Travel ban see steep visa drop

Muslim nations targeted by Trump’s travel ban see steep visa drop

By NAHAL TOOSI, TED HESSON and SARAH FROSTENSON

The number of U.S. visas issued to visitors from six majority-Muslim countries targeted by President Donald Trump’s travel bans plummeted during a six-month period, according to an analysis by POLITICO.

The monthly average of such visas issued to the six countries — Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen — has fallen 44 percent this year when compared with the monthly average in fiscal year 2016, according to State Department data.

The visitor visas, known as non-immigrant visas, are issued principally to business travelers, tourists and students.

Non-immigrant visas to people from all Arab nations fell 16 percent and the number issued to people from the world’s nearly 50 majority-Muslim countries fell 8 percent, even as the number issued to people from all nations was virtually unchanged.

Visas below 2016 average in travel ban countries
From March to August 2017, the number of visas granted to visitors from six countries targeted by the travel ban dropped in comparison to the 2016 monthly average.

The president’s travel ban covered seven majority-Muslim nations when it was first signed in January. But one of these countries, Iraq, was dropped from the list when Trump issued a successor ban in March. On Sunday, the travel ban was revised yet again to drop Sudan from the list and add Chad. In addition, the Trump White House added two nations that are not majority-Muslim: North Korea and Venezuela.

Starting in April, POLITICO began tracking visa data provided by the State Department, looking in particular at majority-Muslim countries, including those six affected by the first two iterations of the travel ban. POLITICO measured the changes from March, by which time the White House’s intent to limit travel from these nations was well-established, through August, the most recent month for which data are available.

POLITICO tracked data for the six majority-Muslim countries to see whether the mere fact that the White House identified as unwelcome visitors from those nations had an impact — despite courts blocking part or all of the travel bans for much of that period. The Supreme Court finally allowed the March version of the travel ban to take partial effect in late June.

The State Department data show the number of visas issued, but not the number of applications. For that reason, it’s impossible to know whether more applications were rejected or whether Trump’s heated rhetoric discouraged Muslim travelers from applying for visas to the United States in the first place.

One former State Department official said consular officers approach their job with rigor and professionalism, but might have been influenced by the security-minded posture of the Trump administration.

“The law does require you to err in the direction of refusing a case,” the former official told POLITICO. “It’s possible that there were officers who were just harder to persuade and were being more cautious and refusing visas.”

In addition, the role of an individual consular officer is only a piece of the vetting process. The Homeland Security Department, intelligence and law enforcement agencies also monitor applications for admission, and each of them could issue a “red light” to halt a visa application.

The White House referred POLITICO to the Department of Homeland Security for comment, and DHS referred questions to the State Department. Asked why visas to visitors from Muslim-majority countries were down, a State Department official stressed that the demand fluctuates throughout the year. “The department remains committed to facilitating the legitimate travel for international business travelers while ensuring the security of the U.S. borders,” the official said.

Reaz Jafri, a New York City-based partner at the immigration law firm Withers Worldwide, said he is finding that many people from majority-Muslim countries now choose not to come to the United States. He recently met with several clients abroad who “didn’t want to go through the hassle” of applying for a U.S. visa.

“Besides denials, what you’re seeing is increasingly people go through background checks under a process called administrative processing,” Jafri said. This extended vetting has taken eight to 10 weeks for some clients; others are still waiting. “Business travelers, especially, they can’t operate in that type of uncertain environment,” Jafri said, “so they’re not traveling as much.”

Jafri, who deals with clients from Pakistan, India, Malaysia and Indonesia, among other nations, said he’s seen four visa denials this year attributed to alleged connections to terror groups, including one application from a prominent businessman. “I’ve been doing this for 25 years,” he said. “I’ve not seen a terrorist-related denial for a client, ever. … I’m not sure what’s happening with regards to database analysis and collection.”

