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Trump’s Africa Ban is Only the Latest Example of his Racist Core
Donald Trump has issued yet another Executive Order banning millions more people — mainly from the continent of Africa — from entry into the United States. His principal targets are all people who hail from Eritrea, Nigeria — Africa’s most populous country — and Myanmar, where a systematic genocide against the Muslim minority is being carried out even as we speak. Kyrgyzstan seems to have been added so as not to appear completely and totally racist and Islamophobic. The ban against these countries will take effect on February 21.
And in keeping with his African theme, Sudan and Tanzania are now ineligible to immigrate to the US through the “diversity lottery,” which annually grants green cards for up to 50,000 people from nations that send relatively few immigrants to the US.
Using Muslims as the Template
This, in fact, is the third iteration of the Trump regime’s dogged efforts to excise Muslims from the American body politic. Trump first proposed a Muslim ban while still campaigning for the presidency. In a December 2015 speech, he called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.”