- Tightens Visa Restrictions
By Hamilton Nwosa (Head The New Diplomat, Business and Data Desk)
United States President Donlad Trump has finally wielded the big stick as his administration is banning immigration from Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, and three other countries in what experts describe as an extended policy blocking travel from seven other nations.
Under this new rule just unveiled by the Trump administration, citizens from Nigeria, Eritrea, Myanmar and Kyrgyzstan won’t be allowed to apply for visas to immigrate or relocate to the U.S.
According to the Trump administration, this latest move is designed to tighten security for countries that don’t comply with the United States’ minimum security standards, cooperate to prevent illegal immigration, and observe U.S immigration protocols and procedures.
The prestigious Wall Street Journal owned by billionaire Australian-American media mogul, Rupert Murdoch reports that two other African countries, Sudan and Tanzania, will totally be barred from participating in the United States diversity visa lottery, which randomly awards green cards to 50,000 immigrants from under-represented countries annually. It is important to note that many of the recipients are from African countries.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the new restrictions are set to take effect on Feb. 21 and will apply only to new visa applications as immigrants who were issued valid visas before that date will still be able to move to the U.S.
One official at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) estimated the affected population of people barred from immigrating to the U.S. might total 12,000 per year, the newspaper reports.
Recall that The New Diplomat had recently reported plans by the Trump administration to impose massive visa restrictions on Nigeria and six other countries. The list of affected countries listed then were Belarus, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Nigeria, Sudan and Tanzania.
This measure which was coming three years after the Trump administration’s first Executive Order which banned seven countries with Muslim nations in the majority had attracted concern as Nigeria is said to be a United States strategic partner. Apart from being the most populous country in Africa she has a huge Nigerian diasporan community in the United States with the result that Nigerian-Americans are among several US citizens excelling in key sectors such Medicine, Law, Academia, Business, Public Policy, etc.
It would be recalled that after the first Executive Order, the Trump administration issued a second travel ban in March 2017, and a third in September, 2017. The travel bans which were initially blocked by two appeal courts orders were, however upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court after a slew of litigations.
According to the to the WSJ “the six countries will join a list of seven nations, most of them Muslim-majority, that faced significant travel restrictions under President Trump’s original travel ban, issued in 2017.”
Immigrant advocates have however denounced the coming restrictions ahead of their release, terming the new policy an “African Ban” and criticizing the Trump administration for not imposing restrictions on other, larger nations that also don’t cooperate with the U.S.
“There are bad actors in Russia, bad actors in China, and none of those places have been put on any kind of ban,” thundered Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D., Texas.) whose Houston district includes the largest Nigerian community in the U.S. “It is pure discrimination and racism.”, she added.
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But Chad Wolf, acting Secretary of the DHS said the new immigration restrictions were designed to address security concerns in the way the banned countries track their own citizens, share information with the U.S. and cooperate on immigration matters. He accordingly outlined a process, which the department undertakes and reviews periodically within every six months under the Trump administration.
Following that process, which Mr. Wolf explained that, the administration opted to place immigration restrictions on the countries that don’t meet its minimum security standards including Nigeria, Eritrea and Myanmar.
According to Wolf “the new restrictions were meant to encourage countries to cooperate more fully with the U.S. the countries facing more tailored bans have less ground to make up.”
“These countries for the most part want to be helpful, want to do the right thing,” Mr. Wolf said. “But for a variety of reasons, they failed to meet those requirements we laid out.”
Interestingly, today’s announcement is coming days after the third anniversary of the original travel ban imposed by President Trump when he issued his first executive order. That executive order which reportedly threw several US airports into chaos, as travelers, including U.S. permanent residents who were born in any of the countries on the list, weren’t allowed in the country as immigration officials sought to enforce the order.
However, reprieve came when that ban was blocked by a federal court, but an unrelenting administration issued another version of the executive order in March of that year. A third version, issued in September, established a set of criteria under which countries might face bans. The administration said it used those criteria for its expansion this week. The Supreme Court ultimately allowed that form of the travel ban to take effect in June 2018, calling it a permissible form of presidential power.
But Wolf said the administration had been weighing travel restrictions on several other countries, including Belarus, but dropped those countries from the list because they either complied with U.S. security demands ahead of the announcement or were taken off by other government agencies, who feared imposing bans on them would put other foreign-policy and national security goals at risk. Efforts to reach Godfrey Onyema, Nigeria’s Foreign Affairs Minister were unsuccessful. His telephone line was constantly switched-off.
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