Pakistan feels the heat: President Donald Trump's visa ban

Pakistan is among a handful of Muslim countries that are feeling the pinch of United States (US) President Donald Trump's visa ban about six months in, with 26 per cent fewer non-immigrant visas issued to Pakistanis in 2017 as compared to previous year's average, according to a Politico (an American political journalism company) analysis.

Trump passed an executive order at the beginning of the year which initially barred travelers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and Sudan. In successive iterations of the ban, Iraq and Sudan were dropped from the list and Chad, North Korea and Venezuela were added to it.

Data collected and analysed by Politico showed a "notable drop" in the number of visas issued to people from Muslim-majority countries overall, in addition to those targeted by Trump's travel ban, with Arab states among the hardest hit.

Although Pakistan is not on the list of countries that were barred, it ─ along with a few other South Asian countries ─ has also seen a decline in the number of visas issued to travellers.

The issuance of visas to the seven countries initially named in the ban dropped 44pc this year compared to monthly average data from March to August in fiscal year 2016, Politico reported, with Syria and Yemen seeing the steepest declines.

Visitor visas to Arab nations fell 16pc, while the number of visas issued to people from 50 Muslim-majority countries in general dropped 8pc.

Iran witnessed a 37pc decline in the number of visas issued over the six-month period in 2017 compared to March-Aug 2016, whereas Somalia saw a 42pc drop in visas in the same time period, the report said.

Some Muslim countries, however, including the Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, were among those that witnessed an increase in non-immigrant visas, the data showed.

Interestingly, the number of total visas issued remained virtually unchanged, according to Politico.

Ban: what is meant for Pakistan?

As first reported by Pakistan’s daily Newspaper The News, the drop was an estimated 40% for Pakistan in the months of March and April this year compared to the unweighted annualised average for 2016,  not taking into account traditional seasonal surges such as summer months, other breaks and holidays. (Numbers were up by an estimated 28% for India, by the same calculation.)

It was also not clear if the drop was because of visa refusal or fewer applicants or both — travel and immigration experts have noted a general decline in travel to the United States in recent months. The rate of refusal of B visas — the most popular short-stay US visa for tourism and business — for Pakistan was 46.43% in 2016; it was 26.02% for India.

Pakistan is not in that list, but it seems to have suffered a decline according to a calculation of the state department data by Pakistan’s The News, which used the same formula to first report the 40% drop in non-immigrant visas to Pakistanis — to 3,925 in April and 3,973 March from the unweighted annualised average of 6,553 in 2016 (total 78,637).