The day after Mr. Trump was elected, the campus was in mourning. Peirce was quiet, just a few murmurs and trembling voices. Banners were hung in protest. Classes were full of shaking hands, and conversation about what to do. And, I was among that crowd, crying on and off all day. I felt sick, sick because Trump’s campaign promises filled me with fear.
A few days ago, one of those biggest fears became true. There was an executive order made on immigration, stating that for 90 days immigrants and non-immigrants from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen will not be able to enter the US. Admissions of refugees from all countries into the US is suspended for 120 days. And, all refugees from Syria are suspended from admission into the US indefinitely. I will not go into the politics of this. I don’t have the energy for it. There are people, far smarter and better educated, who can do that.
I will instead state this, however: I was not born in this country. I have been a dual-citizen for my entire life. Growing up, I have had friends who were not from this country, who were here on a visa or a green card. And this policy is sickening to me. I can’t understand it. Something in me is rejecting it, not letting me fully process it.
And sitting at Peirce the night this policy came out, I felt alone. The rest of new side was talking and laughing as if nothing had happened, and I didn’t quite know what to do. I wanted to stand on a chair and scream. I wanted to see if people in the room were aware, if they cared.
I think the people at Kenyon are good people. I think we all mean well, and try to be activists. But, this school is full of Americans who have never been anything but American. And, I think in that circumstance, it is unlikely that you have considered being shut out of the States. It is difficult to really grasp at the idea of not being able to go home, whether the US is home or one of the 7 banned nations. For many fully legal immigrants of our country, under the ban, if they leave the US to go to their original country, they may not be able to come back. We have refugees who were told, after strict vetting, that they could enter our country, who are now stuck in war-stricken land, and they aren’t allowed in.
When I was seven years old, and I had just moved to the US, my father got stuck up in Canada. For an unexplained reason, he was not allowed back into the country. They interrogated him for an hour or so at the border in Montreal before telling him he would not be coming home that day. With a valid work visa and an American wife and kids, there was no reason for him not to be allowed in. He was stuck in Canada for a week.
They let him back in. My dad was able to get home, and that was that. It was a mild inconvenience in our lives, and we didn’t think much of it. But, I find myself thinking now—had my father been from Iran, or Iraq, and not Canada; had this story happened today—the ending would have been different. No matter the fact that my dad finished high school and went to college in the US, no matter that his job and home and family were all here, if my dad was Iranian and not Canadian, had this happened this January instead of that October, my father would not have been allowed in.
If you don’t think this ban applies to you; if you don’t have the empathetic depth to understand that to be born American is something that happened to you by chance, that you could have been Syrian or Somalian, just trying to come to the States for school, for work, for a life—then I’m not quite sure you know what it means to be American. We are a nation of immigrants. If you are an American, someone within your family, maybe one, maybe many generations ago, could have been denied when they first moved to the US. If you are American—this ban applies to you. This is personal. Don’t allow yourself to forget it.