The United States is granting fewer visitor visas to people from around the world — not just Muslims — as President Donald Trump ratchets up his anti-immigration rhetoric.

By one measure, the U.S. granted 13 percent fewer visitor visas over the past 12 months when compared with fiscal year 2016, according to State Department data analyzed by POLITICO — a downward trend that appears to have accelerated in the past six months.


It’s unclear whether the drop is due to fewer people applying or more rejections of applications. The cause is likely some combination of both. The State Department furnishes data on how many visitor visas are granted per country, but releases only limited information on how many applications are received or refused.

But the decline comes as Trump is once again underscoring his hard-line views on immigration. Over the weekend, the president used Twitter to blame Democrats and the Mexican government for a “dangerous” flow of migrants over the border. The Republican president blasted America’s “dumb immigration laws” and threatened to abandon legislative talks on how to deal with undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children.

Evidence plainly indicates that Trump’s desire to restrict foreigners’ access to the U.S. has become a reality. Critics say that, by imposing new procedural and security hurdles, Trump and his aides are building a figurative wall to keep people out of America, even those who just want to come for a brief visit. The critics fear the drop in visas could damage industries, ranging from tourism to higher education.

“There’s been a concerted effort … to really slow down the wheels of immigration,” said Sirine Shebaya, a senior staff attorney with Muslim Advocates, a legal advocacy organization. “There are particular immigrant populations that this administration does not see as fully belonging here in the United States, and it includes Muslims, it includes immigrants of color [and] it includes people from Africa.”

Visa issuances fell for non-Muslim majority countries From March 2017 to February 2018, many non-Muslim-majority countries saw a drop in U.S. visitor visas given to their citizens. Here are a select few:

People from Arab and Muslim-majority nations saw some of the steepest drops in visitor visas. That includes the handful targeted by the three successive iterations of Trump’s travel ban, whose legality will be debated in front of the Supreme Court this month.

But substantial drops were observed also in non-Muslim-majority countries.

People from Haiti, which Trump reportedly described as a “shithole” country whose immigrants he judged less desirable than those from Norway, have been granted fewer visitor visas throughout the past 12 months for which data were available compared with fiscal year 2016.

On a larger scale, China, a country whose trade practices Trump has blasted almost every month, got tens of thousands fewer visitor visas compared with fiscal year 2016.

Venezuela is another interesting case: Trump barred some officials from the country’s authoritarian regime, blaming them for the economic and humanitarian crisis there. But his administration simultaneously granted fewer visitor visas to ordinary Venezuelans who must live under that regime.

Visas drop sharply for travel ban countries For six countries targeted by various iterations of President Donald Trump’s travel ban, the drop in visas granted has been steep, although none has hit zero yet.

Katie Waldman, a spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department, said the United States has a “new baseline” for security and needs to be certain of the identities and threat risks of those who enter the country.

“This is a basic and fundamental obligation of any government,” she said in a written statement. “The measures adopted over the last year have had that single goal in mind and have been unquestionably successful.”

Asked for comment on the drops, a State Department official said: “Visa demand is cyclical and affected by various factors at the local and international level.”

To track the decline in foreign visitor visas, POLITICO analyzed monthly data across all nonimmigrant visa categories from March 2017 through February of this year. Those categories encompass visas for tourists, temporary workers and students, among others.

For visa statistics prior to March 2017, the State Department provides only annual totals — and these according to fiscal year, which begins not in March but in October. That makes direct month-to-month comparisons impossible. So POLITICO compared the monthly statistics available from the past year with the monthly average of visas granted in fiscal year 2016, the last full fiscal year under former President Barack Obama.

That fiscal year, the U.S. granted an average of 865,124 visas worldwide per month. But, from March 2017 to February 2018, the U.S. granted 754,479 visitor visas worldwide per month — a 13 percent drop.

Under Obama, the U.S. saw an overall rise in the number of visas issued to foreign visitors, from 5.8 million in fiscal year 2009 to a peak of 10.9 million in fiscal year 2015.

The worldwide decline in U.S. visitor visas under Trump was particularly glaring during the last six months for which data are available. In September, the number fell below 700,000, where it has remained each succeeding month except January. When compared with fiscal year 2016, the gap is too large to be explained solely by restrictions on Muslim-majority countries.

The State Department also has released the total number of visitor visas issued worldwide for fiscal 2017, most of which fell under Trump. That total, 9.7 million, was well below the fiscal year 2016 total, 10.4 million, and offers further evidence that Trump’s efforts to curtail access to the United States are working.


During his campaign for the presidency, Trump took a hard line against immigration, calling for a ban on Muslims entering the United States and the construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, to be paid for by Mexico. He cast the proposals as being about national security, saying they were needed to stop criminals and terrorists.

