travel ban

President Donald Trump’s proclamation imposing U.S. travel restrictions on Cuban and Venezuelan nationals comes after years of repeated abuse of the American immigration system and visa overstays by individuals linked to the two nations’ respective authoritarian regimes.

Chinese officials are reportedly refusing to discuss Beijing’s travel ban against Marco Rubio, the former Republican senator from Florida who was confirmed as U.S. Secretary of State on Monday.

Republican Senators are asking President Joe Biden to “immediately restrict travel” to the United States from China as Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials are accused of hiding information related to an “unknown respiratory illness” spreading in Beijing.

China’s state-run Global Times was in high dudgeon on Thursday over Western media coverage of China’s respiratory illness outbreak.

In President Joe Biden’s first full Fiscal Year in office, his administration admitted to the United States nearly 63,000 legal immigrants on green cards from countries once placed on a travel ban list for their involvement with terrorism. 

Donald Trump, in response to the war in Israel, is promising to reinstate a travel ban for “terror-afflicted countries.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed a bill Wednesday that officially ends the state’s ban on official travel to conservative states that had enacted laws that Democrats claim are anti-LGBTQ. The ban had been a total failure.

A spokesperson for California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has admitted that the governor used state resources in recent travel to Montana, despite a ban on state-funded travel to the state.

China’s grim coronavirus lockdown expanded on Thursday with a warning from the National Immigration Administration (NIA) that movement across China’s borders will be more tightly restricted. Chinese social media is buzzing with citizens who say their passports were seized without justification by border police.

The government of India on Sunday announced “tourist visas issued to nationals of China are no longer valid.” The Times of India called it a “tit-for-tat move” in retaliation for China barring over 20,000 Indian students from returning to Chinese soil after they ventured abroad.

Canada’s Transportation Minister, Omar Alghabra, confirmed reports that a charter plane in the city of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories has been grounded after carrying two Russian nationals. Minister Alghabra wrote about the matter on Twitter on Thursday, saying: “A charter aircraft

Charlotte Bellis, a 35-year-old pregnant New Zealand journalist abandoned in Afghanistan by her own left-wing government due to its coronavirus quarantine rules, said on Saturday she had no alternative but to ask the Taliban for help.

In what looks like a potential repeat of the Djokovic controversy in Australia, France has declared that unjabbed foreign athletes will not be permitted to play in the country.

President Joe Biden announced Friday he will lift travel restrictions on eight African countries on December 31, attributing the decision to the fact that restricting international travel will not greatly affect the Wuhan coronavirus Omicron variant’s spread in the United States.

All people seeking to travel out of southern China’s Dongguan city must present a negative Chinese coronavirus test result to municipal authorities before they are allowed to exit the community, Dongguan city officials announced on Thursday.

South African Dr. Angelique Coetzee — who discovered a new variant of “Covid-19,” or the Chinese coronavirus, called Omicron last month in her patients — told the Africa News Agency (ANA) on Tuesday she considered the worldwide bans on travel out of southern Africa following Omicron’s emergence “knee-jerk” and short-sighted, given the lack of information about the strain.

An editorial in the government-owned newspaper Ghanaian Times published Monday accused President Joe Biden and other Western leaders of “mak[ing] Africa their whipping boy” by banning African travelers from entering their countries in response to the discovery of the “Omicron” variant of Chinese coronavirus.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday denounced President Joe Biden’s ban on travel from southern Africa, and similar measures hastily imposed by other nations after the Omicron coronavirus outbreak, as “travel apartheid” – in other words, racist mistreatment of Africans.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres condemned travel bans rapidly imposed in the past week on southern African countries in response to the discovery of a new Chinese coronavirus variant, stating on Monday that he was “deeply concerned” about policies such as that enacted by President Joe Biden.

Malawi’s President Lazarus Chakwera on Sunday denounced bans on Africa travel imposed by the Biden administration and several other governments, in response to the Omicron coronavirus variant, as “Afrophobia.”

South African citizens complained over the weekend that the Chinese coronavirus’s latest superstar variant, now generally referred to as the “Omicron variant,” has been closely identified with their nation.

Japan’s government on Monday announced a month-long ban on all foreign travelers entering the country beginning Tuesday in an effort to prevent a new strain of coronavirus known as Omicron from invading Japan.

Cyril Ramaphosa, the president of South Africa, condemned on Sunday what he repeatedly called “unjustified” travel bans on citizens of his country and its neighbors by much of the West and the Middle East in response to the discovery of a new Chinese coronavirus variant known as “Omicron.”

TOKYO (AP) – Portuguese health authorities said Monday they have identified 13 cases of omicron, the new coronavirus variant believed to be more contagious, among team members of a professional soccer club.

President Joe Biden announced a travel ban on African countries on Friday in response to news of the newly named “Omicron” variant of the coronavirus.

The president remains on his extended Thanksgiving vacation on Nantucket island at a $30 million compound with his extended family, having no events on his public schedule.

The government of Beijing, China’s national capital, announced Tuesday that it would cancel or limit flights into the city from other Chinese regions battling high daily rates of coronavirus for an indefinite amount of time, the state-run Global Times reported.

China’s state-run Global Times on Tuesday was incensed at the United States for allowing international travel to resume, pointing to China’s own coronavirus surge as evidence that a “zero-tolerance policy” remains the “must-have strategy to contain the virus at the lowest cost.”

The United States is finally reopening to British travellers after almost two years of heavy restrictions — but for the most part they must be double-vaccinated.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) – Sydney will end hotel quarantine for vaccinated passengers when scheduled international flights restart in Australia within two weeks, officials said on Friday, while maintaining some restrictions on foreigners entering the country.

Two U.S. citizens banned from leaving China by the country’s government since 2018 were released over the weekend and returned to America on Sunday just 48 hours after the U.S. Justice Department arranged for the release of Huawei executive and Chinese national Meng Wanzhou from Canadian detention, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Tuesday.

Putian city in southeastern China’s Fujian province sealed off more than half of its highway entry and exit points on Sunday as part of an effort by municipal authorities to contain a new, local outbreak of the Chinese coronavirus, Reuters reported on Monday.

Brazilian health officials on Sunday halted a World Cup qualifying soccer match in Sao Paulo between Brazil and Argentina minutes after it started, accusing four Argentine players of violating Brazil’s Chinese coronavirus quarantine rules, Reuters reported Tuesday.

The European Union plans to recommend that its 27 nations reinstate restrictions on tourists from the U.S. because of rising coronavirus infection levels there, EU diplomats said Monday.

The European Union on Thursday will consider reimposing restrictions on U.S. travelers due to rising cases of the Chinese coronavirus in President Biden’s America, despite his administration’s vaccination effort which has seen over 171 million fully vaccinated in the U.S. 

The Department of Homeland Security announced on Friday an extension of the non-essential travel ban at land border ports along the U.S./Mexico and U.S./Canada borders. The ban, now in place for over 18 months, prohibits nonimmigrant visa holders from entering the United States for recreational travel, shopping, or visiting relatives.