While President Trump works out the legal kinks in his “extreme vetting” executive order, existing law allows his administration to nix visas for people from countries that refuse to accept their own citizens facing U.S. deportation.

Section 243(d) of the Immigration and Nationality Act allows the government to strip visas for travelers from those countries — about 22 of them — until they comply with U.S. deportations, The Washington Times reports. Among countries on the “uncooperative” list are five of the seven countries identified in Mr. Trump’s vetting order.

Over the past 15 years the visa-hold law has been rarely used, supposedly to give diplomacy a chance. But as experience demonstrates, diplomacy is rendered useless when countries that refuse to take back their own criminal citizens plant thumb to nose and wiggle their fingers at the U.S.

Iran, for example, has refused to take back 29 of its own thugs; Iraq has rejected 33. And despite the Obama administration’s overtures to normalized relations with Cuba, that despotic regime refused to accept 600 criminals in the first nine months of the last fiscal year, according to The Times.

Funny thing, though: When their U.S. visas are cut off, the uncooperative countries soon come into compliance.

This may not be exactly what Team Trump envisioned with its extreme vetting. But it is a legal alternative to at least stem the flow from nations that nose-thumb U.S. deportations.

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