Trump New Travel Ban 3.0

22 Mar 2023

As with the previous ban, Canadian dual citizens are unaffected.

Two days ago, President Donald Trump issued a proclamation (Presidential Proclamation Enhancing Vetting Capabilities and Processes for Detecting Attempted Entry Into the United States by Terrorists or Other Public-Safety Threats  – the Presidential Proclamation) to limit travel from a handful of countries. His previous attempt at a travel ban sought to block all travel from the previously listed countries temporarily. This one is indefinite and imposes different restrictions for different nations. Three new countries – Chad, North Korea and Venezuela – have been added to the list since the last executive order earlier in the year, and another country, Sudan, was removed from the list altogether. The list now encompasses Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen. The new restrictions include a phased-in approach beginning next month.

The Venezuelan restrictions aim to isolate government officials that the White house blames for the country’s slide into chaos, including officials from the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service and their immediate families.

For the last three months, the President employed an executive order to ban foreign nationals from six Muslim-majority countries from entering the US unless they had a “bona fide” relationship with a person or entity in the country. This is what has come to be known as the “bona fide proviso”. Those nations included Iran, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and Sudan.

As per the Globe and Mail, Trump’s refugee policies and travel bans have been cited as the driving forces behind a rise in U.S. border crossings by asylum seekers who want refugee status in Canada. Under 2004’s Safe Third Country Agreement between Canada and the United States, refugees who’ve been rejected in one country are prevented from seeking asylum in the other. This means that, if asylum seekers show up at official border crossings, authorities will turn them back. But the deal doesn’t cover people who cross unofficially – so-called “irregular migration” – and then claim asylum once they’re in Canada.