Supersize the Entry Ban
President Trump should add more countries whose nationals overstay visas at high rates
By George Fishman on July 11, 2025
Summary
On June 4, President Trump issued an “entry ban” proclamation restricting, in whole or in part, travel to the United States for nationals of 19 countries. While Trump’s 2017 entry ban did not rely on visa overstay rates of countries’ nationals as a selection factor, overstay rates were a factor this time. President Trump concluded that “Nationals of some countries … pose significant risks of overstaying their visas … which increases burdens on immigration and law enforcement components of the United States, and often exacerbates other risks related to national security and public safety.”
Upwards of 40 percent of the illegal alien population in the U.S. did not cross the border illegally, but rather came here legally on a temporary basis and then overstayed their visas. As the House Judiciary Committee once concluded, “Aliens who have abused our hospitality and overstayed their visas in order to work illegally are just as culpable as aliens who enter the U.S. illegally.” And the 9/11 Commission’s staff report on terrorist travel concluded that overstaying a visa was one of the “entry and embedding tactics” used by foreign terrorists in the United States.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, nationals of 31 countries have higher estimated B visa overstay rates than do at least one of the countries subjected to the 2025 entry ban in part because of their nationals’ overstay rates, as do nationals of 67 countries with regard to F/M/J visa overstay rates. I would urge President Trump to consider further entry bans for nationals of these countries with even higher overstay rates (often extraordinarily high) than some of the countries sanctioned in his 2025 proclamation.
https://cis.org/Fishman/Supersize-Entry-Ban
