500,000 legal U.S. residents blocked from returning to America
We are now finding out that Donald Trump’s Muslim ban applies to some 500,000 legal U.S. residents from returning from trips abroad.
Trump claimed the ban applies to “terror-prone” countries, but many have pointed out that countries like Saudi Arabia where most of the 9/11 hijackers came from was not included, while countries like Iran who have not been infiltrated by Al Qaeda or ISIS.
It is also important to point out that Muslim countries that Donald Trump has business deals in were also left out of the ban, raising major concerns about conflicts of interests.
Pro Publica reports that the ban goes “well beyond preventing newcomers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, from entering the U.S., lawyers consulted by ProPublica said.” It also applies to hundreds of thousands of legal U.S. residents who hold green cards or temporary visa holders who are on trips abroad and won’t be able to return to the U.S.
One of the people detained at the airport under Trump’s Muslim ban was Hameed Khalid Darweesh who served as an interpreter for the Army’s 101st Airborne Division in Baghdad and Mosul after the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
‘It’s extraordinarily cruel’
Pro Publica went on to say, “Since the order’s travel ban applies to all ‘aliens’ — a term that encompasses anyone who isn’t an American citizen — it could bar those with current visas or even green cards from returning to the U.S. from trips abroad, said Stephen Legomsky, a former chief counsel to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services under President Obama. ‘It’s extraordinarily cruel,’ he said.”
The ban applies to students who went home on holiday trips from returning to school.
According to Pro Publica, “About 25,000 citizens from the seven countries specified in Trump’s ban have been issued student or employment visas in the past three years, according to Department of Homeland Security reports. On top of that, almost 500,000 people from the seven countries have received green cards in the past decade, allowing them to live and work in the United States indefinitely. Legally speaking, green card holders are considered aliens. While lawyers are unsure if they would actually be barred from reentering the U.S. if they have traveled abroad, they conceded it’s a possibility.”
According to Jamal Abdi, policy director for National Iranian American Council said, “We are inundated with calls and questions of how this is going to affect people.”
