admit more refugees.

At the time, the total population of the U.S. was 132.2; in 2010, the last census, the U.S. population stood at 308.7 million.

The Census omits questions that identify the population by religion.

The Jewish population, as recorded by Jewish sources ⁶ in 1940 was estimated between 4,770,000-4,975,000; the estimated Jewish population in 2011 was 6,588,065.

Jews And Syrians: Counting Bodies

It was estimated that the nazis and their followers murdered some 12 million people over 6 years. That figure has now jumped to an estimated 15 to 20 million ⁷ of which at least 5 to 6 million were Jews. (Others murdered by the nazis and those like them included mentally and physically handicapped, Communists, and Roma (gypsies), among others.)

This does not include Jews murdered ⁸ in Muslim countries that aligned with the nazi's effort to exterminate the Jews.

By comparison, as of September 2015, "more than 200,000 people have been killed in the four and a half year Syrian civil" ⁸

Roosevelt and Congress turned their backs on the Jews - even children - while Obama wants to welcome 10,000 Syrian Muslims.

Jews, as a people, never have attacked the United States.

Muslims have, on several occasions, the most successful from the Muslim point of view must be 9-11-2001.

Muslims are at war with each other ¹⁰: Shia, Sunni, Wahabi, and more variations on the theme. Admittedly, Jews also are religiously fragmented, but they are not known to war against each other with any weapons other than words.

The question becomes: Which Muslim sect will be allowed in? If more than one, what guarantee that (a) the refugees won't bring their intra-religion wars to the U.S. and (b) that they won't -as they have done in England, France, and elsewhere in Europe - set up sharia law wherever they settle (at the expense of U.S. and local laws)?

Another question: Who will sponsor the refugees?

A 2011 survey of Muslim Americans, ¹¹ which was conducted in English as well as Arabic, Farsi and Urdu, estimated that there were 1.8 million Muslim adults (and 2.75 million Muslims of all ages) in the country. That survey also found that a majority of U.S. Muslims (63%) are immigrants. Another survey ¹² estimates that between five to 12 million Muslims live in the United States. About one-third of them are African-Americans. Another third are originally from the Indian subcontinent, including Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. The last third include Arab immigrants, Latinos, other European and Caucasian Muslims, and converts to Islam. The first Muslims to come to the Americas were brought as slaves. The first mosque built in America was in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

President Obama claims that all Syrian refugees will be closely vetted and that will take some time, yet he seems prepared to welcome 10,000 or more Syrians in short order.

Sources

1. SS St. Louis
http://tinyurl.com/nmtm3z4

2. St. Louis cargo
http://tinyurl.com/k6sptmx

3. U.S. immigration policy toward Jews fleeing nazis
http://tinyurl.com/mhxroea

4. FDR and the Jews
http://tinyurl.com/nawklrw

5. Wagner-Rogers bill
http://tinyurl.com/nnymb9b

6. U.S. Jewish population, 1654 to 2013
http://tinyurl.com/oh4z2gk

7. Holocaust death count
http://tinyurl.com/d2czb3s

8. Syrian death count
http://tinyurl.com/qy6t2bq

9. Muslims and nazis
http://tinyurl.com/ovr6vj7

10. Islamic Supreme Council of Canada
http://tinyurl.com/zvgj4mn

11. Muslims in U.S.
http://tinyurl.com/ob7pm57