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Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s 75-country visa ban was ruled illegal by a federal judge August 21.<\/span>Eric Lee\/Getty<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n This January,<\/span> Secretary of State Marco Rubio directed consular officers to refuse to process immigration visas for people from 75 countries because, he said, those immigrants would be more likely than others to \u201cextract wealth\u201d or \u201ctake welfare and public benefits\u201d<\/a>\u00a0from the US. Since January, people from those 75 countries\u2014all located in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, or Eastern Europe\u2014have had their visa applications frozen or denied.<\/p>\n On August 21, though, a federal judge in New York struck down this blanket visa ban, on the grounds that it violates the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965\u2019s prohibition on nationality-based discrimination in issuing a visa.\u00a0<\/p>\n As my colleague Julia M\u00e9traux reported earlier this year<\/a>, these \u201cpublic charge\u201d bans are in part based on eugenicist ideas. <\/p>\n Since the 19th century, the United States has used \u201cpublic charge\u201d rules to restrict entry, alleging that immigrants and even visitors would strain public services\u2014reasoning very much rooted in the eugenicist and ableist thinking that shaped key aspects of public policy in the 19th and early 20th centuries, including the claim that so-called \u201cdefective\u201d people would produce \u201cdefective\u201d children. As president, especially in his second term, Donald Trump has brought eugenicist immigration policy roaring back. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n