Washington : The Trump administration is making it tougher for millions of visitors to enter the US by demanding new security checks before giving visas to tourists, business travellers and relatives of American residents.
Diplomatic cables sent last week from Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson to all American embassies instructed consular officials to broadly increase scrutiny. It was the first evidence of the “extreme vetting” Trump promised during the presidential campaign, the New York Times reported on Thursday.
The new rules do not apply to citizens of 38 countries, including most of Europe and longstanding allies like Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea, who can be speedily admitted into the US under the visa waiver programme.
That programme does not cover citizens from any country in the Middle East or Africa.
Even stricter security checks for people from six predominantly Muslim nations — Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen – remain on hold because federal courts have temporarily blocked Trump’s travel ban.
Embassy officials must now scrutinise a broader pool of visa applicants to determine if they pose security risks to the US, according to four cables sent between March 10 and March 17, said the report.
Trump has spoken regularly of his concern about the threat of “radical Islamic terrorism” from immigrants. But it is unclear who, exactly, will be targeted for the extra scrutiny since Tillerson’s cables leave that decision up to security officers at each embassy. -IANS
