US govt cancels 9/11-era registry for foreigners
WASHINGTON: The US government is cancelling an inactive registry programme for visitors from countries where extremist groups are operating, a plan similar to a Muslim registry considered by President-elect Donald Trump.
The Department of Homeland Security is formally ending the National Security Entry-Exit Registration Systems programme, known as NSEERS, by removing outdated regulations, spokesman Neema Hakim said on Thursday.
The rule change was to be published in the Federal Register on Friday and takes effect immediately.
DHS concluded that the programme, which was suspended in 2011, was redundant and inefficient and did not provide increased security. Begun a year after the September 11, 2001 Al Qaeda attacks on the United States, the programme expanded within a year to require registration from visitors from 25 countries, most of them with majority-Muslim populations.
“The intervening years have shown that NSEERS is not only obsolete but that its use would divert limited personnel and resources from more effective measures,” Hakim said.
Trump was asked on Wednesday whether he would support a Muslim registry, similar to the dormant DHS programme, and he would not confirm or deny his plans to do so.
Several Trump transition aides have said the incoming Trump administration will not resurrect the programme, although a key Trump immigration adviser, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, has advocated the idea.
The announcement came as a growing number of prominent tech companies including Facebook, Twitter and Apple have told various news organisations that they would not help the Trump administration build a Muslim registry.
Earlier this month, employees at dozens of technology companies also signed an online pledge vowing not to help Trump build a data registry to track people based on their religion or assist in mass deportations. The petition has been signed by more than 2,500 employees.
The Obama administration’s decision to formally end the programme drew praise from critics who said it was discriminatory.
“I applaud President Obama for his decision to dismantle NSEERS, the idle and ineffective federal registry that targeted Muslims and undermined our core values,” New York AttorneyGeneral Eric T Schneiderman said in a statement. WASHINGTON: Carl Icahn, a newly named adviser to President-elect Donald Trump, has said that burdensome US regulations were hindering free enterprise, and oil refining in particular.
In an interview with CNBC, Icahn, the famed Wall Street activist investor, also suggested he would help push the new Trump administration towards broad-based deregulation, as he is widely expected to do. Trump said on Wednesday that he had named Icahn, 80, as his special adviser to overhaul “strangling regulations.”
Icahn has significant investments in the energy sector, including the Texas oil refiner CVR Energy, which suffered heavily in recent years as energy prices declined but could stand to gain from an anti-regulation agenda.
In the interview aired on Thursday, Icahn said that, under President Barack Obama the United States was “on a fast track to socialism” and businesses suffered under an “absurd regulatory environment.”
“I’m not against regulations at all. I sort of believe that you need a rule of law,” Icahn said. “But it’s become literally absurd in many areas.”
“There good companies, good CEOS, as there are good regulators,” he added. “There are some that are completely absurd.... Frankly, you almost get enraged by some of the stuff.”
He pointed to rules under the Environmental Protection Agency governing oil refineries, asserting that gasoline prices were tied to production limits at refineries on the eastern coast of the United States.
Trump has nominated Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a close ally of the fossil fuel industry and climate change denier, to lead the EPA.
“You have to have healthy refineries,” Icahn said on Thursday. “There are refineries on the brink of bankruptcy today.”