United States President Donald Trump is contemplating a travel ban targeting nearly half of African nations.
A draft list of recommendations developed by diplomatic and security officials suggested a “red list” of 11 countries whose citizens would be flatly barred from entering the United States, including Afghanistan, Bhutan, Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen.
The majority of the countries on the shortlist of 43 countries are African, totalling 22.
The officials, who spoke anonymously to discuss the sensitive internal deliberations, cautioned that the State Department had developed the list several weeks ago and that changes were likely by the time it reached the White House.
The New York Times shared a document containing an internal Trump proposal that listed nations whose citizens could face restrictions on entering the US.
The draft proposal also included an “orange list” of 10 countries in which travel would be restricted but not banned. In those cases, affluent business travellers might be allowed to enter, but not people travelling on immigrant or tourist visas.
Citizens on that list, which included Belarus, Eritrea, Haiti, Laos, Myanmar, Pakistan, Russia, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, and Turkmenistan, would also be subjected to mandatory in-person interviews to receive a visa.
In his first-term travel bans, Trump sanctioned some countries on the draft red and orange lists, but many are new. Some share characteristics with the earlier lists; they are generally Muslim-majority or otherwise non-white, poor and have governments that were considered weak or corrupt.
The proposal also included a draft “yellow list” of 22 countries that would be given 60 days to clear up perceived deficiencies, with the threat of being moved onto one of the other lists if they did not comply.
That list, the officials said, included Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Chad, the Republic of Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Dominica, Equatorial Guinea, Gambia, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, São Tomé and Príncipe, Vanuatu, and Zimbabwe.
