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On Wednesday, the Democratic-led House passed legislation aimed to constrain a president’s power to limit entry to the US. US President Joe Biden reversed the travel restrictions from the Trump administration in one of his first moves in office. It is easing limits on Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea, and some government officials from Venezuela. But, Democrats said Congress has a responsibility to avoid future administrations from enacting similarly broad restrictions. This bill passed the US House by a vote of 218-208, but unlikely to advance in the evenly split Senate because Republicans broadly opposed the bill. The Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Jerrold Nadler said presidents from both parties have used their authority to exclude narrow groups of people from entering the US, such as certain North Korean officials.

Nadler said, “But former President Trump abused this authority, twisting it in ways that were never intended”. Moreover, the White House announced its support for the measure earlier this week, and said, “The prior Administration’s haphazard misuse of this authority highlights the need for reasonable constraints”. Trump had proposed a broad, all-encompassing Muslim ban during the presidential campaign. The first travel ban was announced with little notice within a week of his taking office in early 2017. It caused chaos at airports and sparked protests across the country. Point to be noted that the Trump administration was forced to revise its original order twice to resolve legal problems concerning due process, implementation, and exclusive targeting of Muslim nations. The US Supreme Court upheld the ban in a 5-4 decision in 2018.

The Supreme Court determined that the ban was within a US president’s considerable authority over immigration and responsibility for keeping the nation safe. Republicans said Trump’s actions were not a Muslim ban. They said the ban was limited to countries that were formerly designated by Congress or prior administrations as posing national security risks. They also said that the ban affected only a fraction of Muslim-majority countries. A representative Chip Roy said, “Do not listen to repetitions and lies about Muslim bans when it is not true. The president said he was going to impose a Muslim ban, and he did”. The secretaries of state and homeland security must first determine that the entry of certain aliens would undermine national security or public safety before the president could order a temporary travel restriction.