> The ban is not about values, it is about not being able to acceptably vet who is entering the country when they originate from certain areas.

My spouse is an Iranian national and affected by the ban. I'm from Germany, where we live. Why can't the Trump administration vet her, given that previous administrations could and did?

Because they don't trust the Iranian government to provide accurate and complete information about her.

Previous administrations may have extended that trust, but that doesn't prove they were correct to do so.

They also said it would take 90 days to implement "extreme vetting". If it was just about trusting other governments, they wouldn't have promised that at all.

Why haven't they done it nearly a year later? Probably a good indicator not to blindly trust autocrats who run election campaigns on xenophobia.

What kind of information? How is this presumed information exchange supposed to work? Is the idea that if I travel to the United States, or apply for a visa, that the US will query my government / my government's secret agencies for information about me, and my government will comply? Because (hopefully) that isn't really how it works.

The question isn't about vetting one person - it is about laying out a general rule that we won't accept people from countries where terror cells are common and the rule of law and record keeping is weak.

We are both long-time German residents. What kind of records do you need?