Trumps announces 'permanent pause on third world immigrants'

 

James discusses on TRT World US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on migration in the wake of the shooting by an Afghan national of two Virginia National Guards in Washington.

To watch the video or listen to the podcast, go to https://jamesmdorsey.substack.com/p/trump-announces-permanent-pause-on

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Transcript

[Efnan Bayraktar] Joining me now from Singapore is James Dorsey. He's an adjunct senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

Thank you so much for being with us on the programme, James. How do you read into Trump's recent remarks and what does this ultimately mean for the people that aren't just trying to migrate to the United States, but people who are currently in the United States?

[James M. Dorsey] It's a pleasure to be with you. What this means basically is that the shooter, whether wittingly or unwittingly, gave U.S. President Trump the pretext that he needed. The 19 countries that he is targeting are the countries, apparently, that he targeted in June with the executive order to restrict immigration to the United States.

Half of those countries are Muslim-majority countries, including, of course, Afghanistan, but also Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen. What this feeds into is what we've actually seen since 9-11, when Osama bin Laden essentially destroyed the concept of multiculturalism. Since then, we've seen progressively racist attitudes, discriminatory attitudes, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic attitudes becoming increasingly mainstream and part of societal practise and the language that is used not only in the United States, but also elsewhere.

[Efnan Bayraktar] The details are still vague on how exactly he's going to permanently pause migration from what he calls these third world countries, but experts do believe that the ramifications, of course, will be damaging. Is there anything that can stop him from putting these orders into effect?

[James M. Dorsey] First of all, the Afghans, some 195,000 Afghans who are in the United States since 2021, they're going to be the most affected because each one of them is going to have their residency and presence in the United States reviewed. On top of that, I think that nationals of the countries that we just spoke about are going to find it increasingly difficult to gain entry into the United States. The unfortunate part of this is that there are obviously legal challenges that can be brought to bear, and I'm sure that that will happen in the United States.

But essentially, there is broad-based support for these kinds of measures among important segments of both U.S. and European societies.

[Efnan Bayraktar] The United States, as we know, has always claimed to be a nation of immigrants built by the people who arrived to America from different parts of the world. If Trump does go through with these policies, especially for an extended period of time, and gets rid of those that he sees unfit to be in the country, what would that mean for the future of America?

[James M. Dorsey] Immigrants have contributed significantly to what the United States is today culturally, economically, socially. However, we've seen this anti-migrant stance on the part of Donald Trump since he was in office in his first term, from 2016 to 2020. At the time, he tried to ban unsuccessfully, but nonetheless tried to ban all migration from Muslim countries.

So this is something that's going to be not only at the expense of potential migrants, but at the expense of the United States.

[Efnan Bayraktar] Okay, James Dorsey, thank you so much for being with me here on the NewsHour and sharing that analysis with us.

[James M. Dorsey] Thank you for having me.