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The most hypocritical part of Donald Trump’s Muslim visa ban

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Picture:
Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Donald Trump's most recent executive order has banned citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the US for at least 90 days.

His order, signed at the Pentagon on Friday, suspended the issuing of United States visas or travel permits to people from:

  • Iran
  • Iraq
  • Libya
  • Somalia
  • Sudan
  • Syria
  • Yemen

This has caused large scale disruption across the United States as refugees and immigrants were turned back or detained at airports.

An Iranian scientist heading to study cardiovascular medicine at Harvard, with...

enormous potential to make contributions that will improve our understanding of heart disease

...and a Syrian family of six refugees were among two of the cases highlighted by the New York Times.

A federal judge in Brooklyn stayed Trump's executive order with a ruling that prevented the Government from deporting arrivals.

The ruling did however stop short of permitting them entrance into the country, or commenting on the constitutionality of Mr Trump's executive order.

People have noticed that several prominent Muslim-majority countries were excluded from Mr Trump's ruling, in which he has significant business dealings.

In fact not a single American has been killed on US soil by citizens of any of the Muslim-majority countries affected by Trump's order, between 1975 and 2015, according to the conservative-leaning Cato Institute.

Mr Trump holds business interests in over 20 countries around the world, with a particular focus on the developing world, as the New York Times noted.

Here's a map of all the places Donald Trump has business interests:

Note the lack of overlap with the prior map.

However, 3,000 Americans were killed by citizens of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt in the same time period, many of them during the attacks on 9/11.

Donald Trump has business interests in all three of these countries.

So Donald Trump's ban, as a counter terrorism strategy, doesn't even seem to be looking at the data.

In fact, in a broader point, if you wanted to stop terrorism in the United States, you should be focussing more on permanent residents, as data from the Cato Institute has demonstrated:

Trump's executive order was met by condemnation by many:

And people have pointed out that it prohibits British MP Nadhim Zahawi from travelling to the US as well as Olympian Mo Farah.

Oscar nominated director Asghar Farhadi, nominated for best foreign language film, will also be unable to attend the 2017 ceremony under the ban.

More: Donald Trump should see this map of refugee populations by country

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