Trump proposes ‘extreme vetting’ of immigrants

In a foreign policy speech he delivered on Monday, Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump said he would implement “extreme vetting” of immigrants and would work side-by-side with Israel to fight radical Islam.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gave a foreign policy speech on Monday in Youngstown, Ohio in which he revisited the immigration issue.

Trump offered a number of proposals, the latest version of a policy that began with his unprecedented call to temporarily bar foreign Muslims from entering the country — a religious test that was criticized across party lines.

“A Trump administration will establish a clear principle that will govern all decisions pertaining to immigration,” he said. “And we will be tough. And we will be, even, extreme. We should only admit into this country those who share our values and respect our people.”

Trump said he would call for a new approach to the Middle East, which he described simply as halting the spread of “radical Islam.” He said that, if elected, he would convene an international conference on the topic and work closely with Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Russia, the NATO alliance and “all others who recognize this ideology of death that must be extinguished.”

“As president, I will call for an international conference focused on this goal,” he said. “We will work side by side with our friends in the Middle East, including our greatest ally, Israel.”

Trump then went on to equate his proposed screening test to the Cold War.

“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,” Trump said. “I call it ‘extreme vetting.’ I call it extreme, extreme, vetting. Our country has enough problems. We don’t need more. And these are problems like we’ve never had before.”

Trump also emphasized he would insist that immigrants must agree with American values.

“In addition to screening out all members or sympathizers of terrorist groups, we must also screen out any who have hostile attitudes towards our country or its principles — or who believe that Sharia law should supplant American law,” he said. “Those who do not believe in our Constitution, or who support bigotry and hatred, will not be admitted for immigration into our country.”

“Beyond terrorism, as we have seen in France, foreign populations have brought their anti-Semitic attitudes with them,” he said.

Trump repeated his assertion that Muslim immigrants from certain countries would need to be temporarily barred from entering the US.

“To put these new procedures in place, we will have to temporarily suspend immigration from some of the most dangerous and volatile regions of the world that have a history of exporting terrorism,” he 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 adequate screening cannot take place.”

“We will stop processing visas from those areas until such time as it is deemed safe to resume based on new circumstances or new procedures,” Trump said.

“The common thread linking the major Islamic terrorist attacks that have recently occurred on our soil — 9/11, the Fort Hood shooting, the Boston bombing, the San Bernardino attack, the Orlando attack — is that they have involved immigrants or the children of immigrants. Clearly, new screening procedures are needed,” he said.

As of this writing and according to Nate Silver’s 2016 election forecast on fivethirtyeight.com, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton leads by a large percentage.

Please note: World Israel News does not endorse any presidential candidate.

By: World Israel News Staff