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EXTRA! EXTRA! The Travel Ban is Back

It finally happened.  As promised, President Donald Trump has issued a new executive order regarding travel restrictions to six nations with known ties to terrorist organizations. You can read the order in its entirety here. The new directive halts immigration from those nations for ninety days and halts all refugees from any country entering the United States for the next one hundred twenty days.

However, there are significant procedural differences in this new edict. Instead of stopping the flow of people at U.S. airports by customs officials, U.S. embassies overseas have been ordered to discontinue processing travel documents until a national security review takes place by Trump administration officials.

Section 5 of the presidential executive order outlines how the review will be conducted and its express purpose:

Implementing Uniform Screening and Vetting Standards for All Immigration Programs.  (a)  The Secretary of State, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Director of National Intelligence shall implement a program, as part of the process for adjudications, to identify individuals who seek to enter the United States on a fraudulent basis, who support terrorism, violent extremism, acts of violence toward any group or class of people within the United States, or who present a risk of causing harm subsequent to their entry.  This program shall include the development of a uniform baseline for screening and vetting standards and procedures, such as in-person interviews; a database of identity documents proffered by applicants to ensure that duplicate documents are not used by multiple applicants; amended application forms that include questions aimed at identifying fraudulent answers and malicious intent; a mechanism to ensure that applicants are who they claim to be; a mechanism to assess whether applicants may commit, aid, or support any kind of violent, criminal, or terrorist acts after entering the United States; and any other appropriate means for ensuring the proper collection of all information necessary for a rigorous evaluation of all grounds of inadmissibility or grounds for the denial of other immigration benefits.

The countries affected by the ninety-day ban are Syria, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, and Yemen. Iraq was dropped from the list after officials in Iraq said they would tighten their security checks before putting anyone on a plane bound for the U.S.

Also, the presidential order cuts the annual number of refugees almost in half – from one hundred and ten thousand to fifty thousand. It will also hand over to local communities the power to say whether they want to accept the refugees.

This new order essentially renders the previous one stalled in the courts as obsolete. As well, the new directive does not go into effect until March 16, giving people with valid visas from those countries an opportunity to enter the United States.

Read More From Leesa K. Donner

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