Trump has had limited success fulfilling those pledges. Construction of the wall has been delayed by congressional resistance to funding it (and Mexico won’t pay, either). The travel ban, which critics call a “Muslim ban,” has gone through three iterations and took full effect only in December, after a series of court challenges.

But, according to lawyers and other analysts who study the subject, the Trump administration has used other means to reduce the number of people entering the United States.

U.S. visitor visas for the countries named in the three travel ban policies have plummeted since Trump took office, despite intermittent court injunctions. The most recent version of the policy imposes a range of restrictions against travelers from six Muslim-majority countries — Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. Visitors from North Korea also are barred, as are some government officials from Venezuela.

Travel Ban 3.0 directs immigration officials to consider waivers for affected visitors on a case-by-case basis, a possible reprieve available to people who don’t pose a threat, whose admission would be in the national interest, and who face hardship if they can’t come to the United States. But immigration lawyers contacted by POLITICO said successful waiver requests have been infrequent since the Supreme Court allowed the ban to take effect in December.

“I’ve got a few that are pending, but none that have actually been approved,” said Sarah Pitney, an associate attorney with the D.C.-based law firm Benach Collopy. “Generally, we will tell people, if it’s not life or death, you may not want to waste your money or your time.”

A State Department official said at least 375 waivers have been approved under the third travel ban.

The Trump administration has increased the amount of information it collects from prospective visitors. The State Department announced in August that it would make permanent a supplemental visa questionnaire required for some visa applicants that requests biographical information over the previous 15 years and social media handles over the past five. Then, in September, the Homeland Security Department said it would collect social media data even from permanent residents and naturalized citizens returning from abroad, a move that alarmed privacy advocates.

Most recently, the State Department announced on March 30 that it would require nearly all visa applicants to supply social media handles used over the past five years. In addition, the revised visa application — which the department expects will affect 15 million foreign travelers annually — inquires about past immigration offenses and whether any family members have been involved in terrorist activities.

More screening was imposed after visas were granted. In August, the Trump administration moved to require people with employment-based visas to submit to an in-person interview as part of the green-card application process. Family members of refugees and people who applied for asylum were also required to undergo an in-person interview when they applied for the provisional status that precedes lawful permanent residency.

“They very much want to scale back legal immigration, but instead of doing it in any kind of well-defined and clearly stated way, they’re just clogging the system up so much that they can’t process legal immigration cases,” Pitney told POLITICO.

A sense of panic has swept through colleges and universities, which depend financially on foreign students because they typically pay tuition sticker price. The number of newly enrolled international students fell an average of 7 percent in the fall of 2017, according to a survey of nearly 500 colleges and universities by the Institute of International Education.

Tourism spending in the United States has also fallen under Trump, according to Commerce Department data analyzed by the U.S. Travel Association. Travelers spent 3.3 percent less from January 2017 to the end of November 2017 compared with the same period a year earlier, which the travel association equated to a loss of $4.6 billion and 40,000 jobs.

POLITICO’s analysis of State Department data indicates that for the world’s nearly 50 Muslim-majority countries, 19 percent fewer visitor visas were issued over the past 12 months compared with fiscal year 2016. Even some long-standing U.S. allies, such as Saudi Arabia, saw visitor visas drop.

Meanwhile, the handful of Muslim-majority countries targeted by the three versions of Trump’s travel ban saw their visa numbers crash hard. In February, only 743 people total from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen received U.S. visitor visas; in fiscal year 2016, the monthly average was 4,454.

The president’s first travel ban in January 2017 covered seven Muslim-majority nations. Iraq was dropped from the list when Trump, under legal and political pressure, revised the policy in March 2017. Even so, Iraq’s nonimmigrant visas fell 35 percent in the past year.

The Supreme Court allowed Travel Ban 2.0 to take partial effect in June 2017, but when its prohibition against travel from six Muslim-majority nations expired in September, the administration replaced it with a new set of restrictions. This third version of the ban dropped Sudan from the list, but added Chad as well as North Korea and Venezuela.

A Honolulu-based judge blocked Travel Ban 3.0 in October, but the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals allowed it to go forward partially a month later. In December, the Supreme Court permitted Travel Ban 3.0 to take effect in its entirety pending the outcome of litigation. Oral arguments in the case are scheduled for later this month, and a decision could arrive by the end of the court’s term in June.

If the drop in visas was driven by the U.S. government rejecting more applications, it isn’t certain the State Department was the agency responsible. Its consular officers play the largest role in deciding who is granted visas, but intelligence and law enforcement agencies, including those under the Department of Homeland Security, have a say, too.

It’s also possible that the main factor is falling interest in visiting the U.S. as anti-immigration rhetoric heats up.

“If this continues,” said Shebaya of Muslim Advocates, “it could really change the nature of this country as a dynamic place that is really welcoming and that draws talent and welcomes family reunification.”

Brent D. Griffiths contributed to this report.