Ever since January 20th, the people of this country have been crossing their fingers and biting their tongues, anxiously awaiting (and dreading) the changes that President Trump has vowed to make happen. One of his executive orders, signed January 27th, prevented people from seven countries (Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and Iraq) from entering for a whole 90 days.

This order has sparked outrage because of its direct violation of our constitution, which explicitly states that we are not to discriminate against religion. Although Trump argues that this is not a “Muslim ban,” to the people, it seems clear that he is frowning upon the people of this religion.

Thankfully, this executive order was repealed.

However, the impact it left on both the people inside and outside of our country still remains. Honestly, it’s still very puzzling to me: not one part of this policy makes any remote sense.

For starters, for the last 50 years, we haven’t had any terrorist attack from any of those seven countries. In fact, statistics show that people born and raised in the United States are twice as likely to commit a crime than those who were foreign-born.

Trump claims that he is “putting America first” by implementing this order. He claims that this will lessen the amount of violence happening in our country. However, this is not true.

If we were to talk about terrorist attacks, we should be talking about the one that has scarred us the most: September 11th, 2001.

The suicide bombers of al-Qaeda were from the countries Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, United Arab Emirates, and Egypt, and not the ones that were banned from the U.S.

Immigrants and refugees don’t bring violence – each of them brings ideas, knowledge, and something new to offer. When they come to our country, they come with open minds and open hearts.

People of a different race or religion are not more likely to commit a crime, and it would be an empty argument to suggest otherwise, for violence is something that every human being is capable of. In our country, an increasingly high number of shootings are happening every day, and our president has yet to address this topic.

Before we point fingers at others, we should make sure that our own fingers are clean.