In December 2015, candidate Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” citing security concerns. One week after his inauguration, President Trump signed an executive order that instituted a 90-day travel ban from seven majority-Muslim nations: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

The hastily implemented policy led to distress and confusion in airports across the globe, as travelers worried about possible visa cancellations and whether the ban applied to green card holders. A little more than a week after Trump signed the order, a federal judge in Seattle blocked the policy nationwide.

Besieged by lawsuits, the administration revised the executive order in March — dropping Iraq from the list — but again, the country-specific ban was halted by legal challenges that reached the Supreme Court. The high court allowed the ban to move forward in June, but exempted people with “bona fide” ties to a person or entity in the United States.

The six-country ban in the March executive order expired Sunday, when its 90-day review period elapsed. The administration then announced a third travel ban, this time an indefinite one, for eight countries: Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Chad, North Korea and Venezuela.

The latter two nations appear to have been added to bolster the legal argument that this was not intended to be a “Muslim ban” – though Trump undermined that argument in a Sept. 15 tweet that said “The travel ban into the United States should be far larger, tougher and more specific-but stupidly, that would not be politically correct!”

Despite the legal impediments to the six-country ban, the State Department data show that dramatically fewer people from those nations received non-immigrant visas.

Iranians, who in fiscal year 2016 made up more than half of the 53,440 visitors from the six countries, were especially hard hit. In fiscal year 2016, non-immigrant visas to Iranians averaged, on a monthly basis, 2,450. From March to August 2017, by contrast, they averaged 1,534 — a 37 percent decrease.

“Students are being impacted, family members, fiancees,” said Shayan Modarres, legal counsel for the National Iranian American Council. “This isn’t keeping America safe or making America more safe. This is just hurting America, and it’s self-inflicted damage.”

Among the other five majority-Muslim countries, Syria and Yemen saw the steepest percentage drops. Somalis, who during the whole of fiscal year 2016 obtained only 451 non-immigrant visas, saw such visas drop 42 percent from March to August, compared with the previous fiscal year’s monthly average.

The State Department releases limited information about its visa program. Until this year, the department released annual totals only for the number and types of immigrant and non-immigrant visas issued to people of different nationalities, making it impossible to gauge patterns within any given year.

As part of his effort to tighten scrutiny of foreign visitors, Trump instructed the department to release visa issuance totals for each month, making it possible to observe month-to-month trends. So far, totals for every month from March through August have been released.

But State rejected POLITICO’s request to provide monthly breakdowns from previous years. The department also rejected POLITICO’s Freedom of Information Act request for breakdowns of how many people from individual countries applied for visas and how many applications from those countries were denied.

For this analysis, POLITICO compared the average number of non-immigrant visas issued from March through August of this year with the monthly average from fiscal year 2016. Experts consulted for this story said the six-month sample offered an informative picture of visa issuances.

The information compiled by POLITICO shows notable drops in the number of visas issued to people from majority-Muslim countries overall, not just ones targeted by successive iterations of the travel ban. Arab states were among the hardest hit.

David Strashnoy, a Los Angeles-based immigration attorney and former consular officer who spent nearly a decade with the State Department, said he’s seen longer wait times for people from Muslim nations who have been flagged for administrative processing.

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” he said, citing the administration’s stated commitment to combating terrorism. “This is one of the ways that they’re doing it, by vetting individuals from Muslim-majority countries more thoroughly than other countries.”

Strashnoy said it’s unclear whether the tougher screening will help prevent terrorism. “I could see if you’re trying to find the needle in a haystack, this is a way to do it,” he said. “But the consequence is … this extreme slowdown in the visa-processing machine.”

In an average month in fiscal year 2016, 1,285 Iraqis obtained non-immigrant visas to the United States. That figure dropped by 26 percent from March to August of this year. Saudi Arabians obtained a monthly average of 9,133 such visas in fiscal year 2016. That dropped by 11 percent.

Some South Asian countries also have seen declines. Pakistan, for instance, received 26 percent fewer non-immigrant visas in 2017 compared with its monthly average in fiscal year 2016.

Some Muslim countries, however, received increases in non-immigrant visas. The Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and even hermetic Turkmenistan were among those that saw their numbers rise when compared with fiscal year 2016.