WASHINGTON – US President Donald Trump has busy since taking over the presidency last Friday and is on executive order signing spree in attempt to show that he was really serious about many of his crazy ideas during the campaign.
Trump signed two executive orders early this week in keeping with campaign promises to boost border security and crack down on immigrants living in the US illegally.
The president signed the orders during a ceremony at the Department of Homeland Security after honouring the department’s newly confirmed secretary.
The executive orders jumpstart construction of a US-Mexico border wall, one of his signature campaign promises, and strip funding for so-called sanctuary cities, which don’t arrest or detain immigrants living in the US illegally.
Trump campaigned on pledges to tighten US immigration policies, including strengthening border security and stemming the flow of refugees. He also called for halting entry to the US from Muslim countries, but later shifted the policy to a focus on what he called “extreme vetting” for those coming from countries with ties to terrorism.
Trump’s insistence that Mexico would pay for the wall was among his most popular proposals on the campaign trail, sparking enthusiastic cheers at his raucous rallies. Mexico has repeatedly said it will not pay for any border wall.
Earlier this month, Trump said the building project would initially be paid for with a congressionally approved spending bill and Mexico would eventually reimburse the US, though he has not specified how he would guarantee payments.
In claiming authority to build a wall, Trump may rely on a 2006 law that authorized several hundred miles of fencing along the 2,000-mile frontier. That bill led to the construction of about 700 miles of various kinds of fencing designed to block both vehicles and pedestrians.
The Secure Fence Act was signed by then-President George W. Bush and the majority of the fencing in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California was built before he left office. The last remnants were completed after President Barack Obama took office in 2009.
Meantime, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer says Trump plans to open an investigation into voter fraud “to understand where the problem exists, how deep it goes.”
The president took to social media this morning calling for the investigation to revisit unsubstantiated claims he’s made repeatedly about a rigged voting system.
Spicer did not provide many details as to what the probe would look like, calling it at one point “a task force.”
He suggested that the probe would focus on dead people who remained on the voter rolls and people registered in two or more states. In particular, he singled out “bigger states” where the Trump campaign “didn’t compete” in the election.
There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud occurring in November’s election.
What does this mean for Canada?
Jamie Liew, a professor of immigration and Refugee Law at the University of Ottawa, says Canada will become even more of a hot spot for those looking to relocate or to flee dangerous situations in their home countries.
“Canada will be seen as a more viable option. There will be increasing pressure for Canada to provide more access, to assess and determine whether or not people should be allowed to come in.”
The federal government has a cap of of accepting 300,000 new Canadians this year, but Liew says we should be doing more, especially since Canadians have shown through the Syrian refugee crisis, they are willing to help those in need.
A recent study from Statistics Canada says that almost half the country’s population could be an immigrant or the child of an immigrant within the next 20 years.
