Marco Rubio’s State Department has just made an interesting announcement on Twitter:
The pause impacts dozens of countries – including Somalia, Haiti, Iran, and Eritrea – whose immigrants often become public charges on the United States upon arrival. We are working to ensure the generosity of the American people will no longer be abused.
This is not the same as the anti-terrorist “travel ban” that Trump restored recently—those countries aren’t even being issued visitor’s visa.
In December, after Trump banned travel and immigration from Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela after the attack on the National Guard in DC, Alex C. wrote here that
This is fantastic, but it is far from enough.
There are more than 150 countries that most Americans would consider as Third-World, including every country in South America, Africa, the Middle East, and most of Asia. Yet, none of these countries is under a travel ban.
Well, a lot of them are now. From Time.com:
The department has not publicly identified all 75 of the countries, but a memo first obtained by Fox News included the full list.
In addition to the four named by the State Department in its announcement, the countries reportedly include Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Bhutan, Bosnia, Brazil, Burma, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Colombia, Cote d’Ivoire, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dominica, Egypt, Ethiopia, Fiji, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Nepal, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Republic of the Congo, Russia, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, and Yemen.
I looked at the Fox News story and in addition to the list of names, it mentions this:
In November 2025, a State Department cable sent to posts around the globe instructed consular officers to enforce sweeping new screening rules under the so-called “public charge” provision of immigration law.
The guidance instructs consular officers to deny visas to applicants deemed likely to rely on public benefits, weighing a wide range of factors including health, age, English proficiency, finances and even potential need for long-term medical care.
On Twitter, we at White Papers Institute provided a helpful visualization:
The point of this travel ban is that the US does not need to import poverty. Importing poverty means bringing in people who are never going to pay more in taxes than they consume in government services. America already has poor people who are like that, it doesn’t need more.
In September 2012, Mitt Romney was attacked for saying, at a speech he didn’t mean to be public, that
“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president [I.E. Obama] no matter what,” said Mitt, “the 47 percent who … are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. … These are people who pay no income tax ….”[Transcript]
Of course, the reason he was attacked was that the people who consume more than they produce are disproportionately members of minority groups—and that includes Third World immigrants. And while some people overseas are poor for political reasons—socialism, et cetera, or other kinds of oppression—mostly they’re poor because of the cultures they have produced.
Russian Jewish and Italian immigrants prospered in America in the 19th and early 20th century more than they did at home, and while no one expects Mexicans or Congolese to suddenly dominate the medical profession or win Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, it’s been frequently suggested that they might follow the Italian-American model—which they won’t as evidenced by the terrible integration figures:
The American state of New Mexico, for example, has similar demographics to what New Mexicans jokingly call “Regular Mexico.”
Hispanics and Latinos constitute nearly half of all residents (49.3%), giving New Mexico the highest proportion of Hispanic ancestry among the fifty states. This broad classification includes descendants of Spanish colonists who settled between the 16th and 18th centuries as well as recent immigrants from Latin America (particularly Mexico and Central America).
As a result, it has the third lowest per capita income in the country after West Virginia and Mississippi. The percentage of New Mexicans below the poverty level has hovered around 18 percent in 21st century.
New Mexico was settled by the Spaniards in 1598 and has been an American possession since 1848 and state since 1912, when, as per Wikipedia:
On January 6, 1912, after years of debate on whether the population of New Mexico was fully assimilated into American culture, or too immersed in corruption, President William Howard Taft twisted arms in Congress and it approved admission of New Mexico as the 47th state of the Union.
Taft may have jumped the gun on the assimilation versus (typically Mexican) corruption thing: see this headline from the Santa Fe New Mexican from 2025: New Mexico’s stagnation has root cause: Corruption, by Milan Simonich, April 20, 2025 and this post from the Grant County (NM) Beat
If assimilation from Third World habits of poverty was going to happen it would have happened in New Mexico by now, but it didn’t.
This also applies to America’s native born African-American population—while there are some successful African Americans and more recent African immigrants, most African-Americans still aren’t really assimilated. They maintain a unique culture and set of priorities that isn’t shared with mainstream Heritage Americans which inevitably results in different outcomes.”
So if the New Mexicans haven’t been able to assimilate to the culture of the American majority enough to be really productive in America, why should American immigration policy encourage the immigration of people from (deep breath) Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Bhutan, Bosnia, Brazil, Burma, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Colombia, Cote d’Ivoire, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dominica, Egypt, Ethiopia, Fiji, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Nepal, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Republic of the Congo, Russia, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, and Yemen… Somalia, Haiti, Iran, and Eritrea and all?
James Fulford has been writing about the national question for over 20 years, mostly for VDARE.com, more recently for WhitePapers, and on his own Substack The Fulford File—paid subscribers wanted!.