Green Cards for Travel Ban Foreign Nationals Cut by Less Than Five Percent

The allotment of green cards to foreign nationals arriving from countries listed on President Trump’s travel ban has continued almost unchanged, dropping by less than five percent, since 2017.

In 2017, Trump signed an executive order that put travel restrictions on nationals and residents of Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen.

An extensive review of green card data for Fiscal Years 2017 and 2018, the two years from which data is available post-implementation of the travel ban, reveals the level of green cards given to nationals and residents of the seven original travel ban countries has been reduced only by about 7,200 admissions.

For example, nearly 138,000 green cards were given to native-born Iranians, Libyans, North Koreans, Somalians, Syrians, Venezuelans, and Yemenis and nationals who last lived in those seven countries before securing lawful permanent residence in the U.S.

Compare that to the two last fiscal years of former President Obama’s administration, 2015 and 2016, when more than 145,000 green cards were given to nationals and residents of the seven travel ban countries — indicating a 4.98 percent decrease in green cards given to travel ban foreign nationals before and after Trump’s travel ban was implemented.

The overwhelming majority of the nearly 138,000 travel ban nationals who have been given green cards in the first two years of the Trump administration arrived as chain migrants, refugees, asylees, or on employment-based green cards. Chain migration is the process by which newly naturalized U.S. citizens can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the U.S.

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