Countries, Europe, Greece, Help Refugees, Human Rights, Refugees Issues, Reports, Turkey
President Donald Trump is poised to sign executive orders as soon as Wednesday that would limit immigration and the flow of refugees into the United States, restricting access from some predominantly Islamic countries, according to media reports.
Citing congressional aides and immigration experts, Reuters initially reported Tuesday that Trump plans to sign orders Wednesday at the Department of Homeland Security that would restrict travel to the U.S. for refugees and some visa holders from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. The Washington Post, however, reported late Tuesday that the president plans to sign orders related to a border wall and sanctuary cities on Wednesday, then move to immigration- and refugee-related orders later this week.
Trump on the campaign trail also called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the U.S. and for “extreme vetting” of refugees without providing an explanation for how that would differ from existing stringent government reviews of refugee applications.
Syria has the lowest proportion of Muslim residents among the countries Reuters’ sources cited, at 87 percent, according to the CIA World Fact Book. The others are more than 96 percent Muslim.
Those countries were all included as regional threats in last year’s Worldwide Threat Assessment, a document produced annually by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that’s considered the intelligence community’s general assessment of threats to U.S. national security. Other predominantly Muslim countries included in the threat report that weren’t specified by Reuters’ sources include Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Egypt and Pakistan. The report also identifies terrorism threats in places like North Africa and Europe.
Jul 29, 2023
It has been close to six years since hundreds of thousands of Rohingya faced a deadly genocide by Myanmar’s military and fled the country in search of protection and refuge in neighbouring Bangladesh. The Rohingya population has been undergoing persecution, discrimination, arbitrary arrests, and atrocities in Myanmar for over seven decades. Their condition is alarmingly […]