Welcome to complain: The United States may further expand the list of countries subject to the migration ban

Donald Trump is increasingly curtailing the "open door" policy towards other states. The United States will expand the list of countries from which it is impossible to enter the United States, experts told Izvestia. Venezuela, Nigeria, South Africa, Cambodia, as well as countries in Central Asia neighboring Afghanistan, such as Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, may be blacklisted. Those countries where terrorist groups and drug cartels are active are at risk, and the leadership does not intend to move in Washington's wake. At the same time, the migration policy of the White House does not suit a part of the liberal-minded American society. About which countries have already been included in Trump's list — in the Izvestia article.

Which countries can be blacklisted?

The day before, Donald Trump decided to expand the list of countries whose citizens are prohibited from entering the United States. This list includes African states (Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Sierra Leone, South Sudan), Middle Eastern (Syria and Palestine) and even southeastern countries (Laos).

These restrictions apply to both the entry of migrants and non-migrants, the president added. The decree provides for exceptions for lawful permanent residents, current visa holders, certain categories of visas and persons whose entry serves the national interests of the United States. The proclamation was published on the White House website.

For the first time, Trump decided to create such a list in June of this year. Then Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen got into it. Partial restrictions have affected even more countries.

"I have announced a permanent ban on migration from third world countries, including from such hellholes as Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia and many other countries," the Republican said then to the thunderous applause of his supporters.

Such a list was compiled and supplemented according to two principles, experts say. On the one hand, it includes countries where there really are serious security problems, including terrorist threats. On the other hand, the list is significantly politicized: it includes states that do not want to follow closely in Washington's wake.

A striking example is Laos, a country where there is a problem of drug trafficking, as well as illegal human trafficking. This allows Washington to regularly accuse the Laotian authorities of violating human rights, Alexander Korolev, Candidate of Political Sciences, Deputy Director of the Central Research Institute of Higher School of Economics, said in a conversation with Izvestia.

On the other hand, Laos, along with a number of other Southeast Asian countries, is under economic pressure from the United States: in April, Trump imposed duties of 48% against it. This is one of the highest rates, more than only Cambodia (49%). Over time, the White House may expand the blacklist of forbidden countries precisely at the expense of the Southeastern region, Korolev is sure.

— It will largely depend on how economically the countries behave in relation to the States. It's a politicized list. Cambodia, which Trump also accuses of violating human rights, I think will enter sooner or later," he is confident.

As for the new African states, there is a difficult security situation in Mali, Niger, and Burkino Faso, Vsevolod Sviridov, deputy director of the HSE Center for African Studies, tells Izvestia. In addition, these states have "morally and publicly renounced the pro-Western vector," says Maya Nikolskaya, head of the Africa in the Focus of Russian Interests program at MGIMO.

— I think Nigeria and South Africa can be on this list in the long term. The United States accuses them of violating human rights and threatening security by trying to negotiate concrete economic concessions from them. Perhaps the threat of visa denial for the elites of these countries may become one of the levers of pressure," explains Sviridov.

The decision to include Syria in the prohibition list is directly related to the recent terrorist attack in Palmyra, during which two American servicemen were killed, orientalist Leonid Tsukanov told Izvestia.

"Given that the attack was carried out by a recruited employee of the Syrian general security service, officially loyal to the government, Trump decided to play it safe and generally cut off the likelihood of potential radical agents entering the country," the expert believes.

The White House decided to include Syria in the list, even despite the obvious desire of the new government that came to power after Bashar al-Assad to establish contacts with Washington. So, in early November, the new interim president of Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa, arrived in the United States on a visit.

In the case of Palestine, this is a continuation of the course of non—recognition of its statehood, as well as the desire to exclude the creation of cells of Hamas and other Palestinian movements in the United States, Tsukanov says.

It is obvious that by creating such an instrument of pressure on states, Trump plans to expand it further. For example, the list may include countries where a crisis suddenly broke out and the local population began mass migration. These include Venezuela, if the United States decides to launch a large-scale operation against Caracas, or the Central Asian states, says Andrei Kortunov, an expert at the Valdai Club.

— If negative events suddenly occur in Afghanistan in the near future, they may also affect the Central Asian region. In other words, there will be threats to stability in neighboring countries bordering Afghanistan. These are Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and others," he argues.

The expert also recalled the internal crisis in Kazakhstan in early 2022, adding that if something like this happens in another country, it may immediately get on Trump's list.

How anti-immigration policy divides the United States

Not everyone in the United States is satisfied with the president's radical measures to combat illegal immigrants. According to a survey by YouGov and CBS, 52% of Americans support deportation, while 48% oppose it. And although the fight against illegal immigrants still causes less resistance from society than the rest of Trump's policy, the Democrats use this topic to criticize their opponent, which only exacerbates the existing split in the United States, American scholar Malek Dudakov tells Izvestia.

— The Democrats, of course, do not like this, and they will criticize Trump and call him a racist, but this is typical rhetoric for them. It is true that there is a split in American society and it will worsen in any case," the political scientist emphasizes.

At the same time, according to him, Trump has ensured that today there are much fewer migrants entering the United States, and the migration flow itself has fallen by 90% to its lowest levels in 60 years. At the end of November, the head of the White House announced plans to expel all migrants who came for asylum from the country, and at the end of October, he reduced the quota for accepting refugees from 125,000 to 7.5 thousand people in the next fiscal year from October 1. In the future, Trump may try to reduce the number of green cards, which are currently issued at 1 million per year, Dudakov believes.

The White House administration has also used more drastic measures, staging raids in a number of states. "We must step up efforts to detain and deport illegal migrants in America's largest cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, where millions of illegal immigrants live," Trump said in June this year.

Unsurprisingly, this eventually led to mass protests in a number of states. In June, because of the arrests of illegal immigrants, rallies began in Los Angeles, from where they spread to San Francisco. In response to the riots, Trump sent 2,000 National Guard officers to California, and for the first time in several decades, such a decision was made without prior request from the state authorities and without their consent.

At the same time, due to the reduction in the flow of migrants, the country's economy is also suffering some damage. Thus, the unemployment rate reached 4.6%, the highest level since 2021, and amounted to 6.1 million people, according to a report by the US Department of Labor. The shortage of personnel is most painful for those enterprises and firms in which migrants most often worked. Despite this, Trump, apparently, is not going to turn off his course.