In response to Barry Clemons’ Feb. 10 letter (In defense of vetting immigrants,” page A4, North Kitsap Herald):

I feel you have a misconception on why many liberals are opposed to our president’s immigration policy.

We are not naive. We understand why caution is important to national security. No one I have talked to or heard about is against vetting. Even most of the acts of President Obama that you point to do not deal directly with vetting; they deal with the treatment of immigrants.

What fills us with horror about these new policies is that they are clearly targeting a religious group. Trump denies it being a “Muslim ban,” and yet when the facts are taken into account there is nothing else it could possibly be. The media may twist facts at times, but looking at the actual legislative language is completely unambiguous. It is a fact that the countries specified are Muslim-majority countries. It is also a fact that the executive order gave immigration priority to those who claimed to be of a religion that was not the majority in their country.

The fact that the order even mentions the non-majority religion implies that they are aware what the majority religion is. So there are two options here: either the administration is viciously anti-Muslim, or they are not competent enough to actually research and consider the legislation they are enacting. Neither option is acceptable.

If you want to speak about values from the inception of our country, then you cannot ignore the separation of church and state. If you live by Christian values, I have a great respect for you, but we absolutely cannot make America a Christian theocracy.

Connor Delaney

Poulsbo