President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced that his travel restrictions have expanded to 20 additional countries.
Citizens of Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, South Sudan, and Syria are now banned from entering the country, according to the Associated Press.
Anyone with travel documents issued by the Palestinian Authority also faces travel restrictions.
Trump added 15 other nations to the list of countries facing partial restrictions: Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Ivory Coast, Dominica, Gabon, Gambia, Malawi, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Tonga, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
The restrictions cover travel and possible immigration.
A White House fact sheet noted that the new proclamation Trump issued Tuesday continues his ban on travel from Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. Partial restrictions on citizens of Cuba, Togo, and Venezuela. Laos and Sierra Leone had been subject to partial restrictions in an earlier proclamation, but are now on the list of nations totally banned.
The fact sheet noted that nations on the list have “severe deficiencies in screening, vetting, and information-sharing to protect the Nation from national security and public safety threats.”
“It is the President’s duty to take action to ensure that those seeking to enter our country will not harm the American people,” the fact sheet said.
“The Proclamation narrows broad family-based immigrant visa carve-outs that carry demonstrated fraud risks, while preserving case-by-case waivers,” it added.
“Many of the restricted countries suffer from widespread corruption, fraudulent or unreliable civil documents and criminal records, and nonexistent birth-registration systems — systemically preventing accurate vetting.”
Some nations on the list have high rates of citizens who overstay their visas and will not take back those who do so, the fact sheet said.
Some nations on the list “permit Citizenship-by-Investment schemes that conceal identity and bypass vetting requirements and travel restrictions,” the fact sheet said.
“It is the policy of the United States to protect its citizens from foreign nationals who intend to commit terrorist attacks, threaten our national security and public safety, incite hate crimes, or otherwise exploit the immigration laws for malevolent purposes,” Trump wrote in a proclamation on the White House website.
The proclamation gave examples of why some nations have been banned.
“At least one country lacks mechanisms in hospitals to ensure births are reported, and widespread corruption, combined with a general lack of vetting and poor recordkeeping, result in any non-citizen being able to obtain any civil document from that country, particularly if that person is willing to pay a fee or engage an individual that specializes in assisting in such fraud,” Trump wrote.
“Corruption in another country even extends to the national school system, which has provided falsified diplomas and grade information in the past to fraudsters who have tried to obtain student visas and eligibility for large athletic scholarships,” the document added.
“According to United States law enforcement reporting, foreign nationals from countries named in this proclamation have been involved with crimes that include murder, terrorism, embezzling public funds, human smuggling, human trafficking, and other criminal activity,” the proclamation said.
“Many of these countries are ranked in the top third of countries for criminality, and widely unreliable foreign civil documents and lack of authoritative criminal information make it extremely difficult for United States screening and vetting authorities to assess prior criminal activity and other grounds of inadmissibility.”
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