'Facts' from Branstner's Aberdeen speech a mixed bag
KatherineGrandstrand kgrandstrand@aberdeennews.com, Aberdeen News
About 300 people listened Thursday night to facts about immigration and refugees, at least as set out by speaker Ron Branstner.Branstner, who lives in Minnesota and California, gives similar talks in other cities as he travels. He said all of the inf
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Aberdeen News
About 300 people listened Thursday night to facts about immigration and refugees, at least as set out by speaker Ron Branstner.

Branstner, who lives in Minnesota and California, gives similar talks in other cities as he travels. He said all of the information he presented was true.

The day after his speech, the American News fact-checked a handful of Branstner’s claims that were relatively easy to confirm or debunk. The results of the research follow.

• Branstner attributed the following quote to President Theodore Roosevelt in 1907: “In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin.”

Evidence: The quote is from the 26th president. But it was not written while he was in office in 1907, rather days before his death in 1919. A copy of the typed letter is available through the Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson State University in North Dakota. Later in the quote, Roosevelt calls for English to be the only language spoken in America.

Determination: Largely true.

• Branstner said people can immigrate to the U.S. even if they have severe health problems.

Evidence: Federal laws note there are several diseases that would prevent someone from entering the U.S., including active tuberculosis, infectious syphilis, gonorrhea, infectious leprosy, chancroid, lymphogranuloma venereum and granuloma inguinale.

HIV was on this list, but was removed in 2010. President Barack Obama finalized the removal, but it was started under the George W. Bush administration, according to a 2009 article by the New York Times.

Other diseases are quarantinable by presidentialexecutive order, including cholera, diphtheria, infectious tuberculosis, plague, smallpox, yellow fever, viral hemorrhagic fevers, severe acute respiratory syndrome and influenza caused by novel or re-emergent influenza (pandemic flu), according to the Centers for Disease Control.

People affected by diseases reportable as a public health emergency by the World Health Organization include many previously mentioned and polio, also cannot enter the U.S., at least not without a quarantine, according to the CDC.

Determination: Largely inaccurate.

• Branstner said that holding up four fingers — like people might do to indicate they want four of something — is a sign of the Muslim Brotherhood. He said this while talking about the dangers of Islam in the U.S.

Evidence: The reference is out of the Egyptian revolution, specifically in fall 2013, according to an article in The Atlantic. The gesture comes from the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque, the site of a violent confrontation in the summer of that year. Rabba means four in Arabic.

The Muslim Brotherhood took up the sign to replace a two-fingered V for victory that protesters had previously been using, according to the Atlantic.

In the unrest in Egypt since the Arab Spring in 2011, the Muslim Brotherhood has been in and out of power in that country, most notably winning the presidency with candidate Mohammed Morsi, who was later thrown out.

Determination: True, at least in context.

• Branstner said Obama’s wedding ring is really a sign of his devotion to the Muslim religion.

Evidence: The ring, which some say has an inscription of an Islamic prayer, is intricately designed from Indonesia, where the president spent much of his childhood, according to a 2009 story in the New York Times. According to Arabic speakers sought out by snopes.com, the pattern on the ring does not spell anything.

Determination: Unknown, though seemingly false.

• A slide Branstner showed attributed a quote to Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett from the Stanford University yearbook in 1977. It said, “I am an Iranian by birth and of my Islamic faith. I am also an American citizen and I seek to help change America to be a more Islamic country. My faith guides me and I feel like it is going well in the transition of using freedom of religion in America against itself.”

Evidence: Valerie Bowman attended Stanford, graduating in 1978. She was born in Iran while her father was a working as a doctor as part of a program that sent physicians into developing countries, according to U.S. News and World Report. She did not become Valerie Jarrett until 1983, with her marriage to William Robert Jarrett. Her parents are American citizens, and the family moved back to the U.S. when Jarrett was 5, according to snopes.com, which determined there is no evidence of the cited quote.

Determination: The quote is almost certainly a fabrication.

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