The executive order banning travel from 12 countries, which came into effect on June 9th, is more methodical than previous iterations.
In his first batch of executive orders, issued on January 20th, President Donald Trump directed top advisers to compile a list of countries with insufficient screening standards for potential migrants, which they considered to be a national-security risk.
The order warned that people from these countries could be barred from coming to America. It was a signal that Trump intended to resurrect the travel ban, one of the most controversial immigration policies of his first term.
Most of the countries targeted in this, the fourth version of the policy, are in the Middle East and Africa. Nationals from seven other countries, including Cuba and Venezuela, face partial restrictions.
A country might find itself on the list if its citizens tend to overstay their visas, if it has refused to take back deportees, if instability prevents proper screening or information-sharing, or if it “has a significant terrorist presence”.
A tally from David Bier and Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, suggests that 116,000 immigrants and more than 500,000 visitors (including students and temporary workers) could be blocked by the ban over the next four years.
The way the ban was written and rolled out shows how the White House has learnt from its earlier failures. When Trump first tried to ban travel from seven Muslim-majority countries in 2017, chaos ensued.
Travellers who had already been issued visas or were approved for refugee resettlement were held at airports. Some green card holders were detained.
The ban followed a campaign promise for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”.
Thousands of Americans, joined by Democratic Party leaders, gathered at big-city airports to protest. This was early in Trump’s first term, and the #resistance was in full swing.
Federal judges issued nationwide injunctions to block the first and second iterations of the travel ban. A third version ended up in front of the Supreme Court by virtue of Trump v. Hawaii.
Writing for the court, Chief Justice John Roberts found that the Immigration and Nationality Act gives the president exceptional discretion to bar certain people, including specific nationalities, from the country if he argues that their presence is “detrimental to the interests of the United States”.
The ruling offered yet more evidence for what Adam Cox of New York University calls “immigration exceptionalism”: the court’s profound deference to the president where immigration policy is concerned.
That opinion influenced the way the Trump administration has resurrected the policy. The president halted refugee admissions in January (except for white South Africans) and waited until June to implement the new travel ban to try to avoid the protests and litigation that took place last time around. The proclamation lists each country and the justification for its inclusion.
There are exemptions, including for green-card holders, World Cup or Olympic athletes, Afghans who worked for the American government and the immediate families of Americans, so long as they can prove it. This is a “much more defensible executive order than the iterations in Trump 1.0”, says Muzaffar Chishti of the Migration Policy Institute.
Travel ban 4.0 looks like it will hold up in court, but it still doesn’t make sense. Like slapping tariffs on allies to bring back American manufacturing or declaring a foreign invasion to speed up deportations, Trump’s justification for banning people from these countries does not hold up to much scrutiny.
The ban is supposed to help neutralise national-security threats, such as the recent attack on Jewish marchers in Boulder by an Egyptian man who overstayed his visa. Yet Egypt is not on the list.
A Department of Homeland Security report confirms that most listed countries do indeed have high visa-overstay rates. But, except for Haiti and Venezuela, the total number of people from restricted countries who didn’t leave America when they were supposed to is relatively small.
Meanwhile, some 40,000 Colombians and 21,000 Brazilians, who are not subject to travel restrictions, overstayed their tourist and short-term work visas (see chart), yet their countrymen are not banned.
The travel ban also sends a message that America is becoming much more hostile to foreigners.
In Justice Anthony Kennedy’s concurring opinion in Trump v Hawaii, he described an “anxious world” watching to see whether America’s leaders “adhere to the Constitution and to its meaning and its promise”. That warning looks ever more prescient.
