The State Department last year denied 1,338 nonimmigrant visa applications in 2017 because of President Trump’s controversial immigration executive actions, just a small fraction of 1 percent of the 2.8 million applications it received that year, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Tuesday.
Through two executive orders and a proclamation, the Trump administration introduced a series of highly scrutinized immigration policy changes. Chief among them was its so-called travel ban, upheld by the Supreme Court in June, which restricted certain foreign nationals’ entry into the United States. Trump also imposed tougher screening and vetting standards and procedures, and gave the State Department funding to roll-out a new form asking applicants for their social media handles.
Nonimmigrant visas allow foreign tourists, students, and business professionals to temporarily stay in the country.
“If the applicant was ineligible for the visa on grounds unrelated to the executive action, such as having prior immigration violations, the applicant was to be refused on those grounds,” GAO wrote.
State in 2017 received about 12.6 million nonimmigrant visa applications but that figure represented a downward trend compared to 2016, the GAO report also found. The number of adjudications and refusal rates increased between 2012 and 2016, while both measures decreased in the first 12 months of Trump’s presidency.
