Closing America To The World

You've already heard about it - President Donald Trump issued a ban on people entering the USA from seven Muslim-majority countries on Friday. The ban even extends to green-card holders who are authorized to live and work in the U.S.

The ban has been met with a lot of negative criticism, as protests erupted across the nations at airports and it has been deeply condemned by leaders of religious groups (an evangelical Christian group said it was an affront to human dignity), academics (thousands of professors, including several Nobel laureates, signed a statement calling it a “major step towards implementing the stringent racial and religious profiling promised on the campaign trail.”) and of course American citizens themselves! From the Silicon Valley to Wall Street, there hasn't been much praise for the bold and totally uncalled for move.

“Foreigners from those seven nations have killed zero Americans in terrorist attacks on U.S. soil between 1975 and the end of 2015,” said Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute. While some families of the victims of 9/11 have received the ban positively, none of the minds behind 9/11 were from any of the seven banned countries (a majority of them were from Saudi Arabia), and many of them fail to realize there is a very likely chance that this ban will further aggravate extreme jihadist groups who already view America as anti-Muslim, leading to more terrorism. This ban will adversely affect thousands of refugees fighting for their lives even though terrorists who had carried out attacks in the United States had not entered as refugees. In fact, some of the attackers were born here in the US.

While a move to increase national security could be implemented, this particularly rash decision was obviously not logically thought out or rationalized. In fact, the only way it could have been rationalized is through ugly racism--by equating Islam to terrorism and closing doors on people based on nothing other than their religion. As Republican Representative Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania stated: "The order was rushed through without any nuances toward immigration policy, and this can be life or death for some people.”

For many of us, policies and laws were our comfort during the change in the presidency. We had confidence that even the President couldn't just do whatever he wanted and of course, there have been several lawsuits filed against the order. It's important at this time to present a united front and speak out--don't consider moving to Canada just because President Justin Trudeau tweeted “To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength.”

As BU students remember how much pride we take in being such an international school, talk to your peers and come together to present a unified voice of concern.

Also, check out President Brown's email to the BU family where he advises against travel outside the US for students from those countries--we don't want to loose you!