Why wasn't the Obama administration's 6 month pause of the Iraqi refugee program or his reversal on the Cuban policy which hurt many, protested much in these parts? Shouldn't we all seek to be more consistent?
“My policy is similar to what President Obama did in 2011 when he banned visas for refugees from Iraq for six months.”
—President Trump, statement on executive order, Jan. 29, 2017
In justifying his controversial executive order halting travelers from seven majority-Muslim countries, President Trump claimed that President Barack Obama did the same thing in 2011. But the comparison is a bit facile.
So what’s the difference with Trump’s action?
First, Obama responded to an actual threat — the discovery that two Iraqi refugees had been implicated in bomb-making in Iraq that had targeted U.S. troops. (Iraq, after all, had been a war zone.) Under congressional pressure, officials decided to reexamine all previous refugees and also impose new screening procedures, which led to a slowdown in processing new applications. Trump, by contrast, issued his executive order without any known triggering threat. (His staff has pointed to attacks unrelated to the countries named in his order.)
Second, Obama did not announce there was a ban on visa applications. In fact, as seen in Napolitano’s answer to Collins, administration officials danced around that question. There was certainly a lot of news reporting that visa applications had been slowed to a trickle. But the Obama administration never said it was their policy to halt all applications. Even so, the delays did not go unnoticed, so there was a lot of critical news reporting at the time about the angst of Iraqis waiting for approval.
Third, Obama’s policy did not prevent all citizens of that country, including green-card holders, from traveling to the United States. Trump’s policy is much more sweeping, though officials have appeared to pull back from barring permanent U.S. residents.
We have sought comment from the White House and also from Obama administration officials and so may update this if more information becomes available. But so far this is worthy of at least Two Pinocchios.