16 March 2025 - 9:50pm
Donald Trump outraged critics early in his first presidential term by implementing what they called a “Muslim ban”. Really, it was nothing of the sort: the ban restricted travel from seven nations with active insurgencies or revolutionary anti-American governments. All were Muslim-majority countries — Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, and Sudan — but that was hardly the most notable thing they had in common.
Trump now appears set to expand the policy in his new administration. The New York Times has reported that there are 43 countries which might be subjected to travel restrictions, with 11 up for outright travel bans. These include such distinctly non-Muslim countries as North Korea, Cuba, and Bhutan.
Bigotry wasn’t the principle behind the first-term travel bans, and isn’t the motive for the new restrictions, either. There are obvious national-security concerns about almost all of the countries cited. The new list consists of Afghanistan, Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela, as well as second-time designees Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, with only Bhutan standing out as a puzzling inclusion. There are reasonable arguments against barring entry to America from all visitors from these states — for one thing, the bans apply indiscriminately to opponents of the anti-American elements in these countries, as well as to children and others who pose no conceivable threat. But most Americans would need little convincing that 10 of the 11 countries on the new ban list are likely sources of trouble.
The same applies to the 10 countries on the “orange” list for increased restrictions but not outright travel bans: Russia, Belarus, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Myanmar, Laos, South Sudan, Eritrea, Sierra Leone, and Haiti. A further 22 countries, however, are on a “yellow” list and would get 60 days to resolve the administration’s concerns about them or they, too, would be placed on the orange or red lists. This probationary litany consists of developing countries in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. Some states included, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, are hotspots of rebellion or insurgency. But the island nations of the Caribbean and Pacific are not.
Along with the questionable security value of complete bans where even some of the red-list states are concerned, the scope of the yellow list suggests the Trump administration has in mind something more than the risk of terrorists getting into the country on travel visas. Two ideological motives are also at play. One is simply a Right-wing tendency to inflate threats, particularly where such inveterate foes as Iran and Cuba are involved. If Iran is a hostile regime, as indeed it is, all Iranians must be threatening — or so the logic goes.
The other ideological motive is something new. Freedom to travel is a pillar of the liberal international order, with nations expected to treat movement as a right to be restricted only for a very good reason. For those in the Trump administration who want to dismantle liberalism as a system, curtailing freedom of travel from any country is a step toward ending the overall presumption in favour of free movement — a presumption that undergirds liberal arguments for immigration, among other things. Whether many immigrants come from the countries earmarked for bans or not, the principle to be established is that restriction is a default.
Hostile countries provide an easy precedent but, to get the point across, these bans can’t be seen as mere exceptions to a norm of free movement. Hence the value of including some apparently innocuous countries on the red and yellow lists. If travel from them can be curbed, why not travel from, say, Europe — or Canada? In practice, the volume of travel between the rest of the developed world and America is too great and too economically important to be subjected to arbitrary restrictions. But the principle is what counts for ideological purposes.
The public might not be quick to rally to the liberal presumption in favour of free movement, given all the abuses it has led to — from immigration crises to the 9/11 attacks, which were perpetrated by men who overstayed their visas and might never have been let into the country in the first place under less liberal presumptions. But officials who want to uproot liberalism as a governing philosophy should take heed: the public may not feel the principled outrage liberals do over limitations on free movement.
Still, if other nations adopt illiberal visa policies toward Americans and an administration like Trump’s is unable to keep the world open to tourists and businessmen, US citizens’ anger over losing their own freedom to travel will be visited on Republicans. Americans may not subscribe to free movement as a principle, but they expect to be able to go wherever they like.
