Visa overstays, the order elaborates, “indicates a blatant disregard for United States immigration laws”.
The United Nations estimates that $86bn leaves the continent each year in “illicit financial flows”, or theft through criminal activities and tax evasion.
In displacement camps in New York and Tijuana and the Aegean islands of Greece, I have met pharmacists, artists, DJs and journalists from many of the targeted countries.
Just this week I spoke to a political activist who, forced to flee a massacre in one of the targeted countries, left her three young children behind.
It is not the people of these nations that are a threat to the security of the United States.
There appears to be no logic or rhyme to the Trump administration’s most recent order banning certain nations. Afghanistan, Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela are all targeted for restrictions, while Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen are all targeted for complete bans. Based on “whether each country has a significant terrorist presence within its territory, its visa-overstay rate, and its cooperation with accepting back its removable nationals,” the order argues that they all present security risks.
Overstaying a visa “indicates a blatant disregard for United States immigration laws,” the order explains. However, the most recent Customs and Border Protection data on overstays does indicate that these nations, along with others left off the list, rank highly.
However, if we take a moment to consider this list while paying attention to the history of the world we live in, we will notice a different unifying logic. These nations are all in the global south, and their populations are Muslim and classified as either Black or brown. Nearly half of the population lives in poverty in the majority. Many have recently seen terrible wars or social unrest. For instance, the World Food Program lists Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, and Afghanistan as having some of the worst food crises in the world.
These facts do not demonstrate a tendency to “disregard” the law or the inherent violence of people from these countries, as the travel ban presumes. Actually, nothing about people’s legal status can be found in the data on overstays. Because of their countries’ insecurity, citizens of Afghanistan, Burma, El Salvador, Haiti, Somalia, Sudan, and Venezuela have long been able to apply for temporary protected status. The number of so-called “overstayers” who applied for additional protections, such as asylum, is unknown.
These countries’ poverty and insecurity are primarily signs that they have experienced imperialism, which includes coercion and US military and economic intervention.
Without considering the French extortion of the island nation in exchange for their freedom from slavery and the US occupation of it, you are unable to comprehend the widespread violence or economic hardship that drives people to flee Haiti. The United States’ funding of the mujahideen and the so-called “war on terror,” which did little more than further destabilize the country, are essential to comprehending the mass migration of people from Afghanistan, one of the largest refugee populations in the world. Only because the US backed British efforts to destroy Iranian democracy in order to save British Petroleum is the current regime in Iran possible.
Whether in Cuba, Venezuela, or Iran, US sanctions have caused economic destruction and mass displacement rather than pressuring regime change. American shrapnel has been recovered from Yemeni children’s bodies. At least 68 African migrants who were detained were among the 250 people killed in US strikes on Saada and Sanaa since March.
Data repeatedly demonstrates that African nations like gold-rich Sudan, oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, and Chad, which have been devastated by corporations like ExxonMobil, are victims of theft rather than poverty. According to UN estimates, $86 billion is transferred out of the continent annually through “illicit financial flows,” which include theft through criminal activity and tax evasion. Furthermore, it is estimated that the nations on this list and others in the global south paid more than $2 trillion in interest to the global north alone between 1970 and 2022. One former Burkina Faso president, Thomas Sankara, referred to debt as a “skillfully managed reconquest of Africa.”.
The poorest countries are bearing the cost of the climate crisis caused by the world’s wealthiest nations. According to climate activists, governments in the global north are owed $5 trillion annually by nations in the global south for the destruction they are causing.
From this perspective, Trump’s travel ban, which in its opening paragraphs proudly references what became known as the “Muslim ban” of his first administration, is a brutal extension of a long-standing practice of taking advantage of the lives of Black and brown people and displacing their most vulnerable members.
I have encountered journalists, artists, DJs, and pharmacists from many of the targeted nations in the Aegean islands of Greece, as well as in displacement camps in New York and Tijuana. I recently had a conversation with a political activist who had to leave her three young children behind after being forced to escape a massacre in one of the targeted nations. She expressed her concerns to me following the imposition of this ban, including her ability to obtain asylum, which is presently being decided, and her ability to reunite with her family in the future. As she said, “I wish they could understand that I never wanted to come here,” her voice broke. “.”.
A recent incident in Boulder, Colorado, where an Egyptian man injured twelve people demanding the release of Israeli hostages—though Egypt is not on the list—was used by Trump to defend the ban. Millions of people have been banned because of this one act, which is ridiculous. After a ban on asylum and the revocation of humanitarian parole, this most recent prohibition is merely the latest in a line of measures intended to “Make America white again.”. Attacks on our immigrant students, especially those who dare to speak out against the US funding of Gaza’s destruction, are still happening at the same time.
These countries do not pose a threat to American security because of their citizens. For a long time, the United States has threatened them by taking their wealth, destroying their environments and institutions, and then preventing them from taking part in the safety that was created at their expense. Rather than making our sins worse, we ought to be atoning for them.
