Donald Trump makes an announcement on Twitter in which he said that he will impose immigration ban to face Covid pandemic.
The US becomes the country with the highest number of Covid infections. Donald Trump makes an announcement to order a temporary immigration ban into the US to combat the Covid pandemic. Because of that, he has been accused of “xenophobic scapegoating”.
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Covid: trump will impose an immigration ban
There were no other details on the timing or scope of the president’s proposed executive order and no official policy statement from the White House.
Instead, there was a lone tweet issued by Trump. A few days after announcing that it will suspend funding to the WHO, without warning, he wrote: “In light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy” – a phrase he commonly applies to Covid-19 – “as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens, I will be signing an Executive Order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!”
Responding to Trump’s tweet, Congressman Don Beyer of Virginia tweeted: “From the beginning, Trump has failed about seeking someone to blame for his own failure. Obama. Governors. China. Speaker Pelosi. People of Asian descent. Immigration has nearly stopped and the US has far more cases than any other country. This is just xenophobic scapegoating”. Congressman Jerry Nadler of New York added: “President Trump now seeks to distract us from his fumbled Covid-19 response by trying to put the blame on immigrants.
The truth is many immigrants are on our front lines, protecting us as doctors, nurses, health aids, farmworkers, and restaurant workers”. Moe Vela, a former senior adviser on Latino affairs to then vice president Joe Biden, said: “You don’t have to ban all immigration into the country right now. Instead of using a legitimate mitigation solution, like testing or contact tracing people when they come in, he resorted to his go-to strategy which is anti-immigration and racism. This is no more than a total farce, just another excuse for him play to his base”.
The threatened executive order is consistent with his anti-immigrant rhetoric, during the 2016 presidential election he even floated a “Muslim ban”, and aggressive policy enforcement that saw parents separated from children when they entered the country illegally. Trump’s late-night tweet also referenced a need to keep jobs for American citizens, another longtime campaign pledge. More than 22 million people have filed for unemployment aid since he declared a national emergency on 13 March.
