Why Morocco, Mr. Trump?

Sabrina El Faiz, actumaroc, 16/1/2026
Translated by SOLIDMAR

This isn’t the 1990s anymore.
And Casablanca is no longer black and white.

But Donald Trump seems stuck in a fantasy — a world where America reigns alone, China and Russia haven’t risen, and Africa exists only as a backdrop of poverty and desperation.

In Trump’s imagination, Africa is a continent on the run. Everyone is supposedly trying to flee. Morocco, in this outdated vision, becomes a giant holding pen for migrants, waiting to flood the United States with green-card seekers.

That fantasy is wrong.

Moroccans today don’t leave home clutching a suitcase and hope. When they move, they do so with degrees, job contracts, university admissions, and in-demand skills. They don’t emigrate to survive. They relocate to advance.

Yet Trump lumps Morocco together with 25 other African countries and freezes immigration visas — as if Moroccans were lining up to cross the Atlantic and beg for entry. As if Morocco were some security threat. As if reality didn’t matter.

Here’s the inconvenient truth: Morocco has never been a major source of immigration to the United States. Our migration flows point elsewhere — Europe first, Canada increasingly. America is not the promised land it imagines itself to be.

So why Morocco?

Because Trump doesn’t see countries — he sees stereotypes. Because Africa, in his worldview, is frozen in misery. Because reflex beats facts every time.

Trump can slam the door as hard as he wants.
Morocco wasn’t knocking.