“The inclusion of those countries, Venezuela and North Korea, was about the fact that those governments are simply not compliant with our basic security requirements.”

But Becca Heller, director of the International Refugee Assistance Project, said that of the three countries added, “Chad is majority Muslim, travel from North Korea is already basically frozen and the restrictions on Venezuela only affect government officials on certain visas. This must not be normalized.”

The restriction includes suspension of all immigrant visas for nationals of Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia and all non-immigrant visas for nationals of Chad, Libya, North Korea, Syria, and Yemen. Only Sudan will not be any longer subject to travel restrictions. Speaking on background, government officials said the addition of North Korea and Venezuela demonstrated that the measure was set on the basis of security and was not a "Muslim ban," as detractors have argued. North Korea, locked in a dangerous face-off with Washington over its nuclear weapons program, was added, the order said, because Pyongyang “does not cooperate with the United States government in any respect”. Rather than a total ban on entry to the United States, the proposed restrictions would differ by nation, based on cooperation with American security mandates, the threat the United States believes each country presents and other variables, officials said.
The White House announces that citizens of North Korea, Venezuela, and Chad will be restricted from travelling to the United States, along with citizens of the six nations previously listed in Executive Order 13780 with the exception of Sudan.