Insight
No entry: What Trump’s migration policies mean for the EU by Camino Mortera-Martinez 10 April 2017
Trump’s ‘Muslim ban’ does not apply to EU citizens. But his migration and security policies may have unexpected effects in Europe. US President Donald Trump has been in office less than three months, but he has already come up with two executive orders on migration. The first, signed on January 27th, sparked a wave of protests worldwide, as chaos reigned in airports and at other US border checkpoints. The order was ultimately blocked by US courts, which considered it breached the constitution. But Trump did not give up, and signed what he thought would be a legally watertight new migration order on March 6th. The implementation of the second executive order has been put on hold by two federal courts, which found different grounds for ruling against it. In essence, the two executive orders are very similar: both vow to protect US national security by issuing a temporary entry ban for citizens of specified countries (Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen in the original order; all but Iraq in the new order); both suspend America’s refugee resettlement programme for a period of three months; and both reduce the numbers of refugees America will accept in future (from 110,000 to 50,000 in 2017. The US administration will revise this number every year). Trump’s attempts to nuance some of the most problematic parts of the original order (such as the application of the travel ban to legal permanent residents of the US, or giving preferential treatment to Christian refugees) did not convince the judges, who still thought the president’s policy was disproportionate and discriminatory. The ‘Muslim ban’ may be morally questionable and an inefficient way to protect national security; but the ban itself will have little impact on the EU. After some initial confusion, the White House clarified that dual European citizens will not be affected by the restriction. The new order explicitly excludes dual citizens from it. For Europe, the problems with Trump’s migration and security policies lie elsewhere. CER INSIGHT: No entry: What Trump’s migration policies mean for the EU 10 April 2017
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