The Donald Trump administration is set to impose a wide travel ban on citizens of 43 countries in a new ban as part of an immigration crackdown launched by the US President at the start of his second term in January.
The New York Times reported that an internal memo divides the countries into three categories.
The first group (named ‘red list’) comprises 11 countries: Afghanistan, Bhutan, Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen. Their citizens are proposed to be ‘flatly barred’ from entry into the United States.
The second group (‘orange list’) consists of 10 nations, to which travel would be restricted but not cut off. For them, rich business travelers may be allowed entry into the US, but not on tourist or immigrant visas. They are Belarus, Eritrea, Haiti, Laos, Myanmar, Pakistan, Russia, Sierra Leone, South Sudan and Turkmenistan.
The third category (yellow list), the biggest of the three at 22 countries, would be given 60 days to improve perceived weaknesses, with the threat of being transferred to one of the other lists if they didn’t shape up.
It includes Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Chad, Republic of Congo, Congo, Dominica, Equatorial Guinea, Gambia, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, São Tomé and Príncipe, Vanuatu and Zimbabwe.
One of the American officials, speaking anonymously, cautioned that there were likely to be variations on the list and that it had yet to be sanctioned by the Trump administration, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
