The United States last weekend began enforcing the immigration policies of its new president, Donald Trump. Mr Trump campaigned for office on a promise to ban Muslims, saying he would institute a "temporary" ban until US security was tightened against extremists. Such a ban, besides being immoral, is going to be almost impossible to enforce, yet in the event, he has begun what is essentially an odious and global offensive against Muslims.
Of course, since it's Mr Trump, it gets worse. It is all done under his power of executive order, which has the force of law without any accountability. It is the US equivalent of Section 44, where the head of government can issue very powerful orders without a shred of oversight. In Mr Trump's case, he signed an order last Friday banning refugees and citizens of seven countries: Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Iran, Sudan, Libya and Somalia. Mr Trump's justification is that he believes that citizens and refugees from these countries are "linked to concerns about terrorism".
This order is an obvious end run around his detestable campaign promise to ban all Muslims from entering the US. But there are obvious holes in his order, and the largest one is quite serious. Mr Trump's self-described concern about terrorist links does not extend to Saudi Arabia. That country -- the home of 15 of the 19 hijackers in the 9/11 attacks on his own hometown of New York -- is the world's largest source of active terrorists in the Middle East. Most of the biggest terror groups, from al-Qaeda to the so-called Islamic State, trace their origins to Saudi preachers and financiers.
Mr Trump obviously wants to look tough against terrorists. Rather than get down to the extremely difficult task of rooting out violent threats to the US and the world, he has taken the cheapest shot imaginable. His claim to be targeting terrorist-friendly nations is preposterous. Iran hasn't been the source of a terrorist attack for many years, and is actually fighting the Islamic State with the same fervour as US forces.
Far from sending terrorists to the United States, the violent al-Shabaab of Somalia recruits and imports American citizens for its war on Somalian people. The last Muslim immigrant to the United States who was involved in a terrorist attack was Tashfeen Malik, a secret follower of Islamic State who massacred 14 people in California with her US-born husband 14 months ago. Malik was from Pakistan, a country not mentioned in the execrable Trump immigration orders.
And so it goes in this dreadful, discriminatory order to practise religious persecution. Rather than screen refugees, Mr Trump picked up a pen and banned them. Rather than strengthen the admittedly porous US immigration procedures, President Trump put them in limbo. Even permanent-resident immigrants – green card holders – from the seven countries will be held at US airports and border crossings for interrogation.
Thailand is not significantly affected by Mr Trump's so-far limited war on refugees. But we should not be silent. While the US is busily tearing down its centuries of goodwill as a refuge which values freedom, it is sullying the world with this unprecedented attack on people based on nothing but the president's religious prejudice.
It is impossible to justify Mr Trump's divisive and harmful attack on some people who practise Islam.
It deserves strong criticism on every level, from Mr Trump's own business interests to simple human respect. This US policy, based upon religion, should be ended even more quickly than it began.