The Trump administration has expanded its controversial travel ban policy to include new restrictions targeting immigrants from Eritrea, Myanmar, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Sudan, and Tanzania, and it just went into effect today.
According to Vox, the new restrictions aren’t as severe as those for other countries covered by the preexisting travel ban; they will still allow people from the newly listed countries to travel to the U.S. temporarily.
Trump signed the detailed proclamation last month, which also bars citizens of those countries from participating in the diversity visa lottery, which offers 55,000 citizens of countries with low levels of immigration an opportunity to come to the United States each year. Existing visa holders and refugees will not be affected.
The travel ban expansion comes just as Trump has begun to ramp up his reelection campaign, invoking his tougher and more restrictive immigration policies in an effort to appeal to his core base.
Critics have called it the “African ban” as the expansion is expected to hit Nigeria, the largest African country by population, the hardest. In 2018, the U.S. granted Nigerians almost 14,000 green cards. The expansion will cut down on people immigrating from those affected countries who want to join their family members already in the U.S.
While it doesn’t affect student visas outright, it could discourage students from coming to the U.S. to study, since they might not have the option to remain in the country permanently.
Trump’s administration has always argued that the countries affected posed a threat to the U.S.’s national security based on the findings of multiple government agencies but have never made any of the “findings” public. They have only broadly cited terrorist activity, a failure from those countries to properly document their own travelers, and insufficient efforts to share information with the U.S. as justifying reasons for the ban.
Meanwhile, many former intelligence officials have insisted that the ban will do nothing to improve the so-called threats to national security.
