In exchange for the possibility of barring those who might intend harm, the United States is making detractors out of people who want to be friends.
The month of May is graduation time here in Dubai, too. The seniors at the university where I teach happily toss their mortarboards into the air and pose for selfies, as seniors do annually. But this year something is different: When I ask the new grads where they will go for their summer internships or jobs or even vacations, I'm hearing much more uncertainty than in years past. One Emirati student told me he had to cancel his plans to travel to the United States. "Most of us can't get visas to the U.S.," he said. Another Emirati said she'll probably go to Britain because her plans for a summer internship in New York fell through when she could not get a visa. London is hardly a consolation prize, but why deny these students a chance to visit the United States?
Mind you, the United Arab Emirates is not on the list of six countries whose nationals are the focus of the Trump administration's controversial travel ban (and even that ban is in limbo as it makes its way through the U.S. courts). But I also have a student from Syria - which is on the list, along with Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen - who was accepted by a U.S. graduate school but cannot get to it. Students alsotold me that, ban or no ban, their visas were denied or the response to their requests took so long that they gave up. These students weren't seeking H1-B work visas; they wanted just to study. Now they're taking a last-minute look at Britain and Canada. One Syrian student told me with relief that she was accepted to Carleton University in Ottawa to study journalism. She's one of the lucky ones.
It's not just students who are facing this difficulty. A family I know here had been granted visas by the U.S. Consulate in Dubai. But their attempt to attend a wedding in Indianapolis was blocked at the airport. A U.S. consular officer in Abu Dhabi canceled the visas on their passports and prevented them from boarding the plane. Why? The family told me they weren't given a reason, but they believe it was because their British passports indicate they were born in Iraq. Iraq is no longer on the list of targeted countries
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