Journey of the immigrant ban: where it began and where it is now

The journey of an immigrant in America—particularly one who’s a person of color—has not been an easy or uncomplicated one. President Trump’s recent decision to put forth an executive order banning immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries and cutting down the number of refugees entering the country has been highly contested across the nation, even as the ninth court ruled against reinstating the ban.

Although not many students from St. Paul Academy and Summit School have a direct connection to the seven countries mentioned in the ban, the stance the ban takes in regards to what the place of immigrants and Muslims in this country is has affected many students within the SPA community.

9th grader Lori Li doesn’t have a connection to the seven countries that were banned, but she reacted with confusion and shock when she first learned about Trump’s executive order.

“I was saddened and disappointed when I heard about it because it showed the executive branch’s opinions and views of Muslims,” she said. “Banning foreigners [from coming] into the U.S. only leads to more ethnic conflict and controversy.”

Fear and the sense that hatred is on the rise in America seems to be the common thread among students whose communities are more intimately affected by the ban.

Senior Sarah Murad has noticed an uptake in anxiety in her family, who is afraid that they will be put in unsafe situations because of the message the Trump administration has sent with this ban regarding Muslims.

“It just made everybody more scared—[my family] just went out of the country and before we left my dad was talking to my mom. He was like ‘okay, you have to delete anything from your phone that might cause any kind of suspicion in case they stop you’ even though we were just going to London,” she said.

Murad describes how relieved she and her family were in another instance, when her dad was let back into the country on his way back from visiting Pakistan, the country her parents immigrated to America from.

“[The ban] just increases the fear—we weren’t even going to any of those seven countries but it doesn’t matter [anymore],” she said. “Now, security at airports are so much harsher towards anybody who even looks like they could come from any of those seven countries, so it just makes everybody feel like they’re being watched even more than we already were.”

Junior Ben Konstan was also upset by the ban, but he believes that it might help in the long run by forcing Americans to act.

“This seems a bit backwards, but I felt relieved. Obviously the immigrant ban is a horrible thing for a plethora of reasons, but in terms of the larger picture, we need enough to go wrong to motivate people to fight for what is right … I believe in the end it will create a backlash that will move this country in the right direction,” he said.

Konstan believes that national security isn’t served by this ban, and that it’s a bad way to combat terrorism. Despite its ineffectiveness, he thinks the country should abide by the ban if it is legalized, until it can be challenged and defeated in court.

“Protecting citizens should go above just about everything else, yet this ban simply doesn’t do that,” he said. “The ACLU can lead the charge with everyone who’d like to join to challenge the legality of the ban, but if it holds up in courts, then it is our duty to follow it.”

As Murad graduates and leaves SPA later this year, she worries about entering a college environment at the University of Minnesota that’s much larger and more diverse.

“I’m  anxious to go into an environment where it’s so large—I don’t know anybody or what their views are so it just makes me more worried…[it’s] not going to be quite so easy to feel safe in my environment,” she said.

Murad’s main concern about the way Trump’s ban has played out is how easy it was for him to pass it in the first place.

“What more worries me is that [Trump’s] totally ruining the whole checks and balances thing  … when he was first elected I was like ‘okay he probably won’t be able to do anything stupid because the rest of Congress and everybody will stop him’ but now I’m not even so sure,” she said.

Sophomore Eva Garcia, who belongs to a community that is primarily composed of immigrants from Mexico, also feels like the ban has made her environment much more emotionally and physically unsafe.

“My whole family is stressed and scared every time Trump comes on the news,” Garcia said. “We either go straight to watch it and see what he did this time, or turn it off because we just want to have [one] day where we don’t have to deal with that because … it’s so much fear, it’s really scary.”

The immigrant ban feels like a precursor to harsher immigration policies around deportation to some in Eva’s community, who are in an especially vulnerable position because of the way Trump spoke about Mexican immigrants during his campaign. Trump’s policies around deportation are already incredibly frightening to Garcia, and the immigrant ban just adds to that fear.

“A lot of my family are people who could get deported any second and it’s really scary because I feel like soon something is personally going to happen to my family and I’m not going to be ready,” she said. “It [could] change my life and I have four more years where it’s going to be like that, where everything could change within a minute.”

For many students like Garcia, it feels like they’re just going through the motions, preparing for the worst and hoping nothing will happen to their families under the Trump administration. Although it is really easy to feel alone at this time, Garcia believes that providing support for others will be the best way to move forward.

“You have to support people and I don’t think we’re doing that right now … we’re not creating a place where [immigrants] feel safe,” Garcia said, “[Living in America] is better sometimes from where they were before but it’s not a safe place.”

Murad also sees community support as an integral part of fighting the ban, but she’s seen it play out in a positive way for her community.

“I’ve seen a lot of stories about people in different groups who are supporting Muslims so I guess that’s where the silver lining is,” she said.

However, Murad believes that resistance and even full-out opposition to the ban, should it become legal, is key for those who want to make a positive difference.

“What’s the point of having any values at all if somebody in power can just make some rule and we all have to follow it?” she said. “The people of America have to know—when the president isn’t aware …what is good for this country and what is not.”