Seemingly covering his tracks from preying left-wing lawfare lawyers and their rent-a-judges, President Trump declared, in meticulous legal language that he would cut off visas to 12 miscreant nations whose nationals habitually overstay their visas, and whose governments won't take them back, as well as those nations whose nationals are impossible to vet, owing to lousy government recordkeeping and weaselly failures to cooperate. Another seven got their visas restricted, allowing a little wiggle room, presumably for being a little less horrible.

According to the Wall Street Journal:

WASHINGTON—President Trump on Wednesday signed a sweeping travel ban on 12 countries, largely in the Middle East and Africa, and introduced more-limited travel restrictions on seven others, reintroducing a controversial immigration policy that came to define the early days of his first term.

The ban will completely bar travel to the U.S. by citizens of Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

Citizens from an additional list of countries will be barred from permanently immigrating to the U.S., along with applying for tourist or student visas. Those countries are Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela. Citizens from these seven countries will still be eligible for other temporary visas, such as the H-1B temporary work visa.

The move makes sense, given that lawmen are still hunting for all of the thousands of terrorist watchlisters let in by Joe Biden over the past four years without vetting, and we've just had a flamethrowing firebomb attack on elderly Jewish citizens in Colorado by a crazed lunatic from Egypt here illegally who vowed to kill "all the Zionists" and said he'd try again.

The Wall Street Journal sarcastically noted that his country was not on the list, but it missed the point: Apparently Egypt does take its nationals back, has a decent recordkeeping system of all the terrrorist crazies in the country, and its law-abiding nationals have relatively low visa overstay rate in the states.

Biden let the toad in with no vetting. Trump insists on vetting potentially problematic foreign nationals, and requiring cooperation from their home countries to ensure there are no problems. With that the requirement, and that requirement met, Egypt didn't need to be on the list.

The tough measures are important for all of the reasons Trump's meticulous declaration stated, but also for two unstated reasons:

By forcing nations that supply huge numbers of illegals to keep their people in-country, the Trump administration forces these miscreant states to clean up their act, to create a country that people want to live in. Cynical dictatorships love to ship their nationals abroad for gringo to take care of for them. That takes public pressure off them, and enables them to run socialist hellholes with very little opposition to worry about. Now the heat is on them to clean up their act, or it's Ceaucescu time for their miserable hides. Nicolas Maduro will eventually get that message.

The other reason is related to the first -- as locals flee these zero-growth socialist hellholes, not only do their dictators not have to take care of them, they also lose the benefit of their remittances, which is the other reason why they drive people from their countries. They benefit big from the cash sent home through their central banks by the illegal migrants, while gringo gets the bill to take care of them.

Trump's shutdown puts a stop to that cynical game, and cuts off remittances from their bolting emigrants pretty quickly. No more cash, and keep your nationals to yourself. That should be good for a few rounds of unrest as the cash dries up and the locals demand an honest economy. Some might reform as a result, and for those that don't, well, the dictators that foster illegal immigration will get exactly what they deserve.

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