US granting few visas to foreigners under Trump administration

WASHIGNTON, April 3 (APP):The number of foreigners travelling to the United States has dropped significantly, with some of the Arab and Muslim-majority countries witnessing steepest drops in grant of visitor visas, a news report said on Tuesday.
The new estimates are based on State Department data that was analyzed by the online news magazine POLITICO. The drop in numbers of foreigners was likely the combination of fewer people applying for US visas as well as the percentage of rejection of cases by US immigration, the report said.
President Trump has adopted strong policies against immigrants, with actions against illegal immigrants high on his agenda. He has also proposed limiting even the legal immigration. The drop in grant of few visitor visas to people was widespread and not just the Muslim countries, the report said.
However, according to the report, some of the sharp decline in visitor visas was witnessed in Arab and Muslim-majority countries, especially those which were named in the three travel ban announced by President Trump.
The executive ban which is now partially in place faced many legal hurdles before it was implemented. The policy impose a range of restrictions against people from six Muslim-majority countries included in the ban order that included Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. The other two countries are North Korea and Venezuela.
“From March 2017 to February 2018, the number of visas granted to visitors from Muslim-majority countries dropped in comparison to fiscal year 2016. Of the 48 nationalities analyzed, 37 experienced a decline while only 11 were up from the 2016 monthly average” the report said.
The Supreme Court is slated to debate the travel ban this month, the report said.
“By one measure, the U.S. granted 13 percent fewer visitor visas over the past 12 months when compared with fiscal year 2016,” the report said, adding that the trend appears to have accelerated in the past six months.
Critics have ascribed new procedural and security hurdles by the administration for the drop in granting foreign visas, which are affecting even those who wanted to come to the country for a brief visit. They fear the drop in visas could damage industries, ranging from tourism to higher education.
The restrictions are also hitting many non-Muslim-majority countries which saw a drop in US visitor visas given to their citizens, the report said.
“Under Obama, the U.S. saw an overall rise in the number of visas issued to foreign visitors, from 5.8 million in fiscal year 2009 to a peak of 10.9 million in fiscal year 2015,” the report said.
“The State Department also has released the total number of visitor visas issued worldwide for fiscal 2017, most of which fell under Trump. That total, 9.7 million, was well below the fiscal year 2016 total, 10.4 million,” the report said.