New Travel Ban Rules Create Awkward Family Dynamics

President Donald Trump’s administration has issued guidelines through the State Department for who will be exempt from the travel ban from six majority Muslim countries, which the U.S. Supreme Court allowed Monday to partly go into effect. The guidelines are highly arbitrary in defining what counts as a family relationship that merits exemption. For example, your mother-in-law is close enough to come into the U.S., but not your grandmother, a blood relative without whom you wouldn’t exist.

That’s because the Trump administration wants to keep out as many people as it can. But it’s also the result of the Supreme Court’s decision, which created a brand new legal category of “bona fide relationship” while defining it only in connection with the plaintiffs in the case. The result will be practical difficulties as well as more litigation in the months before the justices directly address the legality of the ban.