Why These 75 Countries? The Real Logic Behind the List
The Question Everyone Asked — and Almost Everyone Asked It Wrong
The most persistent question that followed the U.S. pause on immigrant visa processing was also the most emotionally charged: Why these countries? The speed with which the question became an accusation revealed how poorly modern immigration systems are understood. For many observers, the list of affected countries appeared arbitrary, political, or even punitive. Some assumed race. Others assumed diplomacy. A few assumed vengeance. Very few assumed data.
Yet immigration policy at this level is rarely emotional and almost never improvisational. Countries do not appear on such lists because of who their citizens are, but because of what long-term patterns suggest their systems produce. To understand the list, one must stop thinking like a traveler and start thinking like a state (Associated Press, 2026; Reuters, 2026).
How Governments Actually Decide: From Diplomacy to Risk Modeling
Modern immigration selection is no longer driven primarily by bilateral sentiment or historical friendship. It is driven by risk profiling. Governments increasingly treat migration as a regulatory problem: how to admit people in ways that minimize long-term fiscal exposure, legal friction, and political backlash. This has produced a quiet but consequential shift—from discretionary openness to evidence-weighted selection (Brookings Institution, 2024; Ryo, 2019).
At the core of this shift is a simple institutional question: What happens after admission? Not immediately, but five, ten, or twenty years later. Immigration systems now ask whether patterns associated with certain origin countries correlate with overstays, public-assistance reliance, documentation inconsistencies, or enforcement challenges. When correlations persist, scrutiny follows.
The Hidden Architecture: Overstays, Compliance, and Trust
One of the least discussed but most influential datasets in U.S. immigration policy is the overstay report. Published annually by the Department of Homeland Security, it tracks how many visa holders fail to depart as required. These reports do not name individuals. They identify patterns by country and visa category (Department of Homeland Security, 2022, 2024).
Countries with persistently high overstay rates—especially in family-linked or temporary-to-permanent pathways—inevitably attract heightened scrutiny. This does not mean every applicant from such countries overstays. It means the probability distribution troubles policymakers. Immigration systems are not designed to reward exceptionality; they are designed to manage aggregates.
This is the first uncomfortable truth: collective data shapes individual treatment, even when individual behavior is exemplary.
Why “Rich Countries” Also Appear on the List
A second misconception is that only poor or unstable countries are affected. This is demonstrably false. Wealth does not immunize a country from scrutiny. Some high-income or middle-income countries appear on such lists because wealth alone does not predict compliance. In certain contexts, it may even facilitate overstays through informal labor markets, dual residences, or complex family arrangements.
What matters is not GDP, but administrative predictability: reliable civil registries, document authentication systems, enforcement cooperation, and historical compliance trends. Immigration systems reward institutional reliability more than economic status (OECD, 2019; Wasem, 2021).
Public Charge: The Silent Filter Most People Never See
Another decisive factor is the doctrine of public charge. Though frequently misunderstood, it plays a central role in immigrant visa adjudication. U.S. law allows the denial of permanent residence to individuals deemed likely to rely primarily on public assistance. This assessment is no longer narrow or static. It is holistic and predictive (U.S. Federal Register, 2025; Butcher, 2024).
Public-charge analysis now considers age, health, education, employment prospects, household composition, and the credibility of financial sponsorship. Countries with historical patterns of family-based migration that strain sponsorship enforcement may trigger heightened review—even when sponsors appear adequate on paper.
This is not a moral judgment. It is a risk calculation.
Documentation Credibility: The Issue No One Likes to Discuss
Perhaps the most sensitive factor is documentation integrity. Immigration systems depend on trust: birth records, marriage certificates, educational credentials, and identity documents must be verifiable. When civil documentation systems are inconsistent, fragmented, or vulnerable to fraud, risk flags emerge.
This does not mean most documents from such countries are false. It means verification costs rise. And when verification costs rise, issuance slows. In high-volume systems, cost translates directly into caution.
