Immigration Impact reports that President Trump earlier this week invoked a rarely-used law to impose visa restrictions on Cambodia, Eritrea, Guinea, and Sierra Leone, declaring each country “recalcitrant” for refusing to accept the return of immigrants that the United States has ordered deported.
Three countries—Cambodia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone—were hit with relatively minor sanctions, limited to a denial of visitor visas for certain government officials and their families. However, Eritrea was sanctioned much more sternly, with the U.S. government cutting off visitor visas for all Eritreans.
Cambodia’s alleged non-compliance largely stems from U.S. efforts to deport former refugees, many of whom fled Cambodia as children during the Khmer Rouge regime. Cambodia’s objection to taking back these individuals is twofold.
In contrast, Eritreans will face far broader restrictions, as all nationals applying for a visa from within Eritrea now are barred indefinitely from receiving “B” visas for business or tourist travel to the United States. For decades, Eritrea has generally refused to accept deportees from the United States. This is because Eritrea practices a policy of only permitting “voluntary repatriations” of deportees, accepting only those who agree to be deported.
Guinea, on the other hand, does accept a small number of deportees from the United States each year. However, over the past decade, America has expressed repeated frustration over Guinea’s refusal to issue travel documents for the majority of Guinean nationals that the United States seeks to deport.
Sierra Leone, like Guinea, accepts some, but not all, deportees from the United States. It is unclear exactly why Sierra Leone was hit with sanctions, as reporting from May indicated that Sierra Leone had either been taken off the list of recalcitrant countries or been declared only “at risk” of non-compliance.
KJ