United States President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Friday making major changes in the country's policies on refugees and immigration.
Syria
Mr. Trump’s order directs the State Department to stop issuing visas to Syrian nationals and halts the processing of Syrian refugees. That will remain in effect until Mr. Trump determines that enough security changes have been made to ensure that would-be terrorists can’t exploit weaknesses in the current vetting system.
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Mr. Trump ordered a four-month suspension of the broader refugee programme. The suspension is intended to provide time to review how refugees are vetted before they are allowed to resettle in the U.S.
Mr. Trump’s order also cuts the number of refugees the U.S. plans to accept this budget year by more than half, to 50,000 people from around the world.
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In the last budget year the U.S. accepted 84,995 refugees, including 12,587 people from Syria. President Barack Obama had set the current refugee limit at 110,000.
The temporary halt to refugee processing does include exceptions to people claiming religious persecution, so long as their religion is a minority faith in their country. That could apply to Christians from the Muslim-majority countries.
Extreme vetting
Mr. Trump’s order did not spell out specifically what additional steps he wants to see the Homeland Security and State departments to add to the country’s vetting system for refugees. Instead he directed officials to review the refugee application and approval process to find any other security measures that can be added to prevent people who pose a threat from using the refugee programme.
During the Obama administration, vetting for refugees included in-person interviews overseas, where they provided biographical details about themselves, including their families, friendships, social or political activities, employment, phone numbers, email accounts and more. They also provided biometric information, including fingerprints. Syrians were subject to additional, classified controls that administration officials at the time declined to describe, and processing for that group routinely took years to complete.
Other immigration
Mr. Trump’s executive order suspends all immigration from countries with terrorism concerns for 90 days. The State Department said the three-month ban in the directive applied to Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen, all Muslim-majority nations. The order also calls for Homeland Security and State Department officials, along with the director of national intelligence, to review what information the government needs to fully vet would-be visitors and come up with a list of countries that don’t provide it. The order says the government will give countries 60 days to start providing the information or citizens from those countries will be barred from traveling to the United States.
Barring any travel to the U.S. from those seven countries, even temporarily, appears to at least partially fulfill a campaign promise Mr. Trump made to ban Muslims from coming to the U.S. until assurances can be made that visitors are properly vetted.