Trump move to screen Muslims

New York - Trump's policy advisers had already discussed drafting a proposal for his consideration to reinstate the registry for immigrants from Muslim countries.

Donald Trump's new administration could push ahead rapidly on a registry for immigrants from Muslim countries and construction of a US-Mexico border wall without seeking immediate congressional approval, sources said.
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who helped write tough immigration laws in Arizona and elsewhere and is advising the president-elect, said in an interview that Trump's policy advisers had already discussed drafting a proposal for his consideration to reinstate the registry for immigrants from Muslim countries.
Kobach, a key member of Trump's transition team, said he had participated in regular conference calls with about a dozen Trump immigration advisers for the past two to three months. Trump, who scored an upset victory last week over Hillary Clinton, made building a wall on the US-Mexico border a central issue of his campaign and has pledged to step up immigration enforcement against the country's 11 million undocumented immigrants. He has also said he supports "extreme vetting" of Muslims entering the US as a national security measure.
Kobach said the immigration group had discussed drafting executive orders for the president-elect's review "so that Trump and the Department of Homeland Security hit the ground running".
To implement Trump's call for "extreme vetting" of some Muslim immigrants, Kobach said the immigration policy group could recommend the reinstatement of a national registry of immigrants and visitors who enter the United States on visas from countries where extremist organisations are active.
Kobach helped design the programme, known as the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, while serving in president George W. Bush's Department of Justice after the 9/11 attacks on the US by Al Qaeda militants.
Under NSEERS, people from countries deemed "higher risk" were required to undergo interrogations and fingerprinting on entering the United States. Some non-citizen male US residents over the age of 16 from countries with active militant threats were required to register in person at government offices and periodically check in.
NSEERS was abandoned in 2011 after it was deemed redundant by the Department of Homeland Security and criticized by civil rights groups for unfairly targeting immigrants from Muslim- majority nations.
Kobach said the immigration group had also discussed ways of overturning President Barack Obama's 2012 executive action that has granted temporary deportation relief and work permits to more than 700,000 undocumented people or "dreamers" who came to the US as children of illegal immigrants. - Reuters