Critique Of A Writer's Response By Liam Stewart

We write in response to Liam Stewart’s recent columns, “A Writer’s Response” and “Democrats applaud judicial overreach, again.” In doing so, we do not attack this specific author; instead, we counter the arguments currently employed to justify President Trump’s failed immigration ban, as represented by Stewart in the aforementioned articles.

In “A Writer’s Response,” Stewart examines the issue of immigration law in the United States. He claims that the decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to block President Trump’s immigration order is judicial overreach, without an examination of the Constitution, nor an acknowledgement of the concept of checks and balances upon which our country was founded.

The judicial branch must judge the constitutionality of executive action and Congressional legislation — this is not a
“is a nation of immigrants, but also a nation of laws, and these concepts are not mutually exclusive.” To suggest that the U.S. currently lacks laws regarding immigration and that President Trump’s failed immigration order would fill this void is highly irrational and ignores concrete immigration policy. Stewart further suggests that “we should never underestimate the unimaginable devastation that can result from a small number of [immigrants] driven by hatred.” “National security and public safety,” he writes, are “the preeminent functions of government.”

This argument is framed around the idea that national security and humanitarian aid are mutually exclusive. Stewart quotes Bill Clinton and Barack Obama calling for more severe borders in an attempt to establish a bipartisan desire for increased border control. However, in doing so, Stewart blends the issues of migration across our Southern border and enacting a travel ban on seven majority-Muslim countries, two issues that clearly require individual policies and unique consideration. Conflating the two generalizes the issue of immigration to an extreme