The president’s original travel ban, issued in January, put a 90-dan ban on nationals from seven predominately Muslim counties from entering the U.S. And with or without this order, those without visas were already barred from traveling to the U.S.
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Yet, some of the first order’s core tenets are still in place. Syrian refugees will now be treated like other refugees and be subjected to a 120-day suspension of the refugee program. Refugees will also be subject to those higher standards, and the USA will accept only 50,000 refugees in the current fiscal year – half of what the government originally planned to accept under the quota set by the Obama administration last fall. There is no known case of recently admitted refugees conducting a deadly terrorist attack on USA soil; nor is there research suggesting citizens of the banned countries have a proclivity for terror at rates higher than native-born Americans.
Smaller numbers of United States special operations forces are embedded with some Iraqi units. Legal permanent residents (‘Green Card’ holders) from the countries will not be affected, however, Reuters reported citing a fact sheet supplied by the administration. It’s now been more than a month since Mr Trump’s original order was issued.
Monday’s order also removes a provision indefinitely barring Syrian refugees from the U.S. Also removed is language giving preference to “religious minorities”, a provision that had been widely seen as an attempt to follow through on Trump’s promise to prioritize Christian refugees. The U.S. took in 10,000 Syrian refugees previous year.
According to the Supreme Court, green-card holders have a right to due process when the government tries to stop them from returning to their homes after traveling overseas.
White House aides desperately tried to cheer up a sulking president over the weekend by going over the details of a new plan to ban travel from seven majority-Muslim countries, reports said.
New restriction on the Visa Interview Waiver Program and additional non-immigrant visa applicants will have to undergo in-person interview. The ban was ultimately amended to “extreme vetting” for people coming from countries with a history of exporting terrorism, though the initial ban itself was never publicly abandoned or disavowed by Trump himself.
The new directive was drafted with the intent of withstanding judicial scrutiny that came amid chaos and confusion in American airports in the days following the original ban. The Justice Department refused to defend it.
More than a dozen lawsuits were filed across the country challenging the January order.
The new order has a delayed implementation, designed to avoid the chaotic situation created by the initial order with people in transit when their visas were nullified. Iraq, which had been included in the original travel ban, was removed from the list.
The administration unsuccessfully appealed that decision; a three-judge panel maintained the block the following week.
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Even if the second order is more narrowly tailored, opponents have vowed to continue fighting it with protests and new legal challenges. “The discrimination that spurred the ban doesn’t simply disappear by the removal of a few words”.
