The United States have finally named Nigeria and six other countries as being under Visa restrictions for any application that may result in a permanent stay of the applicant. This is finally putting paid to speculations that US may include Nigeria in her list of sanctioned countries.
President Trump had hinted on this during the Davos Economic summit, but had come short of naming the countries involved. This Magazine had reported that it is highly likely to include Nigeria on the list.
Beside Nigeria, Sudan, Eritrea, Tanzania, Kyrgyzstan and Myanmar are also under ban. This means that these countries will no longer be granted visas that can lead to permanent residency. It does not, however, affect tourist visas, those doing business or people seeking medical treatment.
BBC quoted Acting U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf as saying that the new measure was the result of “failures by the affected countries to meet American security and information-sharing standards”.
“These countries, for the most part, want to be helpful but for a variety of different reasons simply failed to meet those minimum requirements that we laid out,” he was quoted as saying. He listed strengthening of their security requirements as a condition to lifting the visa ban.
According to the BBC, Nigeria is ahead of the six countries on immigration to the U.S, with over 8,000 immigration visas in 2018 alone. That year, Sudan received about 2,000, Tanzania got 290 while Eritrea had 31.
December last year saw about 650,760 non-immigrant visas granted worldwide.
The US government will also stop issuing “diversity visas” to nationals of Sudan and Tanzania.
Those are visas available by lottery for applicants from countries with low rates of immigration to the US. President Donald Trump had criticized the Diversity visas-generally called visa lottery, regarding it as wasteful.
The presidential visa restrictions will take effect February 21, 2020.
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