President Trump has recently issued an executive order on immigration. I have been writing about that alot in the past few days. But this post is just about a small part of it which is quoted below.

Upon the resumption of USRAP admissions, the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security, is further directed to make changes, to the extent permitted by law, to prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual’s country of nationality.

Since the ban is on immigration from 7 majority-Muslim nations, it is very clear that minority religion means all religions except Islam.

The United States has generally avoided religious preference. There is something in the Constitution about that but I don’t want to argue about that here. (But I would be glad to accept comments on that issue.) The main issue I want to explore is how that would work.

Imagine there is some sort of point system and immigrants must meet a certain threshold to get to the US. Do you get extra points for being a non-Muslim? Is it the same for all groups?

What if you don’t have a religion? Do you still get the points?

Do you get more points for certain religions? Does it matter how religious you are? What if you are non-religious but spiritual?

Perhaps we need another order clarifying this. Comments?