The three person panel on immigration came at a valuable time for many others and me to comprehend the nuances behind president trump’s executive order. The most illuminating member of the board was longtime professor of law, Steve Millerman. He began by explaining what had actually happened, saying on jan 25 3 there were multiple executive orders. The travel ban exec order, which prohibited people from 7 countries for 90 days from entering the country. A ban on travel from Syria, and a 120 day refugee ban – which is currently on hold. He then asked the question: what does this hold mean? Apparently, he said, it will take a couple of weeks for the federal district court to make a decision. Trump is not so resolute about what he will do with the executive order, whether he will revise the order, or maybe scrap it altogether. Historically, Donald Trump has been known to make a fast decision, and if it doesn’t work out, instead of finessing in order to fix the problem, he is more likely to scrap the idea and start something new. This method has been a large factor in his success as a businessman and entrepreneur.

The ban is a symptom so so-called islamaphobia, which has been developing over the past decade in the United States. Such factors as the ‘united states of jihad’ (which describes American citizens who convert to terrorism) scare Americans into xenophobic practices. But, most often, these fears are quite unfounded. Opponents of refugee bans site may statistics, but one which is especially potent is the fact that no refugees from primarily islamic countries have ever committed acts of terrorism on the U.S. mainland. Trump claims to want to defeat ISIS, however, if trump truly wants to defeat ISIS, then he has to partner with some of the islamic states. The United States cannot defeat an enemy when, in the region in which it is fighting, Americans are viewed as the enemy as well.

On a positive note, however, the robust reaction from the united states civil society and academia is very promising, showing that not all Americans believe in the changes that are happening with these controversial policies.

President Donald Trump Recently Proposed a travel ban prohibiting entrance of refugees from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Yemen and Somalia into the United states in an effort to stop ‘radical Islamic Terrorism’ from entering the United States. This ban also prohibits green card holders and refugees who have already undergone background checks from entering the US. Understandably, this executive order has been met with outrage and concern throughout the nation. Now many immigrants are concerned that the new approach shown by the Trump Administration may end with unjust deportation. I attended the discussion on understanding President Trump’s Executive order, held by Matthew Hall, Professor Steve Yale-Loehr, Brendan O’Brien, and Pakistani Author Raza Rumi, to better learn what changes we could reasonably expect as an effect of this executive order. I was encouraged to learn, form the ensuing discussion that this executive order is being battled in the courts, and that there is legislation that protects students attending Cornell from immigration officers. Although the executive order has adversely affected millions of Americans, including students here at Cornell and around the nation, I hope that this discussion provided some measure of security and a show of solidarity for those affected by this executive order.

Last Wednesday, I attended a panel discussion held by a law professor, the director of the International Students and Scholars Office, and a Pakistani journalist.  They discussed Trump’s recent changes to immigration policy, as well as specifically what actions Cornell has taken and what resources are available at the school to students who may need them.  The beginning of the panel largely focused on reviewing exactly what has happened.  There have been three executive orders which have imposed a 90 day ban on nationals of 7 Muslim-majority countries, a 120 day ban on all refugees, and an indefinite ban on Syrian refugees.  There are plans for a border wall with Mexico, and more aggressive immigration enforcement policies have been put in place.  Advice for international travel was discussed as well as the role of the ISSO at Cornell.  Raza Ahmad Rumi, who fled Pakistan after an assasination attempt by Sunni extremists, expressed concern at growing Islamophobia and its adverse affects on international cooperation and “homegrown” radicalization.

When the floor was opened for discussion, one of the first questions asked was one that I’ve been wondering about for months now — How on earth is one supposed to keep on top such rapid developments?  Trump has only been president for a month, and every single day brings new controversy, new changes, and new outrageous statements by his administration.  The proliferation of sensationalist and sometimes outright false news stories only compounds this issue — as does the counterpart claims that any and all news by any news outlet is “fake news”.  The panel recommended the New York Times and the Washington Post as reliable sources, as well as Global Cornell.  I had no idea Global Cornell even existed, and I was quite pleased to find that the website keeps a succinct but updated summary of the course of Trump’s immigration actions, including the full text of the initial order itself and the decision of the Ninth Circuit Court.  Global Cornell also provides an extensive list of resources for legal assistance, counseling, events, etc.

As for what Cornell itself has been doing, the university has filed an amicus brief arguing against the executive order, along with 16 other universities.  In November, Cornell declared itself a “Sanctuary Campus”.  In letters from interim president Hunter Rawlings, Cornell has repeatedly asserted its commitment to all of its student regardless of immigration status or nationality.  However, the panel briefly discussed the practical limitations to what Cornell can do to protect its students.  One DACA student asked, quite simply, “How easy would it be for Cornell to be forced to give out my information?”  The answer to this question was rather unsatisfying, and seemed to rely largely on the fact that we’re an isolated campus far from any immigration office, and the fact that our campus has apparently not seen an immigration enforcement officer in recent memory.  Unfortunately, we’re living in times when the precedent of “recent memory” doesn’t appear to be reliable.  DACA is untouched…for now.  The courts have put a stay on the travel ban…for now.  Reportedly, Trump will unveil a new draft of the order sometime within the week.

