Philippine Lawmaker Introduces Bill to Ban Donald Trump from Former U.S. Territory
After Trump called the Philippines a "terrorist nation," at least one lawmaker wanted to do something about it.
Lawmakers in the United Kingdom and Mexico have already debated banning Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump from entering their countries. Now add the Philippines to the list of countries where elected officials are trying to block the real estate mogul from visiting.
Lawmakers in the United Kingdom and Mexico have already debated banning Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump from entering their countries. Now add the Philippines to the list of countries where elected officials are trying to block the real estate mogul from visiting.
Congressman Joey Salceda filed the bill in Manila’s House of Representatives on Monday in response to Trump’s comments at a campaign rally in Portland, Maine last week, when the candidate used the Philippines as an example of “terrorist nations,” countries from where immigrants could come to the United States to attack civilians.
“There’s no way of vetting them, you have no idea who they are. This could be the great Trojan horse of all time,” Trump said. “An immigrant from Afghanistan who later applied for and received U.S. citizenship [and] an illegal permanent resident from the Philippines were convicted [of] plotting to join Al Qaeda and the Taliban in order to kill as many Americans as possible.”
Congressman Joey Salceda said Trump has “no feasible basis or reasonable justification to the wholesale labeling of Filipinos as coming from a ‘terrorist state’ or that they will be a Trojan horse.”
There are close to 4 million Americans of Filipino descent living in the United States, making it the second largest Asian-American community in the country after Chinese.
Salceda said that Trump’s stature as the official Republican candidate make his remarks even more offensive, “thus aggravating the shame” of Filipino immigrants.
“This comes from a long line of pronouncements where he has demonstrated an unrepentantly negative, dysfunctionally nativist, aggressively adversarial attitude towards immigrants in the U.S.A,” he said.
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