Busted: Trump favored PH in his immigration war with 30-day visa-free travel policy? HOAX alert!
US President Donald Trump allegedly signed an executive order allowing Filipinos to go to the US visa-free for 30 days.
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The article has been circulating online for weeks and has resurfaced as more Filipinos shared them and welcomed the possibility of visiting family and friends in the US without the hassle of getting a visa.
In fact, the article that originated from fake news site tv-bbc.com has been shared more than 27,800 times since it was published last month. It was republished by another blog pinoysincayman.com last Saturday, February 25, and has since been shared 42 times.
The website tv-bbc.com is also one of the websites that carried the fake stories about Trump sending his private jet to fetch Duterte and ask him for advice and former President Benigno Aquino III dying in California. Tv-bbc.com is also listed in Meme Buster’s fake news and satire sites to watch out for.
However, this is easily identified as fake news. President Trump has not signed an EO for a 30-day visa-free travel policy for Filipinos.
What he recently did regarding immigration is to call for a merit-based immigration system during his speech to Congress on February 28.
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This is similar to the system used in Canada or Australia.
“It is a basic principle that those seeking to enter a country ought to be able to support themselves financially,” Trump said. “Yet, in America, we do not enforce this rule, straining the very public resources that our poorest citizens rely upon.”
While Trump did not provide further information about the system that he envisioned, a CNN Money report wrote that a merit-based immigration system generally leans towards the favor of highly-skilled immigrants with some level of higher education.
The report also noted how the proponents of the said system say that by inviting and accepting only the best and the brightest minds into America, it will make the country more competitive and reduce the population of low-income immigrants who need public benefits.
This is not the first time fake reports about Trump signing a visa-free policy for Filipinos or Asians surfaced online. In fact, these hoaxes did not only involve the Philippines. Ghana, Belarus, Botswana, Gambia, Haiti, Thailand, Tanzania, Jamaica, and many other countries were also named in these fake stories about the visa-free travel policy to the US, something that hoax-busting website snopes.com has debunked in its article “Did President Trump Sign Visa-Free Travel Policies for Various Countries?”
Trump may have talked to Duterte over the phone, when the Philippine leader congratulated the then-newly elected American president. However, this did not establish anything that would persuade Trump to allow Filipinos to travel to the US without a visa for 30 days.
Sources: ( money.cnn.com , snopes.com )
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