This is one of the reasons countries can remain under scrutiny long after internal reforms have begun. Trust, once eroded, rebuilds slowly.
Why This Is Not Race-Based — and Why That Argument Persists
It is understandable that race enters public interpretation. Lists that disproportionately affect Africa, parts of Asia, and Eastern Europe evoke historical memory. But analytically, race is a poor explanatory variable here. Risk-based selection relies on administrative indicators, not phenotype.
The race argument persists because it feels intuitive and morally legible. Data arguments feel cold and inaccessible. Yet failing to understand the actual logic of selection prevents effective response. You cannot reform what you refuse to analyze.
Nigeria: Why the Data Does Not Match the Self-Image
Nigeria’s inclusion is often experienced as bewildering. Nigeria produces doctors, engineers, entrepreneurs, academics. It sends billions in remittances. It maintains a visible diaspora. From the inside, inclusion feels illogical.
From the outside, the picture is more complex. Immigration systems do not evaluate talent in isolation. They evaluate patterns: family-based migration volumes, overstay trends, sponsorship durability, documentation challenges, and enforcement follow-through. When these indicators raise concern, individual excellence does not automatically recalibrate the model.
This is not hostility. It is a misalignment between self-perception and external assessment.
Why Silence from Institutions Makes Things Worse
One of the most damaging responses to inclusion on such lists is institutional silence. When governments fail to engage diplomatically, technically, and transparently with destination countries, negative assumptions persist. Immigration systems rarely self-correct in the absence of counter-data.
Silence allows risk models to ossify. Engagement allows recalibration.
Read also: Frozen Doors: Understanding America’s New Visa Reality—Part 1
This Was Calculated — Not Random
The hardest truth to accept is also the most empowering: the list was calculated. It reflects data, history, and institutional confidence levels—not whim, not anger, not insult. That does not make it fair. But it makes it intelligible.
And once intelligible, it becomes navigable.
What Understanding Changes
Understanding the logic behind the list changes everything. It shifts the response from outrage to strategy. From despair to preparation. From personal grievance to institutional reform. Immigration systems respond to evidence, not emotion.
Setting the Stage for What Comes Next
Part 2 does not end with accusation. It ends with context.
Because to understand how Nigeria arrived at this moment—where image management competes with survival—one must go beyond outrage and examine structure. What happens to a country when governance failures accumulate long enough to shape how the world sees its citizens? What happens when international systems stop assessing people as individuals and begin sorting them as risk categories?
Part 3 will confront that reality directly.
It will examine why Nigeria, alongside dozens of other nations, increasingly finds itself entangled in global screening regimes, travel restrictions, and heightened scrutiny. Not as punishment, but as consequence. We will map the 75 affected countries, explain the metrics used to evaluate them, and show how governance outcomes—security, documentation integrity, corruption indices, migration patterns—translate into external classification.
This is not about stigma. It is about literacy.
Because in an era of algorithmic borders and predictive enforcement, the most dangerous mistake a nation or citizen can make is to misunderstand how decisions are made.
Part III will not argue emotion.
It will explain the system—how it thinks, how it categorizes, and why those categories now determine access, movement, and opportunity.
Understanding that system is no longer optional.
It is survival knowledge.
Professor MarkAnthony Ujunwa Nze is an internationally acclaimed investigative journalist, public intellectual, and global governance analyst whose work shapes contemporary thinking at the intersection of health and social care management, media, law, and policy. Renowned for his incisive commentary and structural insight, he brings rigorous scholarship to questions of justice, power, and institutional integrity.
Based in New York, he serves as a full tenured professor and Academic Director at the New York Center for Advanced Research (NYCAR), where he leads high-impact research in governance innovation, strategic leadership, and geopolitical risk. He also oversees NYCAR’s free Health & Social Care professional certification programs, accessible worldwide at:
https://www.newyorkresearch.org/professional-certification/
Professor Nze remains a defining voice in advancing ethical leadership and democratic accountability across global systems.
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