WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump unleashed a wave of alarm on Saturday with his order to temporarily halt all refugee arrivals and impose tough controls on travellers from seven Muslim countries including war-wracked Syria. Making good on one of his most controversial campaign promises, and to the horror of human rights groups, Trump said he was making America safe from “radical terrorists.” “This is big stuff,” he declared at the Pentagon, after signing an executive order entitled “Protection of the nation from foreign terrorist entry into the United States.”
Trump’s decree suspends the entire US refugee resettlement programme for at least 120 days while tough vetting rules are established.
These new protocols will “ensure that those approved for refugee admission do not pose a threat to the security and welfare of the United States.”
In addition, it specifically bars Syrian refugees from the United States indefinitely, or until the president himself decides that they no longer pose a threat.
Meanwhile, no visas will be issued for 90 days to migrants or visitors from seven mainly-Muslim countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
In reaction to the order the United Nations on Saturday urged the US to continue its “strong leadership role and long tradition of protecting those fleeing conflict and persecution.”
In a joint statement the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, and the International Organisation for Migration said they believed “refugees should receive equal treatment for protection and assistance, and opportunities for resettlement, regardless of their religion, nationality or race.”
The order laid the way for what Trump has pledged will be the “extreme vetting” of visa applicants’ backgrounds — with some exceptions made for members of “religious minorities,” a caveat many see as a way to apply favourable treatment to Christians from majority-Muslim states.
Civil liberties groups and many counterterrorism experts condemned the measures, declaring it inhumane to lump the victims of conflict in with the extremists who threaten them.
“‘Extreme vetting’ is just a euphemism for discriminating against Muslims,” said Anthony Romero, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Romero said Trump’s order breached the US constitution’s ban on religious discrimination by choosing countries with Muslim majorities for tougher treatment.
Ahmed Rehab, director of the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said his group would mount legal challenges to fight the order “tooth and nail.”
“It is targeting people based on their faith and national origin, and not on their character or their criminality,” he said.
The travel controls will be popular with Trump’s nationalist base, though they stop short of a threat made during last year’s campaign to halt all Muslim travel to the United States.
Trump’s supporters defend the measures as necessary to prevent supporters of Al Qaeda or the IS group from infiltrating the US homeland disguised as refugees.
The US State Department, which with the Department of Homeland Security will have to implement the policies, said it was ready to put them into immediate effect.
Trump’s order also cut the number of refugees the United States plans to resettle in fiscal year 2017 — which is calculated from last October on — from 110,000 to 50,000.
During the ceremony, he also signed an order to “rebuild” the US military and watched Vice-President Mike Pence swear in former Marine general James Mattis as his new secretary of defence. — AFP
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