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Foreign Minister Julie Bishop is pushing for Australian dual nationals to get the same exemptions that may have been granted to other US allies under President Donald Trump's temporary ban targeting seven majority Muslim nations.
Officials were on Monday still scrambling to determine how exactly Mr Trump's executive order will affect Australians, in particular whether those who hold citizenship in the seven Middle Eastern and African nations – which the US has deemed terrorism risks – will be barred from the US for the next three months.
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"I have directed our officials in Washington DC to work with US officials to ensure any preferential treatment extended to any other country in relation to travel and entry to the United States is extended to Australia," Ms Bishop said on Monday.
The order appears to state that virtually all citizens from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Libya and Yemen will not be allowed into the US for the next three months. The US State Department has confirmed it applies also to dual nationals.
But fine print suggests that the order – which refers to a complex section of the US Immigration and Nationality Act – only applies if the citizens are travelling to the US from those actual countries.
Amid ongoing chaos in the US about the interpretation and implementation of the order by border agencies, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said British dual nationals would only be barred if they were coming to the US from one of the seven countries themselves – not if they were travelling from a third country.
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The Canadian government has stated a similar situation exists for its dual nationals.
While these have been reported as exemptions for those countries, it remains unclear whether this is in fact the case for all citizens of those high-risk countries.
President Donald Trump has granted extensions to Canada and the United Kingdom. Photo: AP
Either way, US border officials appear to be applying the order to people who are coming from third countries, not just the risk countries themselves.
Labor's foreign affairs spokeswoman, Penny Wong, wrote to Ms Bishop on Monday asking her to clarify the situation with the US as quickly as possible, saying the uncertainty was "causing a great deal of concern to members of our community".
Australia is one of the US's closest allies under the ANZUS treaty and is part of the long-standing "five eyes" intelligence-sharing agreement along with the US, Britain, Canada and New Zealand.
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