Over the last two months, more than a dozen separate African nations were either banned from traveling to the United States or targeted with visa restrictions enacted by the Trump administration.
Somalia, Sudan, Eritrea, Chad, the Republic of Congo, and Equatorial Guinea are included in the full travel ban that President Donald Trump signed at the start of June, while citizens of Burundi, Sierra Leone, and Togo have been hit with restrictions on certain types of student and business visas.
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At the start of August, the U.S. State Department singled out Malawi and Zambia as countries whose citizens will need to pay a bond of $15,000 to get certain types of visas.
The U.S. Embassy in Zimbabwe also paused all visa applications into the U.S. “while we address concerns with the government of Zimbabwe.”
Visa applicants must “list all social media usernames or handles of every platform”
On Aug. 18, the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria put out its own post saying that visa applicants from the West African nation “are required to list all social media usernames or handles of every platform they have used from the last five years on the DS-160 visa application form.”
Nigerians looking to travel to the U.S. need to apply for either a B1 visa for business or a B2 visa for tourism. At the start of June, the State Department headed by Marco Rubio announced that it was increasing scrutiny of the visa application process by requiring travelers to list and make public all their social media accounts.
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While guidance on which visas this would apply for (the initial announcement focused on those coming in to the U.S. as students) and how it would be enforced is expected to come later, any accounts that need to be included are vetted for “hostile attitudes toward our citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles.”
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U.S. Embassy: “Omitting social media information could lead to visa denial”
“Applicants certify that the information in their visa application is true and correct before they sign and submit,” the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria wrote further. “Omitting social media information could lead to visa denial and ineligibility for future visas.”
The Nigerian government has not yet responded to the post but has, in the past, urged the Trump administration to reconsider a separate move limiting the validity of temporary-stay visas to just three months for Nigerians, Ethiopians, and Cameroonians.
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In response to the travel ban that President Trump put in place for its citizens, Chadian President Mahamat Idriss Deby said that their government would also pause any visas for U.S. citizens that had not yet been processed at the start of June.
“Chad has neither planes to offer nor billions of dollars to give, but Chad has its dignity and pride,” Deby said in reference to the gift of a Boeing 747-8 luxury jet that President Trump accepted as a gift from the Qatari royal family to use as Air Force One.
Countries such as Congo and Sierra Leone called their targeting a misunderstanding and expressed hopes of joint cooperation and friendly relations.
“Congo is not a terrorist country, is not home to any terrorist, is not known to have a terrorist vocation,” Congo-Brazzaville government spokesperson Thierry Moungalla said to reporters.
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