Visa holders rush to board flights to US amid reprieve

CHICAGO — Visa holders from seven majority-Muslim countries who were turned away from the United States due to President Donald Trump’s travel ban are rushing to try again, hoping to make it through a narrow window opened by legal challenges.

The federal appeals court in San Francisco denied Trump’s effort to immediately reinstate the ban early Sunday. For now, it remains blocked by a judge’s temporary restraining order, and federal officials have told their staffs to comply.

Advocates weren’t taking any chances, telling people who could travel to get on the earliest flights they could find after the week-old ban was blocked Friday by US District Judge James Robart in Seattle.

“We’re telling them to get on the quickest flight ASAP,” said Rula Aoun, director of the Arab American Civil Rights League in Dearborn, Michigan. Her group sued in federal court in Detroit, challenging Trump’s executive order as unconstitutional.

Protesters sought to keep up the pressure, gathering in Denver and other US cities to demonstrate against the ban. Meanwhile, legal advocates waited at airports in case anything went wrong with new arrivals.

Renee Paradis was among 20-25 volunteer lawyers and interpreters who stationed themselves inside John F. Kennedy’s Terminal 4 in New York in case anyone needed help. They were carrying handmade signs in Arabic and Farsi “that say we’re lawyers, we’re here to help. We’re not from the government,” Paradis said.

“We’re all just waiting to see what actually happens and who manages to get through,” she said.

Some people have had to make hard choices.

A Yemeni family expected to arrive at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Sunday from Egypt after leaving two of their four children behind. The father and two children are US citizens and the mother has an immigrant visa, but the other two are waiting don’t have their papers yet.

“They just don’t want to take a chance of waiting,” she said.

The State Department has advised refugee aid agencies that refugees who had been scheduled to travel before the order was signed will now be allowed into the US. A State Department official said in an email obtained by The Associated Press that the government is “focusing on booking refugee travel through February 17,” and they were working to have arrivals resume as soon as Monday.

US officials have said up to 60,000 foreigners had their visas “provisionally revoked” to comply with Trump’s order. Confusion during the rollout of the ban initially found green card holders caught in travel limbo, until the White House on Wednesday clarified that they would be allowed to enter and leave the US as they pleased.

Even so, green card holder Ammar Alnajjar, a 24-year-old Yemeni student at Southwest Tennessee Community College, cut short his planned three-month visit with his fiancee in Turkey, paying $1,000 to return immediately when the ban was lifted.

“I got to study. I got to do some work,” said Alnajjar, who arrived at JFK on Saturday. He said he fled civil war in Yemen and moved to the US from Turkey in 2015. “I’m Muslim. I’m proud of it. Islam means peace.”

Despite the government’s suspension of the travel ban pending a resolution in court, some airlines were slow to let aboard people from the seven countries.

Royal Jordanian Airlines, which operates direct flights from Amman to New York, Chicago and Detroit, said it would resume carrying nationals from the seven countries as long as they presented a valid US visa or green card.

A Qatar Airways spokeswoman said the airline would begin boarding travelers from the seven countries – Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Yemen, Iran and Somalia. But immigration attorney Julie Goldberg said a Qatar Airways representative told her that immigrants from the seven countries were still not allowed to fly Saturday afternoon.

Goldberg said she was trying to arrange flights for dozens of Yemeni citizens who have immigrant visas and were stranded in the African nation of Djibouti.

She said a supervisor at Turkish Airlines told her that people holding immigrant and non-immigrant visas from the seven countries still were being banned unless they had a special email from the US Customs and Border Protection with the person’s name and passport number.

A 12-year-old Yemeni girl whose parents and siblings are US citizens living in California was finally allowed to depart after “an hour-and-half of fighting” with officials, Goldberg said. It was unclear when she would arrive.

“Her mother is on pins and needles … her father is on the plane with her,” Stacey Gartland, a San Francisco attorney who represented the girl, said in an email.

Refugees also awaited word on their fates.

A Somali refugee said about 140 refugees whose resettlement in the US was blocked by Trump’s executive order were sent back to their refugee camp and it was unclear if or when they could travel.

Nadir Hassan said the group of Somali refugees was relocated to Dadaab camp in eastern Kenya on Saturday. They had been expected to settle in the US this week and had been staying at an International Organization for Migration transit center in Nairobi.

“I was hoping to start a new life in the US,” Hassan said. “We feel bad.”

