NYTimes: Trump’s Deputies Pick Countries for Pending Visa Ban

President Donald Trump’s deputies have identified 43 countries whose residents and citizens will likely be denied a visa to enter the United States, according to a report.

Visitors and would-be migrants seeking a visa would be “flatly barred” if they come from a list of “Red” countries, including Afghanistan, Bhutan, Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen, the New York Times reported on Friday, citing anonymous sources.

Visas would be “sharply restricted” for people from an additional list of 10 “Orange” countries, including Russia and its neighbor Belarus, Haiti,  Laos, Myanmar (formerly Burma), Turkmenistan, Pakistan, South Sudan, Eritrea, and Sierra Leone. Visitors from those countries would be screened in their home countries before being granted a visa.

Visitors from an additional 22 countries — nearly all in Africa — would not be allowed to visit until their governments improve data sharing and address other relevant  weaknesses, such as lax security procedures for issuing passports. The 22 countries include several small islands in the Caribbean, such as St. Lucia and St. Kitts and Nevis.

The Times reported:

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive internal deliberations, cautioned that the list had been developed by the State Department several weeks ago, and that changes were likely by the time it reached the White House.

However, the blocks would not necessarily reduce the annual inflow of roughly 1 million legal immigrants into the United States. For every blocked migrant from countries on the list, officials might welcome another migrant from a non-blocked country, such as India or Mexico.

Most of the countries are likely excluded because they are dominated by Islamic ideology which encourages terrorism against Western countries.

Some of them, however, are likely included in the lists because many of their visitors remain as illegal “overstays” in the United States instead of going home. Some countries are on the list because their government tried to prevent the deportation of their illegal immigrant citizens from the United States.

The list does not include countries that contribute to the huge inflow of economic migrants into the United States. For example, India is not on any of the lists, even though it sends a vast number of legal and illegal economic migrants into the United States labor force.

Only a few of the nations are on the American continent. They are Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, and the small island states.

Notably, the administration is saying it wants to exclude individuals who hate American society.

In January, Trump signed an Executive Order that says:

It is the policy of the United States to protect its citizens from aliens who intend to commit terrorist attacks, threaten our national security, espouse hateful ideology, or otherwise exploit the immigration laws for malevolent purposes.

Progressives hate the “hateful ideology” ban. Instead, they demand that foreigners be given personal review treatment as if they are without question honest individuals who have formed their own views and ideology without influence from their society’s religion, culture, and economy.

Vice President JD Vance echoed that “hateful ideology” aspect in a March 13 interview with Laura Ingraham:

Choosing who can enter and stay in the United States “is about national security, but it’s also more importantly about ‘Who do we, as an American public, decide gets to join our national community?’”

Russia is on the orange list, presumably in part because of the United States’ alignment with Ukraine in the Russia-Ukraine war.

Back in 2017, Trump barred visitors from a list of eight countries after a loud battle with pro-migration activists. The U.S. Supreme Court sided with Trump after months of legal wrangling, but President Joe Biden’s pro-migration deputies lifted the protections.