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Monday, 30 January 2017

Trump’s Muslim ban is all the world is talking about — here’s how it matters to you

US President Donald Trump’s so-called Muslim ban is just about all the world is talking about this morning. Sitting in Cairo, here’s what you need to know:

Can you go to America? There’s widespread confusion as to who, exactly, may be exempt from US President Donald Trump’s ban on travel to the US by citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries, including Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and Libya. Canada, for example, says it has been assured by the White House that “people can enter the U.S. provided they have a valid Canadian permanent resident card and a passport from one of the seven countries affected.” The same report notes, however, that the US State Department said the ban applies to dual nationals from the seven countries, while the UK has claimed that its nationals can freely travel to the US.

Green card holders will be admitted, at each individual US immigration officer’s discretion: US Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly issued a brief statement late yesterday reading in full: “In applying the provisions of the president’s executive order, I hereby deem the entry of lawful permanent residents to be in the national interest. Accordingly, absent the receipt of significant derogatory information indicating a serious threat to public safety and welfare, lawful permanent resident status will be a dispositive factor in our case-by-case determinations.”

What can green card holders expect? Per a CNN piece widely picked up by US television stations: “Here is the process for US green card holders from Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Syria, Somalia, Libya or Yemen as CNN understands it now: They are allowed to board their plane and fly to the United States. Once they land, their fingerprints and other information will be collected and they will be subject to a secondary interview, in part, to judge whether the traveler is a national security risk.”

Could Egypt make the list? It’s difficult to rule that out after comments yesterday from a senior Trump advisor (see Last Night’s Talk Shows for more).

Egypt is the inadvertent victim of fallout from the ban, with liberal media in the US noting that Trump has not banned immigration from Egypt and other countries with which the US president has in the past done business. “Among them are Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. A vast majority of people living in these countries, like the people living in the seven subject to the immigration ban, are peaceful and law abiding. But these three countries have exported terror to the United States in the past,” an op-ed in the New York Times notes. The WSJ has also picked up the refrain in a piece headlined “Countries Under U.S. Entry Ban Aren’t Main Sources of Terror Attacks.”

Were airlines in Cairo asked to implement Trump’s travel ban? There are conflicting reports on whether or not Cairo airlines have been asked to help implement US President Donald Trump’s executive order barring citizens holding US immigration visas from seven countries from entering the US. EgyptAir official Hossam Hussein told Reuters that airlines have indeed received a request to bar citizens from these countries from boarding US-bound flights, while Al Mal reports that EgyptAir issued a statement denying the request had been received. Seven US-bound migrants — six from Iraq and one from Yemen — were reportedly prevented from boarding an EgyptAir flight to JFK on Saturday.

The ban is also affecting flight crews on US-bound flights, according to an International Air Transport Association (IATA) memo carried by Reuters.

Thousands of Americans protested against the ban at airports over the weekend, with the Associated Press documenting the turnout in this photo essay.

The US business community is stepping up to the plate, with Apple, Google and Facebook emailing their staffs to criticize both the Muslim ban and the ban on refugees, the FT reports.

Go drink some Starbucks this morning. We’ll always prefer locally owned and operated cafés, but we’ll be buying a cup of coffee from Starbucks this morning after Howard Schultz, the company’s founder and CEO (and a man long criticized in these parts for his unwavering support of Israel) announced the company will hire 10k refugees in 75 countries over the next five years in response to Trump’s bans. Schultz’s email to staff of yesterday is a master class in effective internal comms and PR at the same time — read it here.

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