Ending Trump Travel Ban Portends Return to Immigration Security Challenges
By Todd Bensman on November 24, 2020
Presumed President-Elect Joe Biden vowed during the campaign that on "day one" he would rescind President Donald Trump's "vile" and "Islamophobic" restrictions on U.S. entry from 13 countries, the policy often referred to as the "Muslim Travel Ban."
But repealing the president's executive order, which applies to 13 countries with terrorism and espionage concerns, portends a return to a very recent era when U.S. security and immigration agencies often were unable to vet travelers from those particular nations.
Trump's executive order eliminated the problem of vetting the histories, backgrounds, hearts and minds of immigrant visa applicants from ungoverned nations like Yemen, Chad, Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia, where record-keeping systems that can track terrorists (let alone marriages and births), are severely dysfunctional, or don't exist. Other countries were listed because their governments are hostile and uncooperative on terrorism or espionage vetting matters, like Syria, Myanmar, North Korea and Venezuela.
These nations would never help U.S. security establishment filter out terrorists and spies.
https://cis.org/Bensman/Ending-Trump-Travel-Ban-Portends-Return-Immigration-Security-Challenges
