On January 27th, President Donald Trump executed indefinitely suspending Syrian refugees, and barred nearly all travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries including Iran, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, Libya and Sudan – for 90 days and blocking refugees for 120 days. This travel ban has led to global outrage including in Canada.
For federal NDP member of parliament, Irene Mathyssen, she says that Donald Trump’s travel ban is against United Nations law, “It’s a direct attack against the obligations of international communities signed on to U.N convenant to protect refugees. This goes back to the second world war when the U.N pledge made by countries in 1951 so Trump’s ban is backwards and unconventional.”
However, Irene Mathyssen says that Donald Trump’s travel ban could benefit Canada, ” Canadians will be the beneficiaries because all of those incredibly talented people that academic professional community seeking to go to the United States is now looking for a home. We could if this government is smart enough to make the changes needed, we could be the beneficiaries of that human treasure.”
The American State Department have said that fewer than 60,000 visas were revoked since the signing of the order which does not include refugees but for Elgin-Middlesex- London federal Conservative member of parliament Karren Vecchio, she says that Canada should be fixing it’s own immigration policies before looking at what Trump is doing,
” Get your own house in order before you start saying what is going wrong in other houses and I know we have our own problems here. Things like the private sponsorship refugee program now has a cap on it. Programs like that where we could help people in other countries needing assistance, we ourselves could be doing better that way. I think we need to instead of criticising Trump, we need to fix the problems in our country.”
As of February the 4th, The Department of Homeland Security announced it has suspended all actions to implement the immigration order and will resume standard inspections of travellers as it did prior to the signing of the travel ban but Donald Trump’s leadership says it will appeal the suspension.
