Security as a pretext for exclusion?

The latest expansion of the US travel ban has been justified using the now familiar language of security risks and weak vetting systems. Seven more countries have been placed on a no-entry list. On paper this rationale appears technocratic and neutral. In practice, however, the pattern of the ban suggests that ethnic preferences and biases are becoming inseparable from security assessment.

After the most recent additions, the United States has expanded the list of countries with full or partial travel restrictions to thirty-nine, up from nineteen, according to the White House. This travel ban, blocking migrants and visitors from several new African, Asian and Middle Eastern countries, indicates that the current administration increasingly treats nationality, rather than individual conduct, as a proxy for risk.

Growing anti-migration rhetoric foreshadowed this policy. Immigration is increasingly being framed as a national security threat, which can also undermine economic stability and cultural cohesion. Travel bans, visa restrictions and public statements portraying migrants as inherently risky reinforce a narrative in which the mobility of people itself is framed as a danger. Such rhetoric in turn normalises the idea that certain migrant populations are dangerous, which then justifies denying them entry under the banner of protection.

Ironically, the US has welcomed South African whites while banning Afghans, including those who supported US forces and are now under threat from the Taliban. Washington is now cautiously engaging Syria's new leadership for strategic purposes, but it has imposed a blanket travel ban on Syrian citizens. This contradictory approach signals conditional trust in political leaders while presuming collective suspicion of their populations. Over time, such contradictions will further erode US credibility and worsen its image abroad.

Countrywide bans also undermine the principle of individualised vetting. Students, families, researchers and professionals with no security ties are denied mobility not because of what they have done but because of where they were born. Pakistani students and skilled workers, for example, face heightened scrutiny, delayed visas, stricter documentation requirements and uncertainty about enrollment deadlines or skill-based visa processing. Even without a formal ban, these obstacles show how nationality-linked policy biases are constraining opportunity and fostering anxiety among law-abiding migrants.

Such exclusionary policies are not unique to the United States. Across Western countries, governments are struggling with multiculturalism, integration and public anxiety over immigration. Travel bans, strict border enforcement and bureaucratic hurdles are part of a broader trend that frames mobility as a threat and cultural diversity as a challenge rather than a strength. As destination countries increasingly rely on blanket bans rather than individual risk assessments, they further social anxieties instead of alleviating them.

Similar patterns are also visible in Global South. Pakistan has imposed strict limits on Afghan refugees, and countries such as Bangladesh and Malaysia have periodically restricted Rohingya migration citing security threats, which then override urgent humanitarian concerns. These examples indicate that exclusionary migration policies are not limited to West.

When mobility itself is treated as a threat, the process of migration management can easily drift from behaviour-based enforcement to the implementation of reductionist imperatives which erode asylum norms, weaken people-to-people ties and breed xenophobia.

Security matters to all nations, but if exclusion becomes the default response, migration policies risk being tainted by suspicion and separation. Such policies begin treating entire populations as threats and signal that nationality rather than behaviour determines who should be welcomed into supposedly multicultural societies.