Rob Denning The Trump administration is preparing to cancel the visas of up to 200,000 foreigners — the largest mass visa revocation in US history, according to NPR and DW, which both cite US officials briefed on the plan.
The targets are holders of B1 (business) and B2 (tourist) visas issued between 2016 and 2026 who have sought, or are currently seeking, asylum, according to the New York Post. Enter on a short-term visa, then apply for protection once inside the country, and the administration wants that original entry visa cancelled — even for people whose asylum case is still pending. The New York Times reports the plan is being finalized inside the administration; Al Jazeera and Euronews confirm the same scope.
Why this travels beyond the US
HYPOTHESIS: European governments wrestling with their own asylum backlogs — Germany and the UK chief among them — will treat this as a test case for how far a government can go in stripping legal status from people whose protection claims haven't been finally resolved. Supporting this: mass status-stripping at this scale has no recent precedent among G7 states, making it a template rather than routine enforcement. Against this: none of the cited sources report any EU government response yet, so the diplomatic spillover is inferred, not documented.
A revocation at this scale, aimed at people who used a tourist or business visa as an entry route into the asylum system, also raises the stakes with the countries these visa holders came from, whose nationals now face losing legal status en masse.
Watch for: legal challenges from immigration advocates, confirmation of which nationalities are most exposed, and whether any EU government signals interest in a comparable tool for its own backlog.
