President Donald Trump’s decision to ban citizens from 12 countries from entering the United States, citing national security concerns, is yet another attempt by his five-month-old administration to tear down legal migration. Mr. Trump’s decision in 2017, during his first term, to ban citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries had triggered chaos and protests at America’s airports, evoked criticism of the unstated racism and xenophobia, and led to legal challenges. This time, Mr. Trump has focused on mostly West Asia and Africa. Citizens from Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen would be banned, while people from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela will face restrictions. The ban applies only to people outside the U.S. but those with active visas who leave the country could face difficulty during re-entry. Mr. Trump argued that the ban, which came days after the arrest of an Egyptian man for carrying out an attack on a group honouring the Gaza hostages, would help prevent terrorist attacks and keep out those who overstay their visas. Egypt, a close American ally, and Spain, which saw 20,000 of its citizens overstay their visas in 2023, are not on the list, but Chad, whose visa overstay number is as low as 400, is.
Since his swearing-in as the President, in January, for the second time, Mr. Trump has taken a series of measures to crack down on migration. He has suspended the asylum system at the southern border and ended temporary legal residency for Haitians, Venezuelans and Cubans. He has also removed the legal status of thousands of foreign students and instructed U.S. diplomatic missions to pause scheduling new visa interviews as his administration prepares to vet the social media handles of students and scholars. His policies targeting international students have already spread chaos and uncertainty across America’s universities. Now, the outright ban on citizens from a group of countries reinforces the erosion of the self-image of the U.S. — “the shining city on a hill” as Ronald Reagan once called it — as a pluralistic, open society. Mr. Trump’s claim that immigrants bring crime into the U.S. is ill-founded. Many of the people seeking entry into the U.S., from countries that had seen American military intervention, such as Haiti and Afghanistan, are fleeing war, persecution and systemic violence. They are not national security threats but victims in search of refuge. By shutting America’s doors on them, and immigrants in general, Mr. Trump is not making the U.S. safer. Rather, he is turning a country, which historically welcomed immigration and has benefited from it, into an insular, paranoid, self-doubting republic.
Published – June 07, 2025 12:10 am IST