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Trump’s Travel Ban Will Still Allow Valid Visa Holders To Enter The US From Countries Concerned

With President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban going into effect Thursday 8 p.m. EDT, it was announced the border officials had been ordered to still respect valid visas held by foreign nationals from the six Muslim-dominated countries included in the executive order.

This was vastly different from when Donald Trump’s first travel ban had taken effect in January when visitors with valid visas were detained and expelled by immigration officials, The Guardian reported.

“Persons who have visas and show up at the ports of entry on a flight, on a ship, or another method will be allowed to enter the United States unless there’s another reason for not being allowed in,” a senior administration official told reporters. “So someone who has a visa will be allowed to be admitted. If for some reason there is another basis, they will not,” the official added.

The travel ban will apply to people from six countries including Libya, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, and Sudan, who will be banned for 90 days if they fail to show a close relationship with someone living in the U.S. In the case of a refugee from any country, the ban would be applicable for 120 days.

The Supreme Court’s ruling, allowing the ban, will require foreign nationals to pass a test proving a “credible claim of bona fide relationship” with an entity or a person living in the U.S. It defined an entity as a school or a job but excluded a hotel reservation from being considered a bona fide relationship, CNN reported.

One exception, however, would see an academic lecturer exempt from the travel ban if they had been invited to the U.S.

To be eligible to enter the U.S., a relationship would have to be shown with a parent, spouse, fiancée, child, adult son or daughter, son-in-law, daughter-in-law or sibling already living in the country. Family members other than these relationships, however, would not be considered as “close family” under the executive order. That means any “extended” family ties such as grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, and many others will not be enough for someone to enter the country.

Even being the fiancée of someone living in the U.S. would not have been enough under the initial decision made by the Trump administration. That position, however, was reportedly reversed late Thursday, according to Reuters.

International Rescue Committee President, David Miliband said the ban on the extended family was an “alarming” and “inhumane” situation. “The banning of grandmothers – of unaccompanied children – from America’s shores is a disgrace,” he said adding, “Doubly so when America is a breaking a promise we have made to safeguard them.”

The Monday ruling by the Supreme Court on the March 6 executive order narrowed the scope of lower court rulings. The state of Hawaii, however, asked a Honolulu federal judge Thursday evening to decide if the court’s decision was interpreted very narrowly by the administration.

In the past, federal courts had also said the security concerns cited by the Trump administration for this travel ban were unfounded.