In response to huge public outcry against his policy of forcibly separating children from immigrant parents seeking asylum, United States President Donald Trump issued an executive order on July 20 to halt the separations.
A victory? Not so fast, writes Barry Sheppard from San Francisco.
At the press conference to announce his run for president last year, Donald Trump referred to Mexican immigrants as “drug dealers, criminals, rapists” who must be stopped by “building a wall”.
Since taking office, Trump has continued to reiterate that message through policy initiatives designed to further degrade the quality of life for undocumented workers and their families. The overtly racist targeting of migrant and immigrant people by Trump has excited the far-right, and emboldened their efforts to organise, mobilise on a national scale, and terrorise working class communities of colour.
But Trump and a re-energised far right did not appear in a vacuum.
President Donald Trump has signed a new executive order temporarily banning all refugees, as well as people from six majority-Muslim countries, from entering the United States, Democracy Now! said on March 7.
In contrast to the fanfare that accompanied Trump’s rollout of January’s ill-fated travel ban, the March 6 signing was a decidedly low-key event. Trump signed the executive order out of public view.
Parliament has resumed sitting and immigration bills are on the agenda.
Immigration minister Peter Dutton is proposing a new bill which would give him executive powers to cancel anyone’s visa under any circumstance or for any reason — such as someone’s country of origin or religion.
It has drawn comparisons to Trump’s Muslim ban.
The other bill is the refugee visa ban which was held over from last year. It is unknown when debate on the bill will resume in the Senate.
The visa ban came under increasing pressure last year after it passed the lower house.
Condemning Donald Trump’s cruel bigotry is easy — well, OK, maybe not for the Australian government, but for actual human beings with functioning consciences.
Then again, our country is so screwed up, our government’s response to the rise of the most extreme racist authoritarian president in US history is to ask him if he’s still ok to take desperate asylum seekers we won’t help, coz we are sick of the expense of torturing them in isolated hellholes.