Trump to Order Mexican Border Wall and Curtail Immigration
WASHINGTON — President Trump on Wednesday will order the construction of a Mexican border wall — the first in a series of actions this week to crack down on immigrants, including slashing the number of refugees who can resettle in the United States and blocking Syrians and others from “terror-prone” nations from entering, at least temporarily.
During an appearance at the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday, Mr. Trump plans to sign an executive order to direct federal funds to be shifted toward the building of a wall on the southern border, a signature promise of his campaign. He has argued that doing so is vital to gaining control over the illegal flow of immigrants into the United States.
“Big day planned on NATIONAL SECURITY tomorrow,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on Tuesday night. “Among many other things, we will build the wall!”
This executive order will be signed on the day that Mexico’s foreign minister, Luis Videgaray, arrives in Washington to prepare for
the visit of President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico, who is to meet with Mr. Trump at the end of the month. He will be among the first foreign leaders to meet the new president.
Mr. Trump is also expected to target legal immigrants as early as this week, White House officials said, by halting a decades-old program that grants refuge to the world’s most vulnerable people as he begins the process of drastically curtailing it.
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He is considering a policy that would temporarily freeze admissions of refugees from Syria and other majority-Muslim nations, and halve the number of displaced people who can be resettled on American soil. This would effectively bar the entry of people from Muslim countries — including Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and Syria — and might prioritize the admission of those who are Christian religious minorities.
The plan is in line with
a ban on Muslim immigrants that Mr. Trump proposed during his campaign, arguing that such a step was warranted given concerns about terrorism. He later said he wanted to impose “extreme vetting” of refugees from Syria and other countries where terrorism was rampant, although the Obama administration had already instituted strict screening procedures for Syrian refugees that were designed to weed out anyone who posed a danger.
White House officials described the actions on the condition of anonymity on Tuesday to avoid pre-empting the planned announcement. Mr. Trump is also considering slashing, to 50,000 from 110,000, the number of refugees who could be resettled in the United States this year, they said.
The expected actions drew strong criticism from immigrant advocates and human rights groups, which called them discriminatory moves that rejected the American tradition of welcoming immigrants of all backgrounds.
http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world...l-immigration/ar-AAmd3Sn?li=BBoPWjQ&ocid=iehp
