Obama rejects comparison between Trump's immigration policy and his own, encourages protests

Source: The Washington Post


By Juliet Eilperin January 30 at 2:22 PM

Former president Barack Obama rejected the idea Monday that President Trump had based his immigration executive order on a policy adopted by his own administration, and endorsed the protests that have been taking place across the country in response to the new restrictions.

Trump has said that his move to ban the entry of migrants from seven Muslim-majority countries into the U.S., and to suspend temporarily the admission of refugees, was based in part by a decision in 2011 by then-President Obama to ban the admission of Iraqis to the U.S. after evidence surfaced that two Iraqis seeking resettlement had been linked to terrorist activity in their home country. The Obama and Trump administrations also identified the same seven countries as harboring terrorism threats.

Former Obama administration officials have denied that there was ever a halt to the awarding of visas to Iraqis, though the processing of these applications slowed after they were subject to more intense scrutiny.

Obama, who has remained publicly silent about his successor since leaving office a week-and-a-half ago, pledged before leaving office to only speak about Trump's policy moves “where I think our core values may be at stake.” On Monday his spokesman Kevin Lewis said in a statement, “With regard to comparisons to President Obama’s foreign policy decisions, as we’ve heard before, the President fundamentally disagrees with the notion of discriminating against individuals because of their faith or religion.”

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/01/30/obama-rejects-comparison-between-trumps-immigration-policy-and-his-own-encourages-protests/?pushid=breaking-news_1485804873&tid=notifi_push_breaking-news&utm_term=.562fcf92ad38