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Toronto – Not everyone in America is celebrating President Trump’s ban on Muslim immigration, temporary though it may be.
The Washington Post is reporting that thousands of academics, including 12 Nobel Laureates, have signed a petition against the executive order which has barred entry to the U.S. for anyone from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Libya and Yemen, the so-called Trump 7.
American university campuses have seen students and faculty alike react with increasing alarm to Trump’s order and the promise of “extreme vetting” procedures in the near future. Harvard university held a rally Friday night, with students holding signs that read “No Ban No Wall,” in protest of the Muslim ban and Trump’s proposed wall along it’s southern border with Mexico.
Once the petition was started it gained momentum quickly, receiving ten emails every minute at one point. Between 15 and 20 volunteers were needed to keep up with the addition of signatures.
Emery Berger, professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told the Washington Post that colleagues overseas are already discussing or planning to boycott conferences in the U.S. because of the ban. “It’s very chilling,” he said.
According to Berger, the ban has already begun to take its toll on the university’s foreign students, many of whom are from one of the country’s on the Trump 7 list. He described students feeling horrified that they would not be able to return to their studies if they travelled home for a visit.
Berger anticipates a migration of foreign students north of the border saying, “I’m sure it will send really promising star students across the border to Canada or elsewhere.”
As far as the language of the petition is concerned, it couldn’t be more clear; “This Executive Order is discriminatory. The EO unfairly targets a large group of immigrants and non-immigrants on the basis of their countries of origin, all of which are nations with a majority Muslim population.”
It continues reading, “This executive Order is detrimental to the national interests of the United States… From Iran alone more than 3,000 students have received PhDs from American universities in the past 3 years.”
Finally, the petition speaks of the intangible consequences of the order, the inevitable ethical questions it raises when a country such as the United States employs what it calls “discriminatory treatment of law-abiding, hard-working, and well-integrated immigrants.”
