What did the nations of Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Libya, Somalia, the Republic of Congo and Sudan have in common, until they were all put on President Trump’s travel ban list Wednesday night? They are all African countries.
But beyond that, not much links them.
They are scattered across the continent, spanning desert and tropical forest. Some are democracies (in name at least) and some are under military rule, some have a heavy terrorist presence and others do not.
Announcing the travel ban on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said that his administration considered such factors as whether a country “has a significant terrorist presence within its territory, its visa-overstay rate, and its cooperation with accepting back its removable nationals.”
Chad, Somalia and Sudan have struggled with persistent terrorist threats. But so have Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso — three African countries run by military juntas that took power in coups — and none of them are on the list.
Visitors from Chad, Equatorial Guinea and the Republic of Congo overstay U.S. visas at very high rates — 49, 33 and 30 percent in 2023, according to Homeland Security Department data. But far more Nigerians and Ghanaians overstay their visas in absolute terms. The number of Ghanaian and Nigerian visa holders overstaying is in the thousands, while for the banned countries it is in the hundreds.
Not all of the countries who overstay the most are on the list, either — Djibouti’s rate is 23 percent and Liberia’s 19 percent, according to the data, but neither is banned. Somalia, whose overstay rate is 11 percent, is on the list.
Bright Simons, a policy analyst at IMANI Ghana, a think tank based in Accra, said that the Trump administration appeared to be “punishing whole countries for the sins of a minority.”
There was very little a government could do to prevent its citizens from overstaying their visas, Mr. Simons added, suggesting that a more effective approach might be to emulate other countries that ask foreign visitors to post bonds when they apply for visas, to reduce the incentive to overstay.
This would “ensure that personal responsibility is not jettisoned in favor of national stigma,” he said.
Ruth Maclean is the West Africa bureau chief for The Times, covering 25 countries including Nigeria, Congo, the countries in the Sahel region as well as Central Africa.
Saikou Jammeh is a reporter and researcher for The Times based in Dakar, Senegal.
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