Trump's new travel ban has one historic precedent: The Chinese Exclusion Act

The Trump administration this week announced sweeping new restrictions on travelers from eight countries:  Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen

Days later, the administration formally established that the United States will take in no more than 45,000 refugees fleeing conflict around the world. This is a record-low cap on the number of refugees that the United States has ever resettled since 1980. To put this in context, the previous cap authorized by President Obama was 110,000.

The travel ban and refugee cap are two separate policies, but they are related, at least politically, in the eyes of this administration.

With the exception of Venezuela, in which only government officials are targeted, the travel ban prevents nearly any national from these countries from obtaining a visa to visit, live, study or work in the United States. According to my podcast guest Mark Hetfield, there is only one historic precedent for this: the 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Ac…