US Immigration Policy

Joanna Cherry Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

I thank the hon. Lady for what she is doing with the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. It is important that we talk to our friends and partners in NATO about the vital importance of that organisation. She is right to suggest that we have many friends on Capitol Hill who agree profoundly about the importance of NATO—as, indeed, do many in the new Trump Administration—but the way to nail down those arguments is to engage with that Administration in the way we are doing.

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

The ban affects the resettlement of refugees from seven countries, many of whom had been waiting in the camps for years and who had been cleared and were ready to go to the US before the ban came in. How will the Foreign Secretary use this much vaunted special relationship to speak up for the rights of those people, who are themselves the victims of war?

[Boris Johnson]

We have made our position clear on this policy. We believe that the US has a proud record of taking in refugees; it has already taken 12,000 refugees from the Syrian conflict, and I hope that it will think again.