Donald Trump, the presidential nominee for the GOP, proposed a new immigration policy in his speech on Monday in Ohio.
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“In addition to screening out all members of the sympathizers of terrorist groups, we must also screen out any who have hostile attitudes toward our country or its principles or who believe that Sharia law should supplant American law”, he said Monday.
“We should only admit into this country those who share our values and respect our people”, he said.
Building on past proposals, he said immigration from countries with histories of exporting terrorism would be frozen until his administration creates “extreme vetting” procedures that check whether incoming refugees and citizens support an inclusive, pluralistic American society.
“Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, in what was billed as a major foreign policy address, on Monday backed off past threats to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation alliance – saying that if he’s elected, the US will work with the 28-member bloc to defeat the Islamic State”. He called for parents, teachers and others to promote “American culture” and encouraged “assimilation”. I call it extreme, extreme vetting. In Trump’s view, the government would have an ideological litmus test, based on social media and interviews with friends to determine an immigrant’s eligibility for citizenship. Trump did not clarify how USA officials would assess the veracity of responses to the questionnaires or how much staffing it would require to complete such vetting.
Trump also said he plans to halt immigration from nations with a “history of exporting terrorism” until new procedures are implemented by the USA government to properly screen applications from those parts of the world.
He has struggled to stay on message and build a consistent case against Democrat Hillary Clinton, repeatedly causing problems for the White House race with provocative comments that have deeply frustrated many in his own party. Last week, 50 Republican foreign policy experts signed a statement saying they wouldn’t vote for Mr. Trump because they question his capacity to serve as commander in chief.
Trump also called for a beefed up approach on homeland security.
“If my son were still in Iraq and I say to all those who are there, the threat to their life has gone up a couple of clicks”, he said.
Today he argued, “The rise of ISIS is the direct result of policy decisions made by President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton”.
Trump is right that the Islamic State capitalized on the political and security vacuum in Iraq in 2014, but it’s not clear that a long-term US military occupation to hold and exploit Iraqi’s oil resources would have led to a more stable outcome. “She also lacks the mental and physical stamina to take on ISIS and all of the many adversaries we face”.
Russian Federation and the United States have been discussing greater coordination in Syria, where ISIS is part of a volatile mix of groups fighting for power.
But the world powers have been unable to reach an agreement on which militant groups could be targeted.
He claims that the current U.S. strategy of nation-building and regime change is a failure and has created a vacuum that allows terrorists to grow and thrive.
He panned the long, expensive Iraq War started under Republican President George W. Bush, as well as President Obama’s calls for new leadership in some Middle East countries during the pro-democracy Arab Spring uprisings.
Obama has held up Bush’s yearslong commitment to setting up and securing a new government in Iraq after the initial invasion as a reason to avoid US military intervention in countries such as Syria.
The proposal follows his months-long call for a “total and complete” ban on foreign Muslims’ entering the US, which was also short on specifics.
“Donald J. Trump on Monday described the fight against global Islamic terrorism in stark terms, invoking comparisons to the dangers of the Cold War era in calling for “extreme vetting” of new immigrants and issuing an open call for new alliances”.
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But what, other than saying “radical Islamic terrorism” a lot, would President Trump actually do to fight the evil Muslim bogeymen he conjures up? He introduced a new standard following the June massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, vowing to “suspend immigration from areas of the world where there is a proven history of terrorism against the United States, Europe or our allies, until we fully understand how to end these threats”.
