It is now two years since the Trump administration introduced its travel ban on citizens from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia. Coming in the wake of the candidate’s clearly Islamophobic comments on his campaign trail to the White House, the clampdown caused understandable concern in the Muslim world.
The executive order the new president signed was widely condemned, not least by professionals within his own State Department. Opponents took to the courts, initially mounting successful challenges that forced the order to be suspended. However, last year the Supreme Court ruled that a president did have the executive power to ban immigrants.
Trump’s action initially brought chaos at airports, as well as heartache for US Muslims who suddenly found that they could no longer welcome relatives for weddings, funerals and other family gatherings. No less troubling was the impact on students destined for, or already engaged in courses and postgraduate study at US universities and medical schools. Lawyers had argued that keeping these largely young people from their studies was an own-goal for the United States. It meant that the countries Trump targeted, particularly Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, with their dearth of properly qualified doctors and professionals, would suffer in the long-term. Moreover, America’s ability to influence and inspire the young minds of the future leaders of their struggling societies back home would be diminished.
There is no doubt the president was playing to the gallery of his core supporters, whose reaction to any outsiders, be they Hispanic immigrants or Muslims is informed, if that is not too kind a word, by classic redneck ignorance and prejudice. However at one point in 2015, Trump was actually promising a travel ban on all Muslims. In the event, he selected only countries in which Daesh (the self-proclaimed IS) and its allies had an active and threatening presence.
His opponents had argued that even closer scrutiny of visa applicants from these countries - the application regime was hardly easy or sympathetic beforehand - would have been able to identify potential terrorists trying to reach US soil. It was pointed out that Saudi Arabia managed to welcome pilgrims from these same countries and, since the outrageous 1979 attack on the Grand Mosque in Makkah, had introduced highly effective measures against further terrorist assaults. Yet in fairness, the Haj is always highly organized. Pilgrims travel to strict timetables which dictate the timing of their arrival and departure. Nevertheless, given the vast resources that have been thrown at the US Department of Homeland Security and the country’s range of intelligence organizations, it ought to be possible for any visitors over whom there was the slightest suspicion of terrorist activity, to be monitored. Unfortunately, as was demonstrated in the wake of Trump’s travel ban, a bloc of unthinking, uneducated and traditionally insular Americans began to suspect even US Muslim citizens. The deeply crass assumption was that every Muslim was a terrorist.
The good news is that the Trump travel ban on citizens from these seven Muslim countries has not turned out to be absolute. “Immediate relative visas” have been granted and some students, among them outstanding postgraduate researchers, have been allowed to resume their studies. The bad news, for America at least, is that the travel ban, coming as it did after the president’s own Islamophobic comments, has damaged the country’s reputation in the Muslim world.
