海角大神

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright took to Twitter Wednesday to express solidarity with Muslims and refugees in general.

She followed the picture with another tweet saying, 鈥淚 was raised Catholic, became Episcopalian & found out later my family was Jewish. I stand ready to register as Muslim in #solidarity.鈥�

Ms. Albright鈥檚 sentiments, along with similar statements by feminist icon Gloria Steinem and Big Bang Theory actress Mayim Bialik are a response to President Trump鈥檚 recent moves to make good on his campaign promises regarding immigration. An executive order signed Wednesday aims to jumpstart construction on the border wall, and reports say that a future order will halt the flow of refugees.

According to a draft executive order obtained by CNN, the president plans to suspend all refugee admissions for up to four months and to prohibit admittance of anyone from聽Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen聽for聽30 days.

"In order to protect Americans, we must ensure that those admitted to this country do not bear hostile attitudes toward our country and its founding principles," the order reads, according to CNN. "We cannot, and should not, admit into our country those who do not support the United States. Constitution, or those who would place violent religious edicts over American law."

A 30-day stay of visitors from Muslim-majority probably falls short of a 鈥淢uslim ban,鈥� which most legal scholars say would be unconstitutional, some observers worry it might be just the first step the president takes before moving on to other promises.

During the campaign, Mr. Trump said he would 鈥渁bsolutely鈥� implement a database to register Muslims, words that were criticized by Muslim groups around the country and compared to anti-Jewish laws in Nazi Germany .

A protest group soon sprang up with members pledging to falsely register as Muslims in an attempt to dilute the database and diminish its discriminatory power. At the time of writing, almost 31,000 people had signed on to register.

America has created a similar registry at least once before. The administration of President George W. Bush enacted the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) in 2002 as a response to the 9/11 attacks. The system required non-citizens who are 16 years and older from 24 Muslim-majority countries and North Korea to be fingerprinted and photographed when entering the United States and to check in periodically with immigration officials until leaving.

NSEERS reportedly monitored upwards of 80,000 men and boys, 13,000 of whom were subject to deportation. Despite its scale, the program resulted in no terrorism convictions before 2011, when Obama canceled it by taking all 25 countries off the list. 聽

The efficacy of the NSEERS program is a matter of contention. The American Civil Liberties Union told CNN that it believed NSEERS 鈥渁ctually made genuine efforts at trying to combat terrorism more difficult by destroying relationships with immigrant communities and actually negatively impacting the ability of the federal government to cooperate with foreign governments in fighting terrorism."

This week鈥檚 executive orders brought similar concerns back to the surface, as 海角大神 reported Wednesday.

The border wall seems to be sending a similar message to Mexico, with President Enrique Pe帽a Nieto canceling his upcoming White House visit in response to Trump鈥檚 order to build the wall and subsequent tweets.

Trump says he wants to protect American jobs and stop terrorist attacks, but some wonder if such simple solutions as walls and databases can solve the complex problems facing the country.

鈥淵es, we want safer borders, but we鈥檝e also learned after a couple of decades of NAFTA that we are better off, we are safer and doing better economically, if Mexico is doing well,鈥� Luis Ribera, director the Center for North American Studies at Texas A&M University in College Station told the Monitor. 鈥淚f there are more jobs in Mexico, there will be fewer people crossing the border."