A lawmaker in the Philippines is calling for Donald Trump to be permanently banned from the country after the Republican U.S. presidential nominee implied that Filipino immigrants pose a terrorist threat to the United States.
Rep. Joey Sarte Salceda filed a resolution with the Philippines House of Representatives on Monday proposing the lifetime ban on Trump for "being inimical to the national interest" of the country.
Trump had said in an Aug. 4 speech that the U.S. was "letting people come in from terrorist nations," rattling off a list of countries that included the Philippines.
"This could be the great Trojan horse of all time," he said in a clip of the speech posted to YouTube.
"An immigrant from Afghanistan ... an illegal permanent resident from the Philippines were convicted (of) plotting to join al-Qaida and the Taliban in order to kill as many Americans as possible," he said.
In the resolution, Salceda blasted Trump, saying "there is no feasible basis or reasonable justification to the wholesale labeling of Filipinos as coming from a 'terrorist state' or that they will be a Trojan horse."
The lawmaker also said he is concerned that Trump's pronouncement had demonstrated a "negative, dysfunctionally nativist, aggressively adversarial attitude towards immigrants in the USA, where he aspires to be the leader."
The U.S. State Department estimated last year that there are roughly 4 million people of Filipino descent living in the U.S., making one of the largest Asian-American populations in the country.
Congressional resolutions are not binding but express the stance of the House.
The Philippines is not the first country where politicians have called for banning Trump.
In January, lawmakers from both the United Kingdom and Germany discussed possible prohibitions on his entry to the countries.
