President Donald Trump added seven more nations to the US travel ban Wednesday. These countries are Nigeria (partially banned), Syria, and Palestinian Authority passport holders.
The White House claimed that Trump, who has been campaigning for a long time to limit immigration and has gotten more and more angry about it, wanted to keep out foreigners who “intend to threaten” Americans.
A White House statement added that he also wants to keep foreigners out of the United States who would “undermine or destabilize its culture, government, institutions, or founding principles.”
Trump’s move comes only days after two US soldiers and one civilian were killed in Syria. Since the demise of longstanding ruler Bashar al-Assad, Trump has been trying to improve relations with the country throughout the world, according to AFP.
Authorities in Syria reported that the person who did it was a member of the security forces who was going to be fired for having “extremist Islamist ideas.”
The Trump administration had already informally stopped Palestinian Authority passport holders from traveling because it is against the recognition of a Palestinian state by other major Western countries, such as France and Britain.
The whole travel restriction also affected Laos in Southeast Asia and some of Africa’s poorest countries, such as Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Sierra Leone, and South Sudan.
The White House added that Trump was also putting some travel restrictions on people from other African countries, including Nigeria, which has the most people, and Caribbean countries with mostly Black people.
Increasing the anti-immigrant tone
In the past several weeks, Trump has used more and more charged language to speak out against immigration from Africa.
He claimed at a rally last week that the US should only take individuals from “shithole countries” and not from Norway and Sweden.
He also called Somalis “garbage” after a controversy in which Somali Americans were said to have stolen money from the government in Minnesota by making up fake contracts.
Trump had already stopped Somalis from coming in. Afghanistan, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, Sudan, and Yemen are the only nations still under a full travel ban.
Last month, Trump made the ban even worse for Afghans by ending a program that helped bring in Afghans who had fought with the US against the Taliban. This happened after an Afghan veteran who seemed to have PTSD shot two National Guardsmen who were sent by Trump to Washington.
Along with Nigeria, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Dominica, Gabon, The Gambia, Ivory Coast, Malawi, Mauritania, Senegal, Tanzania, Tonga, Zambia, and Zimbabwe are now somewhat restricted.
Angola, Senegal, and Zambia have all been important partners for the US in Africa. Former President Joe Biden praised the three for their dedication to democracy.
In the statement, the White House said that some of the nations on the blacklist had high crime rates and that keeping track of passports was hard.
The White House said that Turkmenistan, one of the countries that was first targeted, had made “significant progress.”
The countries in Central Asia will be able to get US visas again, but only as non-immigrants.
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