From Tallahassee to Miami, President Donald Trump’s punitive executive order on immigration has ensnared international students throughout Florida’s colleges and universities. The order, signed under the auspices of preventing terrorism but without adequate input from intelligence officials, has triggered a cascade of predictable consequences. Among them: Students from affected countries have seen their lives and educational pursuits needlessly upended.
Trump’s order bars entry to refugees from anywhere in the world for 120 days and bars those from Syria indefinitely. It also restricts immigration for 90 days from seven countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. The order follows through on a campaign promise to better secure the border, though Trump denied it was the Muslim ban he proposed last year.
Within hours, there were reports of travelers being detained and parents being separated from children, sparking protests at major airports across Florida and the nation. The fallout on college campuses came quickly. The Florida State University graduate student from Iran, who went home for his father’s funeral and now cannot return. The doctoral candidate at Florida International University who completed his engineering degree in December but was waiting to graduate in May when his family could attend. Their visa interviews, to travel from Iran, were canceled. Tampa Bay Times staff writer Tony Marrero reported on Mehdi Zeyghami, a doctoral student at the University of South Florida who has been studying solar equipment technology for four years, research that earned him an award from the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning Engineers. He left school in May to go home to Iran to care for his mother following heart surgery and, once she recovered, applied for another visa. It was approved the day before Trump’s order was signed, then denied.
Disrupting the lives and work of these students and countless others does nothing to make America safer. Zeyghami’s adviser at USF, Yogi Goswami, a distinguished professor of chemical engineering and immigrant from India, explained the senselessness of slamming the door on international students: "They become ambassadors in (their countries) because they feel so thankful and blessed to be able to come to the U.S. and be exposed to the topmost researchers in the world. Those are the people we need all over the world." Instead, the president’s sweeping order conveys a posture of distrust and hostility and feeds into the dangerous sentiment that the United States is at war with Islam.
Students comprise just a fraction of the casualties of Trump’s misguided executive action on immigration. His supporters point out that the restrictions are only temporary — small comfort to students like Mehdi Zeyghami who could see years of work lost during those three months. Trump’s poorly written, indefensible order has thrown uncertainty into the lives of people who came to America for the right reasons: to work, advance their studies and prepare for successful lives.
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