News analysis Why Myanmar and Laos are caught up in Trump's sweeping travel bans

Both nations are collateral damage in a US domestic political agenda where visa overstays are conflated with national security and public safety threats, analysts say

- Philip Wen

BANGKOK - The inclusion of Myanmar and Laos on a list of countries deemed by the Trump administration to pose terrorist and national security threats to the US prompted immediate double takes from analysts in South-east Asia.

US President Donald Trump issued a proclamation on June 4 banning citizens from 12 countries, mostly in the Middle East and Africa, from entering the US, reinstating and expanding on one of the most controversial measures from his first term in office. Partial restrictions apply to seven additional countries.

Mr Trump cited a June 1 attack where a man threw a petrol bomb into a crowd of pro-Israeli demonstrators in Boulder, Colorado, injuring 15 people.

The federal authorities said the perpetrator was an Egyptian national who overstayed his visa, a premise the President seized on to justify his newest measures in a sweeping immigration agenda since taking office.

"The recent terror attack in Boulder, Colorado, has underscored the extreme dangers posed to our country by the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted, as well as those who come here as temporary visitors and overstay their visas," he said in a video posted on social media. "We don't want them."

Aside from Myanmar, the countries affected by the full ban are Afghanistan, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. Laos, Burundi, Cuba, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela are the seven countries whose citizens will come under partial restrictions.

While Myanmar and Laos are not the only countries likely to feel aggrieved, South-east Asian analysts said the two countries were clear examples of what it meant to be effectively rendered collateral damage, swept up in a purely US domestic political agenda and a conflation of visa overstays with national security and public safety threats.