The Trump administration recently announced plans to expand its travel ban to include six additional countries

The new order suspends immigrant visas for citizens of Nigeria, Myanmar, Eritrea and Kyrgyzstan. Meanwhile, citizens from Sudan and Tanzania are now barred from the U.S. diversity visa program. Tourist, business and other non-immigrant travel visas will remain unaffected, however.

Why expand the travel ban?

The administration cited security concerns as the rationale behind the expanded ban, pointing to insufficient information sharing from the countries' governments about criminal and terrorism data, a lack of electronic passport systems and issues with Interpol reporting methods.

Trump initially issued the executive order in 2017 and sought to deny visas to citizens from several Muslim-majority countries, but faced a series of court challenges. A modified version of the order that restricted entry of some citizens from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, along with Venezuela and North Korea was eventually upheld by the Supreme Court in 2018. Chad was included on the list of banned countries at that time but was later removed.

Next steps

With the most recent additions, the travel ban now directly affects 13 countries, all of which have substantial Muslim populations. The ban's expansion is likely to affect some 12,300 potential immigrants, according to The New York Times.

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Envoy is pleased to provide you this information, which was prepared in collaboration with Sara Herbek, who is a Managing Partner at Global Immigration Associates, P.C. (www.giafirm.com), Envoy's affiliated law firm.

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