Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has proposed an “extreme vetting process” for the new immigrants to prevent the entry of radicalised ones into the US.
“We should only admit into this country those who share our values and respect our people. In the Cold War, we had an ideological screening test. The time is overdue to develop a new screening test for the threats we face today. I call it extreme vetting. I call it extreme, extreme vetting,” Trump said at an election rally in Ohio.
“Our country has enough problems. We don’t need more. These are problems like we have never had before. In addition to scrape out all members of the sympathisers of terrorist groups, we must also screen out any hostile attitude towards our country or its principles, or who believed Sharia law should supplant American law,” he said.
“Those who did not believe in our Constitution or who support bigotry and hatred will not be admitted for immigration into our country. Only those who we expect to flourish in our country and to embrace a tolerant American society should be issued visas,” Trump said.
“As soon as I take office, I will ask the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security to identify a list of regions where inadequate screening cannot take place. There are many such regions. We will stop processing visas from those area until such time as it is deemed safe to resume based on new circumstances or new procedures,” he said.
“The size of current immigration flows are too large to perform adequate screening. We admit about 100,000 permanent immigrants from the middle east every year. Beyond that, we admit hundreds of thousands of temporary workers and visitors from the same regions,” he said.
“Hundreds of thousands. If we don’t control the numbers, we can’t perform adequate screening. There’s no way it can take place,” he added.
“We want to build bridges and erase divisions. The goal of the commission will be to identify and explain to the American public the core convictions and beliefs of radical Islam, to identify the warning signs of radicalisation, and to expose the networks in our society that support radicalisation,” he said.
“This commission will be used to develop new protocols for local police officers, federal investigators, and immigration screeners. And while I’m at it, we should give a hand to our great police officers and law enforcement officials,” he said.
By Premji
