In reaction to the Israeli conflict, former President Trump has promised to bring back the travel restriction that he previously put in place for “terror-afflicted nations.”
Trump promised Republican supporters this week that he was going to reinstate the travel ban he had imposed in 2017 through an executive order. This ban prohibited the majority of legal immigration from Iran, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, Venezuela, Nigeria, Myanmar, Eritrea, Sudan, North Korea, Tanzania, and Kyrgyzstan because of their ties to terrorism.
“We implemented a rigorous travel ban to ensure that radical Islamic terrorists were kept far away from our nation throughout my tenure as Commander in Chief,” stated Trump.
“We will stop giving funding to Palestinian terrorists immediately, and we will put back in place the travel ban on terror-torn countries so that the violence and death we saw this week will not occur again in the United States,” he said.
Trump’s travel ban, which was upheld by a five-to-four vote of the US Supreme Court, consisted of countries that either didn’t share important national security information or were found to house and support terrorists. At that point, North Korea, Iran, Sudan, and Syria were all called “state sponsors of terrorism” by the State Department.
Breitbart News noted at the time that the travel ban was very successful at stopping legal immigration from nations where terrorism was common. By February 2019, the travel restrictions had cut the number of legal immigrants from those countries by about 80% in comparison to 2016.
Towards the end of January 2021, President Biden blocked Trump’s executive order and allowed people from all the nations on the travel ban to come to the United States legally again.
People in the US liked the travel ban while Trump was in office. After a lot of negative coverage in the news, over four in nine American voters said they supported the travel restrictions in November 2018. In January 2019, 80% of voters in the US-backed “tough” limits on legal immigration from countries with a lot of terrorists, like the travel ban.
