On January 14, 2026, the State Department announced via its X.com account that it was pausing all immigrant visa processing for applicants from 75 countries processing effective January 21, including countries like Brazil, Iran, Russia and Somalia. The pause will include applications for family members, including spouses and children, of U.S. citizens who are located abroad in the named countries, as well as immigrant workers being recruited by U.S. employers. The full list of countries impacted by this policy has been released on the State Department’s website.
This is the latest iteration of the Trump administration’s travel bans, the first of which was issued in June of last year and targeted 19 countries, and the second in December, which added countries and restrictions to the list, taking the number of total banned countries to 38. Nationals from the additional countries included in this latest version of the ban are not prohibited from being issued nonimmigrant (i.e. temporary) visas such as tourist, student, and work visas. However some of the countries named in the first two travel bans include restrictions on nonimmigrant visas.
A State Department spokesperson told the Washington Post that the latest version of the ban is intended to limit applicants who may become a “public charge,” in other words a person who in the future could need to rely on social safety net benefits from the government. Fox News was the first to report on the expanded travel ban and cited a November 2025 State Department cable that explains the change in policy to consular officers, directing them 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.” (The cable has also been reported on by KFF Health News, noting that consular officers are also directed to consider mental health and obesity when issuing visas.) In 2025, the Trump administration proposed to rescind the Biden-era guidance on public charge for persons applying for immigration benefits with the Department of Homeland Security, giving the administration additional leeway to adjudicate and reject applications based on public charge concerns.
Impact:
The State Department only processes applications for persons who are located abroad, and permanent immigrant visas approved abroad allow immigrants to then adjust to lawful permanent resident status (aka a green card) after arrival in the United States. A green card then allows the holder to apply for U.S. citizenship after a set period and if they meet certain requirements. Green card holders have equal rights on par with U.S.-born workers in terms of their workplace rights and earn higher wages on average than workers who are in a temporary status or who lack status. The Cato Institute has estimated that the expanded ban on 75 countries will ban nearly half of all legal immigrants annually, roughly 324,000 based on 2024 immigrant visa issuances.
The stated reasons for the January 2026 travel ban are dubious. Most immigrants who are not U.S. citizens are ineligible for federal public benefits, and green card holders are ineligible for five years. The likely result of the public charge-related travel ban will be that many foreign-born persons in the United States will not apply for benefits they are entitled to because they’ll fear negative consequences on future applications for immigration status, including many immigrant parents who may forego public benefits for their U.S. citizen children.