GREENFIELD — State and local officials spoke out Monday in response to an executive order signed by President Donald J. Trump on Friday, which essentially bans immigration from seven Muslim-majority nations for 90 days.
“It is shameful that the president of the United States has unleashed a wave of fear across the country with an executive order to deny lawful residents their constitutionally guaranteed rights,” state Senate President Stanley Rosenberg said in a statement.
Rosenberg continued, “I am proud that it was a federal judge in Massachusetts who issued the broadest restraining order against such a cowardly act, and I am proud that lawyers are advising clients with green cards to fly into our airport, Logan International.”
The president’s executive order, enacted “to protect the American people from terrorist attacks by foreign nationals admitted to the United States,” also bars all refugees from the U.S. for six months, with Syrian refugees banned indefinitely. Immigrants affected by the ban include those from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
According to the order, its purpose is to alleviate pressure on “relevant agencies” and allow better immigration policies to be put into place.
In talking about the executive order, Rosenberg pointed out to the Statehouse News Service on Monday that its issuance on Holocaust Remembrance Day was a particular slight. “If you study the history of what happened in Germany it was one incremental policy change after another after another after another. And before you know it you turned around and you saw what happened as a result of that, and I’m just really very upset that he did it at all. And that he did it on that day is just to forget history and not understand the pain they’re causing.”
Rosenberg wasn’t the only elected official who decried the president’s timing.
“The fact that President Trump chose Holocaust Remembrance Day to sign his Muslim ban shutting the door to thousands of refugees fleeing war is shameful,” Congressman James P. McGovern said in another statement.
“Our country has long stood as a beacon of hope to the world with the Statue of Liberty welcoming generations of families in search of safety and a better life. Turning our backs on the innocent women, children, and families desperate to escape violence is not only callous and wrong, it is deeply un-American,” McGovern wrote.
Greenfield Human Rights Commission Chairman Philippe Guy Simon said immigration shouldn’t stop for better policies to be enacted. He also said Trump’s order is illegal, citing the Immigration Act of 1965.
The 1965 act determined, “no person shall receive any preference or priority or be discriminated against in the issuance of an immigrant visa because of the person’s race, sex, nationality, place of birth, or place of residence.”
Simon, who “worked next door to the World Trade Center, and was there on 9/11,” said he believes the executive order stems from fear, created as “a smokescreen to cover the real problems in this nation. Real problems of employment, of affordable health care, of a well-funded public education.”
Laurie Millman, director of Greenfield’s Center for New Americans, expressed similar sentiments.
“Our understanding of the Constitution is that everyone is welcome,” Millman said. “We’re working with the ACLU and others to see what the constitutionality of this is.”
“The order itself has no direct impact on any of our students, faculty or staff, ” Greenfield Community College President Robert Pura noted. A schoolwide email was sent addressing the executive order. But “today, I feel compelled to write with deep concern about President Trump’s executive order, signed last Friday, restricting entry to the U.S. by citizens of seven foreign countries,” Pura wrote.
“That executive order,” he said, “while it might have been intended to serve to protect, undermines the very egalitarian values that our nation was built upon. It is also an insult to the millions of immigrants whose hands have built this nation, literally.”
Elsewhere, the Gill-Montague Regional School District released a statement saying, “We will continue to enroll and serve every child living in our district who chooses to attend our schools, without regard to their immigration status.”
“Nothing in any of the recent presidential executive orders alters our policy of providing equal access to undocumented students or our commitment to providing all children with the academic and emotional support that will allow them to flourish and become contributing members of our community.”