This week we spoke to Yassamin and Emma about their personal reasons for attending the protest against Trump’s ‘Muslim ban’ held on College Green last week.
Why did you go to the protest last week?
Emma: I’ve never protested against anything before, but Trump seems to have driven an unbelievable amount of people to demonstrate for the first time. When I heard about his travel ban I was disgusted; the fact that one man would take it upon himself to discriminate between individuals on the basis of their nationality and essentially their religion made a lot of people here in the UK very angry, and as my dad and much of my extended family are Iranian I had a very personal motivation for joining them in protest.
Yassamin: It was a similar situation for me. I’m Iranian, so when I heard about Trump’s travel ban I was absolutely fuming. I’ve never been a fan of his, but this latest move made things a lot more personal for me, and I was driven to go to the protest-I’ve never been to one before either!
What were the potential effects of the travel ban on you or your family?
Yassamin: The fact that Trump thinks it’s okay to bar travellers from the US based on the colour of their passports is just not right. My family and I have both Iranian and English passports, so if the ban were reinstated we could still travel to the US, although we’d probably still get a lot of trouble at security as my mum, dad and brother were all born in Iran.
Emma: My dad’s family grew up in Iran. He moved to the UK about 40 years ago, whilst many of his relatives moved to America. My uncle, who lives in the US, became critically ill last year, and over the past few months my aunt has been staying with him to nurse him. She came back to England right before the ban was implemented, but its terms essentially barred both her and my dad from entering the US. If anything had happened to my uncle whilst the ban was still in place, his only siblings wouldn’t have been able to get to him. Trump just didn’t seem to have any qualms about taking away individual freedoms without any consideration of the consequences, and I just find that disgusting.
So even if the ban remains blocked, are you or your family put off from traveling to the US?
Yassamin: Travelling to the US when you have an Iranian passport was a nightmare even before Trump got into the White House! Last year, my family and I planned to go to Disneyland for my birthday, but the visa application process was so long and difficult due to our Iranian passports that we just gave up on the idea.
Emma: It’s true-last year when my uncle first fell ill it took my dad two weeks to be granted a visa because of his Iranian passport. Even his 89-year-old mother was put through endless rounds of interviews and forms before being allowed to travel to see her son. But Trump’s ban made these kind of difficulties so much worse, and has made the discrimination against certain nationalities that already exists impossible to ignore.
Yassamin: Exactly. When my brother travelled to Las Vegas a couple of years ago he was the only one out of his group of friends who got pulled aside when going through security. He was taken into a back room for questioning, yet given absolutely no reason as to why he had been chosen. Sadly, the kind of discrimination and prejudice illuminated by Trump’s election and his travel ban isn’t new. But I’d still like to travel to the US-I refuse to let Trump or any piece of legislation he attempts to bring through scare me off.
Emma: Our families have as much right as anyone else to travel to the US, and I feel the strong public opposition to the travel ban over the past week or so has shown that most people agree. But it does definitely change how my family will feel about travelling there, knowing how unwelcome and even threatened they are as long as Trump is president.