Friday, March 21, 2025
In no surprise, the Trump Administration is looking at banning the issuance of visas to Iranians, similar to the very controversial ban issued eight years ago in the first Trump term.
A draft report leaked March 14 tentatively proposes halting the issuing of visas of any kind to nationals of 10 countries, including Iran Only seven of the 10 countries are Muslim-majority, a slight shift from the ban in Trump’s first term, when all the countries in the first ban list were Muslim and the travel ban was routinely called a “Muslim ban.” The proposal as leaked is just a draft.
The list of countries could be changed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio before it goes to President Trump. The seven Muslim-majority countries listed in the draft are Iran, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. The three non-Muslim countries are Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela.
The standard for citing these 10 counties is that their “vetting and screening information is so deficient.” In other words, it means that these countries cannot be relied on to give the United States accurate records on such things as the criminal history of people applying for visas to enter the United States.
In 2017, Trump’s initial ban on visas for many Muslims did not pass judicial review. He had to go to a third iteration before he got passed the Supreme Court.
But on President Biden’s first week in office, he signed an order revoking Trump’s ban. On Trump’s first day in his second term, he signed an Executive Order (EO) directing several cabinet officers to draft a list by March 21 of countries to be hit with a visa ban.
A second category is countries that are not quite as bad as those in the first category when it comes to supplying information on visa applicants. That list comprises five countries – Eritrea, Haiti, Laos, Myanmar and South Sudan—that are often poorly run and unable to provide information even if they are not hostile to the US
