UN Official: Trump’s Vulgar Comments on Africa, Haiti Shameful

Mr Trump was in a closed meeting with members of Congress to discuss immigration on Thursday when he reportedly questioned why the United States would accept more people from Haiti and “sh*thole countries” in Africa, rather than places like Norway.

Former US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power said she’s never seen a response from African nations to the United States like this before.

Trump also favors stopping the diversity lottery, a system that reserves visas for people from countries that have relatively few immigrants in the United States.

Ambassadors unanimously agreed the resolution after an emergency session to weigh Trump’s remarks. CNN’s Anderson Cooper said the words were clearly racist, but he stopped there.

Before Trump, the most prominent one was Alabama Sen.

Trump criticised immigration to his country from El Salvador, Haiti and the African continent, by calling the group “shithole countries”.

The president tweeted that he used “tough” language but that that was “not the language used”. “Journalists can, and probably will, note that “critics say” his remarks have a racist connotation”.

And they spurred a harsh reaction from the United Nations, with rights office spokesman Rupert Colville calling them “shocking and shameful“.

“The African Union condemns the comments in the strongest terms and demands a retraction of the comment as well as an apology to not only Africans but to all people of African descent around the globe”, it said.

Almost 700,000 Dreamers are at risk of losing deportation relief and work permits ― or already have ― because Trump ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA.

Africans of all stripes took to social media. “America’s colleges are hungry for the strength and talent of African, Haitian and Central American students – we witness and admire the work they have done on campuses throughout this country”, Coleman wrote. I have found the people to be creative, hardworking, brave, and persistent.

Much of Trump’s first year as president has been marked by racial controversy.

Botswana also said it had summoned the U.S. ambassador to that country to “express its displeasure” and had asked him whether Botswana “is regarded as a “shithole” country”.

Some acknowledged problems in their countries, but blamed this on their poor leaders as well as Western nations.

El Salvador’s foreign minister said a formal protest had been made over the comments attributed to Trump. I could tell you how I have spent an inordinate amount of time and energy, throughout my life, educating people about Haiti and disabusing them of the damaging, incorrect notions they have about the country of my parents’ birth.

However Juba businesswoman Jenny Jore, 31, told AFPthat Trump’s remarks were “on point”.

“We will not accept such insults, even from a leader of a friendly country, no matter how powerful”.

Before he was president, Trump once called civil rights activist Al Sharpton to complain that he called him a racist and Sharpton said he corrected him – he was speaking about his actions and not him.

In 2016, in response to a question about then-candidate Trump’s views on immigration and his intention to build a wall along the USA border with Mexico, Francis said a man with such views was “not Christian”.

“He didn’t just name a white country, he named the whitest, so white they wear moon-screen”, he said.