Khaberni - Hours after US President Donald Trump announced a permanent ban on immigration from all third-world countries until the American system has fully recovered, the Department of Homeland Security, on Friday, referred Reuters to 19 countries listed on a travel ban list when asked about the third-world countries.
Trump's administration began ramping up its measures against immigrants after a migrant from Afghanistan shot two members of the National Guard, one of whom was a woman who later died.
In June, Trump issued an executive order banning entry to citizens of 19 countries into the United States, dividing the countries into two groups, either completely banning travel or partially. Here is the list that was previously included in the travel ban, which Trump's announcement and the Department of Homeland Security clarification meant.
The list of countries whose citizens are completely banned from traveling to the United States included 12 countries, among them 4 Arab countries: Libya, Sudan, Yemen, and Somalia, in addition to Iran, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, and Haiti. The list also imposed partial restrictions on entry from seven other countries: Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela.
At that time, Trump based his executive order on several reasons, including "deficiencies in security procedures, failure to apply screening measures, refusal by some to accept their citizens whom the United States decided to screen, and some being categorised as terrorist states by the United States", and the executive order stated that the reasons behind the decision are to "protect the United States from foreigners intending to commit terrorist attacks or threaten national security or adopt ideologies of hatred or exploit immigration laws for malicious purposes".
In two lengthy posts on social media before midnight on Thursday, Trump wrote that he would permanently halt immigration from all third-world countries until the American system has recovered, would revoke the citizenship of immigrants undermining domestic security, and also threatened to cancel "millions" of accepted applications granted under his predecessor Joe Biden and "deport anyone who does not offer the United States additional value".
Trump also confirmed that he would end all federal benefits and subsidies "for non-citizens in our country".
In turn, the Director of Citizenship and Immigration Services at the Department of Homeland Security, Joseph Edlow, announced the implementation of new political directives regarding the screening of potential immigrants from 19 countries he described as "high risk", noting that the directives consider specific factors for each country such as their ability to issue secure identity documents. He also mentioned that his administration was implementing the president's executive order on restricting the entry of foreign nationals.
His administration also announced the suspension of processing all immigration applications related to citizens of Afghanistan indefinitely, pending further review of security and vetting protocols, which includes work permits, asylum requests, naturalization, family reunification, and others.
The Afghan citizen Rahmanullah Lakanwal, accused in the shooting incident, entered the United States during Biden's term on planes that transported Afghans who cooperated with the US government and feared for their lives, and worked for nearly ten years for government bodies, the US military, and the Central Intelligence Agency "CIA", and had his asylum request approved months ago.
