Trump is pushing this lie himself and his acolytes are lapping it up.
Trump’s facile claim that his refugee policy is similar to Obama’s in 2011
The only news report that we could find that referred to a six-month ban was a 2013 ABC News article that included this line: “As a result of the Kentucky case, the State Department stopped processing Iraq refugees for six months in 2011, federal officials told ABC News — even for many who had heroically helped U.S. forces as interpreters and intelligence assets.”
The “Kentucky case” refers to two Iraqis in Kentucky who in May 2011 were arrested and faced federal terrorism charges after officials discovered from an informant that Waad Ramadan Alwan, before he had been granted asylum in the United States, had constructed improvised roadside bombs in Iraq. The FBI, after examining fragments from thousands of bomb parts, found Alwan’s fingerprints on a cordless phone that had been wired to detonate an improvised bomb in 2005.
The arrests caused an uproar in Congress, and the Obama administration pledged to reexamine the records of 58,000 Iraqis who had been settled in the United States. The administration also imposed new, more extensive background checks on Iraqi refugees. Media reports at the time focused on how the new screening procedures had delayed visa approvals, even as the United States was preparing to end its involvement in the Iraq War.
In brief, some ways in which Obama's action in 2011 was not like Trumps in 2017:
- It only affected people coming in as refugees, not visitors or people who already had residence.
- It slowed the speed of approvals due to enhanced vetting, but did not stop them altogether.
- All relevant authorities were involved in implementing the changes and there weren't thousands of people suddenly being turned away at airports.
- It involved people from one country (Iraq) and applied regardless of religious affiliation.
So, you can try refuting the lies with that, not that it will make a difference. Plenty of folk in social media land still believe Obama is a Muslim born in Kenya and the stuff about Hilary Clinton and the paedophile ring in the pizza parlour.
