African Arguments published on 11 August 2026 a commentary titled "Somalia: A Government with One Foot Out the Door" by Ismail Abukar, a human rights advocate based in Mogadishu.
A significant percentage of Somali officials are effectively ghost workers who do not come to their offices. Many have foreign passports and dual citizenship. At the same time, remittances from the diaspora have kept Somalia solvent.
The White House published on 4 June 2025 a fact sheet titled "President Donald J. Trump Restricts the Entry of Foreign Nationals to Protect the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats."
The proclamation fully restricts and limits the entry of nationals from twelve countries found to be deficient with regards to screening and vetting and determined to pose a very high risk to the United States: Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.
The proclamation partially restricts and limits the entry of nationals from seven countries who also pose a high level of risk to the United States: Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela.
Comment: Seven of the twelve fully restricted countries and three of the seven partially restricted countries are in Africa.
Four of the fully restricted countries--Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, and Eritrea--were included because nationals from those countries have a history of disproportionally overstaying their visas after coming to the United States. Three of them--Libya, Somalia, and Sudan--were included because the governments have no competent or cooperative central authority for issuing passports.
All three of the partially restricted countries--Burundi, Sierra Leone, and Togo--have a history of disproportionally overstaying their visas after arriving in the United States.
Clearly, this proclamation, at least in the case of the African countries, has little to do with combatting terrorism and a lot to do with keeping people out of the United States from certain countries for other reasons.
Refugees International published on 24 July 2023 a paper titled "Sudan in Crisis: Improving the Response for Sudanese Refugees in Egypt" by Abdullahi Boru Halakhe.
About 120,000 Sudanese are stuck between conflict in Sudan and a hostile environment in Egypt at or near the Sudanese/Egyptian border town of Wadi Halfa in unsanitary conditions where they cannot meet their basic needs for weeks. Relaxation of entry and expediting the refugee determination process, combined with livelihood and labor access by Egyptian authorities and UNHCR, would reduce the humanitarian suffering at the border and inside Egypt.
