A US immigration lawyer said Trump is not permanently banning Muslims from the seven countries mentioned in his executive order. Instead, Washington just wants to buy time to fix its immigration-vetting system.

Lawyer Ryan Barshop said Trump’s order is simply a pause.

The presidential directive bars citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from entering the US for 90 days, suspends the admission of refugees for 120 days, and suspends indefinitely the Syrian refugee program.

“I don’t want to look at the word ‘ban.’ The word ‘ban’ does not appear once. What we have to do is we have to detach ourselves from what’s actually in the text of the (executive order from) what is just becoming hysteria,” he said in an interview with “Mornings@ANC” Tuesday.
Barshop explained that the White House said it is placing a 90-day freeze on citizens of the countries “until we can get the vetting process under control.”
“To call it a ban, we’re not banning people from Indonesia, Pakistan, Egypt. We’re simply putting a hold on those citizens from those countries until we get the vetting process under control,” he said.
Barshop also clarified that the seven countries were previously designated by his predecessor, former President Barack Obama.
“During Obama’s term, he selected seven countries, those on the list today, of significant security concerns. Before the executive order was signed both directors of CIA and FBI which is our equivalent of NBI, reported to the president, said we can’t control vetting from these countries,” he said.

“We have serious security concerns, we have to do something we can’t avoid catastrophe,” he added.