President Trump’s executive order on immigration and refugees threatened U.S. foreign assistance programs, African heads of state threw their weight behind immunizations, and U.K. researchers said it’s too soon to panic. This week in development news.
President Donald Trump made headlines with an executive order suspending refugee admissions to the United States for 120 days and suspending entry to the U.S. by people traveling from seven countries for 90 days. Refugee advocates immediately condemned the policy as an abdication of moral leadership and a wrongheaded approach to national security. As Devex reported, Trump’s order could also put U.S. foreign assistance programs at risk, since these rely heavily on local staffers who may now be ineligible for the special visas and preferential refugee status they have been granted for their service in the past. In a testy — and abbreviated — phone call with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull Wednesday, Trump also called into question whether the U.S. will honor a refugee resettlement agreement struck by President Obama to help resolve Australia’s heavily criticized detention of refugees on Manus Island and Nauru. “The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal!” Trump wrote on Twitter.
Starbucks CEO Howard Shultz took a different approach, announcing that his company will hire 10,000 refugees over the next five years.