Rock legend Bruce Springsteen called President Donald Trump’s executive order temperately suspending the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program “fundamentally un-American.”
“Tonight we want to add our voices to the thousands of Americans who are protesting at airports around our country — the Muslim ban and the detention of foreign nationals and refugees,” the 67-year-old E Street Band leader told the audience at a concert in Australia on Monday.
“America is a nation of immigrants,” Springsteen shouted. “And we find this anti-democratic and fundamentally un-American.”
President Trump signed an executive order on Friday which suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program for 120 days, prohibiting the arrival of Syrian refugees into the United States and halted entry of citizens from countries including Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Libya.
Key elements of Trump’s order, previously reported by Breitbart News, include:
- Suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program for 120 days, prohibiting the arrival of refugees into the United States from any country during that period
- Ordered the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security to undertake a complete review of the refugee vetting process
- Permanently banned Syrian refugees until President Trump determined otherwise, and
- Lowered the ceiling of refugees allowed to enter the United States during FY 2017 to 50,000.
“This is an immigrant’s song,” Springsteen told the crowd as he began to sing lyrics to the song, “American Land.”
Springsteen spent much of 2016 lending his rockstar celebrity support to former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The “Born to Run” singer predicted Trump would lose the election and repeatedly attacked then-candidate Trump, calling him a “moron” and a “toxic narcissist.”
Earlier this month, Springsteen appeared on a podcast episode of WTF with Marc Maron and questioned whether Trump was “competent enough” to be U.S. president.
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