The Trump Administration has suspended all immigration applications from 19 countries considered high risk, days after a shooting in Washington that involved an Afghan citizen, the United States Department of Homeland Security announced.
The suspension applies to people from the 12 countries whose citizens no longer had the right to enter the United States since June and, now, also to citizens from seven other countries affected by restrictions on visa issuance, according to a memo from the immigration services consulted by the news agency France-Presse (AFP).
Applications for green cards from citizens of the countries in question, as well as applications for naturalization, are suspended.
The list includes some of the poorest and most unstable countries in the world.
Last June, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, ordered a ban on entry into the country for citizens of the United States. Afghanistan, Myanmar (formerly Burma), Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
The other seven countries now affected are the Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.
The Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, indicated on Monday night, on the social network X, that she recommended Trump “a total ban on entry of the citizens of every damned country that has flooded the nation with murderers, leeches and welfare addicts“. “We don’t want them, not a single one of them,” Noem wrote.
On Tuesday, the North American President made violent statements against Somalia, stating that migrants from the African country are not welcome in the United States.
“I don’t want them in our country”, disse Donald Trump.
Since the attack in Washington on November 26, attributed to an Afghan citizen, which claimed the life of a National Guard soldier and seriously injured another soldier, the Trump Administration has frozen all decisions on granting asylum in the United States.