On June 4th, President Trump signed into action a travel ban targeting twelve countries: Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.
During his first presidential term, Trump had attempted a travel ban; however, due to its specificity to Muslim-majority countries such as Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Libya, and Nigeria, this earlier ban was severely criticized by the public, both in the US and by foreign nationals. Numerous changes could be seen in the newer version, one Trump had frequently discussed while on the election campaign. For example, the second travel ban states the twelve countries above will have total visa bans, while seven other countries (Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, Venezuela) have bans on specific visas such as immigrant, student, and tourist. It is vital to note that numerous exceptions to the ban exist, including but not limited to, minorities persecuted in Iran and Afghan nationals who can prove they were employed by the US during its military campaign in Afghanistan.
The cause for such a ban was given as the firebombing attack in Colorado where peaceful demonstrators supporting Israeli hostages were attacked by an Egyptian national with molotov cocktails and a flamethrower. However, critics of the travel ban have pointed out that Egypt is not one of the banned countries on the list. Others censured the ban due to its taking in percentages rather than individual amounts; for instance, Chad was included on the ban because their visa overstay rate was 49.5%, but this included only 377 people. On the other hand, Spain had an overstay rate of 2.4%, but this was actually more than 20,000 people. To summarize, the ban was created with the intent to “improve [countries’] information-sharing and identity-management protocols… to regularly share their identity and threat information with the immigration screening and vetting systems of the United States.”
Foreign response to the ban ranged widely. For instance, the president of Chad, Mahamat Idriss Deby, has written that “Chad has no planes to offer, no billions of dollars to give but Chad has his dignity and pride.” On the other hand, the African Union Commission has asked the US to consult with the nations involved with the ban in order to find a less drastic approach to the immigration challenges.