The New Trump Travel Ban: Who’s Now Affected & The Inconsistency Within

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The controversial US travel ban now sees three new additions to the list of countries whose citizens are no longer welcome in the United States while one country has seen its persona non grata status lifted.

Donald Trump yesterday issued a presidential decree that added Chad, North Korea, and Venezuela to the list of counties considered a danger to the United States while, at the same time, removing Sudan from the list of the ostracised.

The list of affected countries now reads:

• Chad
• Iran
• Libya
• North Korea
• Somalia
• Syria
• Venezuela
• Yemen

The new ban comes into effect on 18 October 2017.

Whether or not there is any risk from these countries is clearly open to debate but I’m not going to comment on that here. What I am going to comment on are the rather obvious contradictions between what the ban is supposedly for and what it actually does.

Firstly let’s start with what Trump had to say…in a tweet of course:

Right, that seems clear enough. The US “will not admit those [who we] cannot safely vet” – that’s what the ban is going to do.

Or is it?

There are a couple of large holes in that argument that should be pointed out.

• Iraq isn’t on that list despite the fact that, by the US government’s own admission, it fails the same tests the banned countries apparently failed.

Per the proclamation:

The Secretary of Homeland Security also assesses that Iraq did not meet the baseline

• The ban on Venezuela only applies to certain Venezuelan government officials and their immediate family members.

So Iraq is as dangerous as the other banned countries – but it doesn’t get a ban – and the US only has trouble vetting “certain Venezuelan government officials and their immediate family members” and not the rest of the Venezuelan.

Those seem a little strange when placed alongside the reported purpose of the ban.

According to the White House, Iraq isn’t getting a ban because of…

[T]he close cooperative relationship between the United States and the democratically elected government of Iraq, the strong United States diplomatic presence in Iraq, the significant presence of United States forces in Iraq, and Iraq’s commitment to combating the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

That still makes no sense.

If the “close cooperative relationship” and the “significant presence of United States forces in Iraq” make such a difference, why is the Secretary for Homeland security confirming that Iraq failed the tests?

More importantly, why is a ban that’s meant to keep us safe from people our government can’t vet not banning people who our government admits it cannot vet?!

If we’re to take the words of the presidential proclamation at face value it would appear that our government wants to ban people it cannot vet except in cases where it doesn’t want to…then it’s ok for people it couldn’t vet to come streaming in.

How does that work?

Either the ban applies to everyone our security apparatus cannot vet or it’s pointless.

The issue of the ban relating to Venezuelans is another contradiction.

The ban only affects a small number of government officials and their families and the proclamation reads:

Venezuela has adopted many of the baseline standards identified by the Secretary of Homeland Security and in section 1 of this proclamation, but its government is uncooperative in verifying whether its citizens pose national security or public-safety threats.  Venezuela’s government fails to share public-safety and terrorism-related information adequately, fails to satisfy at least one key risk criterion, and has been assessed to be not fully cooperative with respect to receiving its nationals subject to final orders of removal from the United States.  There are, however, alternative sources for obtaining information to verify the citizenship and identity of nationals from Venezuela.  As a result, the restrictions imposed by this proclamation focus on government officials of Venezuela who are responsible for the identified inadequacies.

Ok, so put simply that means that although Venezuela doesn’t help out we can still safely vet their citizens.

Hmmm…didn’t the President say that this was a ban on people we couldn’t vet?

Apparently, we can already vet the Venezuelan population (including, presumably, the government officials) so why are we wasting time and energy on Venezuela when I’m sure there are more pressing areas of the world to concentrate on?

The logical conclusion to reach would be that this isn’t actually about protecting us all from terrorism or public safety threats but, instead, a way of punishing Venezuela for its political differences with the US…but that can’t be it.

The President has already said that this is just about protecting us all so I must be missing something somewhere…does anyone know what?

Bottom Line

The new proclamation doesn’t change anything for the citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, or Yemen. It doesn’t really change things for the citizens of North Korea either as I doubt many of them have been traveling freely outside of their country anyway.

The citizens of Sudan are welcome back in the US once again (congratulations to you guys), the citizens of Iraq are still welcome into the US despite posing a significant threat to all of us (according to our government), and a few Venezuelan government officials will no longer be able to do their Christmas shopping on 5th Avenue.

Most importantly, however, this ban is not in any way political and, despite not banning people we consider a serious threat, is the only way we’re all going to stay safe. Good to know.