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If all foreign nationals from certain countries did pose a serious and demonstrable danger to American lives, of course, grave and verifiable enough to violate the civil liberties of members of entire groups of people, visas should not merely be denied;s by the ban’s logic at least, those previously granted ought to be taken away.

So unless the claim is that terrorist risks are not terribly risky at all if a visa happened to have been granted at any time before last week through an application process that the very proposition of a ban implies was dangerously inadequate, the exemption suggests that the fact of foreign-ness alone isn’t evidence of risk.

In its infinite generosity, though, the ban offers a second condition: People with bona fide relationships in the United States are deemed safe. Now, what is “bona fide?” Being engaged to someone, being their elderly grandmother or being their prospective employee is not bona fide, not according to the ban’s little-known definition of bona fide anyway, which seems to mean “a relationship close enough that you are more likely to want to maintain it than to set off a bomb.” Conversely, being married to or employed by someone in the United States is evidence that you’re probably safe.

So again, foreign-ness isn’t dangerous – it’s some other totally random quality.

And here’s yet another condition, for this is the ban that keeps on banning by not actually banning much at all: The travel restrictions are in effect for 90 days, at which point the previous visa conditions, which have helped keep the United States relatively safe and relatively prosperous for many decades will return, one must assume, to supporting the nation’s relative safety and prosperity.