What You Need To Know About the Partial Travel Ban That Goes Into Effect Tonight

On Wednesday night, The New York Times reports, the State Department released the details of its new, amended travel ban based on the one initially proposed by President Donald Trump during his first week in office.

The new ban imposes more specific rules about who is and isn’t allowed entry to the United States (please reread that statement and think about how the people who “discovered” America gained access to it) while, in true bureaucratic fashion, also remaining incredibly vague. According to the new ban, those allowed into the U.S. include “students and workers without current visas [and] green card holders, dual nationals and diplomats,” according to The New York Times.

For tourists, business travelers, immigrants and refugees from most other countries, visas will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Individuals from the six countries that have been most in the news in relation to this ban—Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen—are still prohibited from coming to America “without bona fide relationships in the United States.”

What does that mean, you ask? Apparently, a bona fide relationship extends to “‘a parent (including parent-in-law), spouse, child, adult son or daughter, son-in-law, daughter-in law, sibling, whether whole or half [and] step relationships.”

As for “‘grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, brothers-in-laws and sisters-in-law, fiancés and any other ‘extended’ family members,’” it’s a no go.

This seemingly arbitrary designation of who "deserves" or "has a right to" live and exist in the U.S. is sure to create more hardship for individuals attempting to live here, as well as for the governmental agencies themselves who are responsible for monitoring and facilitating those cases.