UK Parliament will debate petition barring Trump visit

The United Kingdom’s Parliament will debate a petition to halt President Trump’s state visit, according to the U.K. Government and Parliament website.

The House of Commons is set to debate the measure later this month. The lower chamber will also take up a petition in favor of Trump’s visit to the U.K., which surpassed the necessary 100,000 signatures to warrant a government response on Monday. 

U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May’s office insisted on Monday, however, that the visit would proceed as planned, rejecting calls to cancel it. May was the first foreign leader to visit the White House since Trump’s inauguration earlier this month.

{mosads}The petition to block Trump’s visit was originally created on the website in late November, but the number of signatures skyrocketed over the weekend after the president signed an executive order barring citizens of several Muslim-majority countries from traveling to the U.S. 

While the petition doesn’t call for Trump to be banned from the U.K., it argues that a state visit would be embarrassment to Queen Elizabeth II.

“Donald Trump should be allowed to enter the UK in his capacity as head of the US Government, but he should not be invited to make an official State Visit because it would cause embarrassment to Her Majesty the Queen,” it says.

Trump sparked outrage after signing an executive action temporarily halting the United States’ refugee resettlement program and blocking people from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Libya, Sudan and Somalia from entering the U.S.

The president has argued that the ban is a necessary measure to prevent terrorists from infiltrating the U.S., but critics claim it amounts to a discriminatory ban on foreign Muslims.