In Tehran, the semi-official Fars news agency reported that a ban on US wrestlers has been lifted following the judge’s ruling, allowing them to take part in the Freestyle World Cup later this month in the Iranian city of Kermanshah. –Tammy Webber

* * *

Associated Press writers Cara Anna in Johannesburg; Alicia Caldwell in Washington; Amy Hanson in Helena, Montana; Robert Jablon in Los Angeles; Karin Laub in Amman, Jordan; Corey Williams in Detroit and AP Radio correspondent Julie Walker and freelance writer William Mathis in New York contributed to this story.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

How Trump’s immigration order could hurt the US economy

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s executive order suspending immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries could slow the US economy by hampering two of the nation’s top export industries: tourism and higher education.

Trump’s immigration order followed his order to build a wall along the border with Mexico and his vow to rip up NAFTA. Combined, those moves could discourage visitors and students from many countries – not just the seven covered by the order – economists say.

They also reflect Trump’s shift toward an “America First” approach and away from the pro-globalization policies embraced by his predecessors. His combative trade stance potentially could open the door for China and other economic powers to fill a void.

Foreign tourists provide critical support to the US economy. In 2015, they spent roughly $199 billion on items ranging from hotel rooms and restaurant meals to plane tickets and amusement parks. That spending counts as exports. Travel and tourism made up nearly 9 percent of US exports that year.

Some economists say they worry that Trump’s order could create an echo of the post-9/11 period, when travel to the United States plunged, in part because of much tighter security. In the 10 years that followed – a period the travel industry recalls ruefully as the “lost decade” – the US share of overseas travel fell by nearly one-third, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. That cost the US economy $500 billion.

“The message got around the world that the United States was an unfriendly country to visit — that it’s a big hassle to visit there,” said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council and author of “The Closing of the American Border,” a book about US security after 9/11.

Given the disruptions at US airports caused by Trump’s immigration order, which were widely covered by television news around the world, “it’s that story all over again,” Alden said.

Many high-tech companies have also opposed Trump’s order because they say it blunts their competitive edge in recruiting high-skilled talent.

“Apple would not exist without immigration,” the company’s CEO, Tim Cook, said this week. The biological father of Apple’s founder, Steve Jobs, was an immigrant from Syria.

When foreign students attend an American college or university and pay tuition, that spending also counts as a US export. Education spending from overseas reached roughly $36 billion in 2015 – up nearly 50 percent from three years earlier, according to Commerce Department data.

Proceeds from tourism and education help narrow the nation’s trade deficit, a frequent target of Trump’s criticism on the campaign trail. Travel and tourism exports exceed overseas sales of autos and auto parts, which totaled $152 billion in 2015. Agricultural exports amounted to $137 billion.

Yet Trump’s orders “couldn’t happen at a worse time,” said Adam Sacks, president of Tourism Economics. Even before Trump’s executive orders, a strong dollar had made it costlier for foreign travelers to visit the United States.

And weaker economies in many countries, from China to European nations, have begun to slow the flow of tourists to the United States. Sacks estimates that travel and tourism spending barely grew last year from 2015’s record level.

“The P.R. optics on this are terrible,” Sacks said.

Trump’s immigration order and belligerent rhetoric about a wall along the Mexican border add up to “a series of immigration and trade policies that are all conveying to the world that we’re not interested in visitors coming to the US,” Sacks said.

Laura Mandala runs a company in Alexandria, Virginia, that does market research for clients in the travel industry, including the Marriott hotel chain and state travel bureaus. Many of her clients spent less on her services in the years that immediately followed 9/11. Now, she fears a repeat.

“It’s the uncertainty,” Mandala said. “When something dramatic happens, they put a freeze on spending until they can figure out what the environment will be like.”

Concerns are rising among administrators of colleges and universities, too. Over the past decade, the number of foreign students in the United States soared 73 percent, according to Moody’s Investors Service. Overseas students typically pay the full tuition price, receive little financial aid and make up 8 percent to 10 percent of tuition revenue in the United States, Moody’s estimates.

More than 1 million foreign students studied in the United States during the 2015-2016 academic year, supporting 400,000 jobs in the process, according to data compiled Open Doors, a joint project of the Institute of International Education and the State Department.

“Universities and colleges have already begun reporting cases of students and scholars stranded after traveling for reasons including studying abroad, attending conferences, and visiting sick or dying family members,” said Esther Brimmer, executive director of NAFSA: Association of International Educators.

After visa procedures were tightened in the wake of 9/11, the enrollment of overseas students fell for three years, according to NAFSA. One reason for the drop: US consulates overseas were required to conduct in-person interviews with all would-be travelers and students seeking visas. Those tightened procedures caused significant delays.

The State Department subsequently allowed foreign students to seek waivers from the interviews when renewing their visas. But Trump’s order suspends the waiver program.

That could lead to future delays, said Rachel Banks, director of public policy at NAFSA, and potentially limit the flow of overseas students to the United States. –Christopher S. Rugaber

source: business.inquirer.net