Rep. Nancy Mace will introduce the Rep. Nancy Mace immigration bill on Wednesday, a measure called the Third World Immigration Moratorium Act that would bar people from 39 countries from entering the United States. The proposal would also block entry for people traveling on Palestinian Authority-issued documents.
Mace said the legislation mirrors the list of countries facing full or partial bans under the Trump administration. She also said many immigrants from the affected countries have failed to assimilate into American life, and she tied the bill to the deaths of Sarah Beckstrom and the wounding of Andrew Wolfe in Washington, D.C.
Third World Immigration Moratorium Act
The bill names Afghanistan, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burma, Burundi, Chad, Cote d'Ivoire, Cuba, Dominica, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Gabon, Gambia, Haiti, Iran, Laos, Libya, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Republic of the Congo, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Togo, Tonga, Turkmenistan, Venezuela, Yemen, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Those countries span the Caribbean, Middle East and Africa.
The measure would take its restrictions from the Trump administration's travel ban framework and extend them into legislation. That means the list would not just sit as a policy choice inside the executive branch; it would be written into a bill Mace plans to bring forward in the House Chamber.
Sarah Beckstrom and Andrew Wolfe in Washington
The timing follows a year of tightened travel restrictions. The Trump administration resurrected a travel ban on 12 countries in June 2025 after an Egyptian national was charged with carrying out a deadly firebombing attack in Boulder, Colorado. Donald Trump later moved to expand the list by more than double after an Afghan national fatally shot 20-year-old Sarah Beckstrom and severely injured U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe in Washington, D.C., in November.
Mace's pitch mixes a public-safety argument with a broad entry ban, and that combination is what makes the bill more than a statement of position. She cast the measure as a defense of U.S. entry standards, saying, “For too long, Washington has looked the other way while bad actors exploited every gap in our system and American families paid the price. Those days are over.”
Rep. Nancy Mace Wednesday
She added, “If you import the third world, you will become the third world.” Mace also said, “This bill makes crystal clear: entry into the United States is a privilege, not a right.” She closed her remarks by saying, “We make absolutely no apologies for defending it.”
The immediate next step is the introduction itself on Wednesday. After that, the bill will have to find support in Congress before any of the proposed restrictions on the 39 countries, or on Palestinian Authority-issued documents, can move beyond Mace's filing.
