Nigel Farage was heckled in the European parliament on Wednesday as he came to the defence of US President Donald Trump’s temporary suspension of immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries.
Farage, who was wearing a Trump badge on his lapel, said “the anti-Trump rhetoric that is coming from everywhere” was in fact a reflection of the “anti-Americanism” of the European Union.
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He also called the opponents of Trump’s travel ban hypocrites and said that former US President Barack Obama introduced a similar measure in 2011 when he “banned any Iraqi from going into the country for six months”.
While Farage was speaking, a Labour Party MEP from London, Seb Dance, sitting behind Farage, held up a banner that read “He is lying to you”.
According to State Department data, 9,388 Iraqi refugees were admitted to the United States during the 2011 budget year.
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The Obama administration did slow processing for Iraqi nationals seeking refuge in the US under the government’s Special Immigrant Visa programme for translators and interpreters who worked with American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.
That happened after two Iraqi nationals were arrested on terrorism-related charges.