The White House has expanded the U.S. travel ban to include 20 additional countries, imposing full and partial entry suspensions with limited exemptions starting January 1.
Citizens of more countries will be prohibited from entering the United States from January 1, the Trump Administration said in an executive order signed by the President Tuesday.
The executive order adds new countries to a “full suspension” list, including Burkina Faso, Laos, Mali, Niger, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, and the Palestinian Authority. A “partial suspension” was issued for Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, Dominica, Gabon, The Gambia, Malawi, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Tonga, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The executive order partially lifts some restrictions implemented earlier this year on Turkmenistan.
The executive order exempts current visa holders already in the United States, lawful U.S. permanent residents who are nationals of the affected countries, certain non-immigrant visa categories, dual nationals who hold citizenship in a country not subject to the restrictions, athletes, such as those traveling for the Olympics, World Cup, or other major sporting events determined by the secretary of state, and members of the countries’ diplomatic corps.
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The new policy also adds bans for immediate family members of countries on the list who had previously been exempted. It also ends Afghan Special Immigrant visas, which were enacted during the Afghanistan War to offer resettlement to Afghan nationals who provided assistance to U.S. military and government operations whose lives were subsequently in danger because of that fact. The Afghan Special Immigrant visa required exhaustive vetting, sometimes taking up to two years to process before an application could be approved.
In a lengthy preamble, the executive order describes the conditions in many of the countries that were cause for national security concerns, such as local governments not being in full control of the country, poor recordkeeping of births and criminal records, widespread document fraud by government officials, and other items that have proved a hindrance to US consular officials attempting to vet visa applications. The administration also expressed concerns about countries that offer citizenship by investment (CBI) without a residency requirement, which it says would ease a path for persons considered a national security threat to easily acquire citizenship in a second country to circumvent the State Department’s normal vetting processes.
Antigua and Barbuda, and Dominica, two Caribbean nations popular with outbound U.S. travelers, were two countries on the list that the State Department identified as offering CBI without residency requirements. Another nation on the list, the South Pacific island nation of Tonga, has a history of passport sale schemes dating back to the 1980s, is reportedly considering a new CBI initiative in the country’s parliament, but the State Department instead cited a high overstay rate on existing visas as rationale for restricting the country’s nationals from being approved for new US visas.
In fact, a high overstay rate on existing visas was cited as a factor for the majority of the countries on the list. The executive order also noted that the governments of Laos, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, and The Gambia have historically refused to accept back their citizens that the U.S. has legally deported.
The restrictions on all countries apply to citizens of those countries—whether they currently reside in that country or not—wishing to visit the United States temporarily or to live and work and instructs consular officials not to issue new visas for work, study, or exchange, and to limit the validity of other visa types, such as those for work transfers, or air and sea crews.
The International Refugee Assistance Project, an advocacy organization that provides legal aid to refugees, decried the executive order, particularly pointing out that the administration had chosen to include an indefinite pause on all immigration applications and petitions for citizens of these countries, including a previously offered exemption of immediate family members of US citizens.
More than 35 countries—mostly in the Middle East or Africa—have blanket restrictions on entry to the United States. This represents nearly 20% of the countries in the world.
