Lawmaker Proposes Donald Trump Be Banned Forever From the Philippines

In response, Filipino Congressman Jose Salceda has filed a bill in Manila's House of Representatives to keep Trump off Philippine lands.  
 
The remarks that earned Salceda’s ire were delivered by Trump at a campaign stop in Portland, Maine last Thursday.
 
“We are letting people come in from terrorist nations,” Trump told the audience, in video from the event. “That should not be allowed because you can't vet them. There's no way of vetting them, you have no idea who they are. This could be the great Trojan horse of all time.”
 
Trump, who warned the crowd that “we are dealing with animals,” offered several stories of terrorism near-misses to gin up fear among his fans.
 
"An immigrant from Afghanistan who later applied for and received U.S. citizenship, an illegal permanent resident from the Philippines were convicted from plotting to join Al Qaeda and the Taliban in order to kill as many Americans as possible," Trump claimed.
 
Salceda’s Resolution No. 143 proposes that Trump be “banned from entering the Philippines for being inimical” to the country’s “national interest.”
 
“There is no feasible interest or reasonable justification to the wholesale labeling of Filipinos as coming from a ‘terrorist state,’” the bill reads. “This comes from a long line of pronouncements where he has demonstrated an unrepentantly negative, dysfunctionally nativist, aggressively adversarial attitude towards immigrants in the USA where he aspires to be the leader.”
 
    US presidential candidate Donald Trump, ipinadedeklarang persona non grata. | @wengsalvacion pic.twitter.com/OgeTSMurgZ
    — DZBB Super Radyo (@dzbb) August 8, 2016
 
The bill also notes that should he become president, Trump “could be in a position to influence policies affecting” the 4 million immigrants of Filipino descent who live in the U.S.
 
While Trump doesn’t have any major investments in the Philippines—this not being Russia and all—he did lend his name to a Philippine resort. Salceda’s bill notes that Trump’s comments “are in stark contrast to the fact that... Trump has been a beneficiary of Filipino hospitality, including patronage of his joint property project.”
 
"I've always loved the Philippines. I think it's just a special place and Manila is one of Asia's most spectacular cities. I know that this project will be second to none,” Trump is quoted as saying on the website for Trump Tower in the Philippines.
 
Filipinos are just the latest group Donald Trump has said he would prevent from entering the country. Many experts have suggested Trump’s proposal to ban all Muslim immigrants would violate the Constitution. Jonathan Turley, a legal scholar at George Washington University, told the Washington Post that Trump’s anti-Muslim immigration stance wouldn’t fly.
 
“Oh, for the love of God,” Turley said to the Post last year. “This would not only violate international law, but do so by embracing open discrimination against one religion. It would make the United States a virtual pariah among nations.’’
 
Richard Friedman, a law professor at the University of Michigan, expressed similar exasperation to the news outlet. “That’s blatantly unconstitutional if it excludes U.S. citizens because they are Muslims. It’s ridiculous.”
 
In May, Rodrigo Duterte was elected president of the Philippines. The bombastic leader has earned numerous comparisons to Trump.