IMMIGRATION/NONTRUTHS/TERRORISM/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump on Tuesday [1-30-18] delivered his first State of the Union address, and CNN’s Reality Check Team was there to vet his claims.
The team of reporters, researchers and editors across CNN listened throughout the speech and analyzed key statements, rating them either true, true but misleading, or false…
Have immigration programs made terrorist attacks possible?…
Trump claimed that the diversity visa lottery and family-based migration made recent terrorist attacks in New York City possible, saying ‘these programs present risks we can no longer afford’ and that the diversity lottery is ‘a program that randomly hands out green cards without any regard for skill, merit, or the safety of our people.’
But the statements are misleading and false, respectively.
It is true that Sayfullo Saipov and Akayed Ullah, two recent alleged terrorist attackers in New York City, arrived in the US because of either family connections or the diversity visa lottery. But in both cases, authorities say they were radicalized in the US — years after they came to the US.
The Trump administration has not explained how it links radicalization in the US to needing to keep immigrants out of the US in the first place.
Roughly 50,000 immigrants per year arrive on diversity visas and hundreds of thousands annually come on family-related visas. The Trump administration has linked a fraction of a percentage of those to terrorism…
Verdict: Trump’s claim that the visa lottery and family based migration made terror attacks possible is true but misleading. His comment about green cards is false.”
-CNN’s Reality Check Team, “CNN’s Reality Check Team vets Trump’s State of the Union,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, Jan. 31, 2018 09:46am