I’m left with a sort of itchy feeling that I really ought to be doing more than refreshing news sites and muttering about the inscription on the Statue of Liberty.  Doing what?  I don’t know.  Neither I nor my family is directly affected by immigration policy.  I’m a 19 year old student.  I’m not even a law or politics student — I’m a prospective chemist taking 21 credits.  I feel like I have no time, money, knowledge, or services to contribute.  BUT, I suspect I could find some if I were given a specific goal to contribute to.  So, if there is someone out there who is more actively involved in protecting our community’s (and our country’s) spirit of international and inter-religious cooperation, then please let people know how to get involved!  I suspect there are many like me on campus and in the wider community who would love to be doing more than grumbling if presented with the opportunity.

Last week, I attended the Immigration Policy panel discussing President Trump’s executive order. I have to say, this was one of the most eye opening lectures/talks i have ever been in attendance for. As Atticus Finch once said (paraphrasing), “you have to walk a mile in another person’s shoes in order to truly understand what they have to go through in life”. I went to this panel just as a casual learner trying to get a better grasp on what the executive order would entail. I had seen it on the news, but I did not have a strong understanding of what the outcomes of the order would be. While I was casual, others were attentive. For a majority of the people in the room, this executive order would have a direct impact on their lives. Before the discussion started, a sheet of paper was distributed to everyone in the audience. On this sheet was a list of personal rights and various questions in which officers are/ are not allowed to ask when travelling. It blew my mind, all of the things that people from outside the country would have to deal with when travelling or even just at their house. On set of bullet points listed what to do if some officer comes to your house. When Trump won the election, there were the various “cry-ins” and the beginning of an atmosphere of uncertainty and fear and I never really understood why. After the panel discussion, I found out why. I am very fortunate to not have to worry about many of the things listed on the hand-out. While I have not yet exactly walked in another person’s shoes, I have at least put the shoes on and got a feeling for what some of the international members of the Cornell community are going through and experiencing.

Last week I heard a panel on President Trump’s recent travel ban, which banned people from 7 countries from immigrating to the United States. Currently, the ban is being blocked by federal judges, until they make a decision on the action. One symptom of the ban is that it enables people to be targeted for eviction from the country, based on any kind of crime that a person may have committed. The panel suggested that the ban is a result of a symptom known as ‘islamaphobia’, which has been developing over the past decade.

The major issue that I have with the ban is that it prevents ALL people from leaving and going to/from these countries, whereas those who are militant, or terrorists are only a tiny tiny fraction of the total number of people. People from these countries have very important impacts in the United States, and some are citizens of the United States who would be trapped from seeing their families because they still live back in those countries. If these people go back to one of those seven countries, they may be unable to get back to the United States, where they work or go to school.

The panel then went on to discuss what Cornell is doing and has done to protect and educate students that are impacted by this ban. Cornell has filed an AMICAS brief saying the order is unconstitutional, and has worked directly with those students to educate them in the proper manner.

The main observations I had from this discussion were that executive orders can carry a lot of weight, yet the judiciary system can quickly activate its checks and balances to block an executive order. It is good to see the countries checks and balances working as they were intended.

Last week, Esmeralda, a Graduate Student heavily involved with the Rose community and Rose scholars program, took a group of Rose scholars to an event happening on campus. This event was called Understanding President Trump’s Executive Order and focused mainly on the three immigration policies that Trump has created and presented to Congress during his first 100 days as President of the United States. Now, I had no idea of how bad the situation with this so called “Travel Ban” had gotten, not because it has been accepted and enforced by Congress and the Senate, but because of the confusion in the information being presented about it. My understanding of the “Travel Ban”, or known in social media as the “Muslim Ban”, was that all immigrants would be targeted for not having papers, but technically they could not all be immediately deported because that is feasibly impossible. It took me to attend this panel and have three of Cornell’s renowned faculty to explain what is actually going on in our government and who is being affected currently.

Right now, the travel ban that everyone is so worried about is not even being enforced and has been been passed by Congress or the Supreme Court. The other two bans pose a much greater concern because they have the potential to be long lasting if accepted. One relates to border security, the other talks about building a wall along the Texas and Mexico border. The one relating to border security states that  everyone who have committed any kind of crime in the US is a target for law enforcement. There were raids that occurred last weekend around the country picking people up and detaining them based on this order. A little over a week ago, a student in Washington that was studying under DACA – Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals – was picked up and detained.

What is scary it the amount of hatred and fear that has grown from these new orders. Basically, for citizens who generalize people of the same appearance and do not educate themselves on the facts of different cultures, any human that appears to be middle eastern and brown is considered Muslim and thus a terrorist. The amount of damage done to mosques, workplaces, and private properties belonging to these so called “Muslim” people has increased tenfold since the beginning of Trump’s presidential election. It is scary to think that anyone could get harmed simply because of the way they look, and rounded up and detained if they have even the smallest misconduct on their personal record.

It makes me proud to say that I attend a school where the needs of all students are being met to the best of the faculties abilities. In order to keep up with information being presented on these matters, the Global Cornell website has a website has detailed articles that explain what is happening in the government every day. Cornell’s law school offers initial consultations for free for students concerned about their ability to continue studying at this institution. Cornell and 15 other institutions filed a statement saying the travel ban is unconstitutional based on the fifth fifteenth and fourteenth amendment. This is a school that takes any student in any study, and it plans to stand by their motto no matter what might happen.

I hope that the amount of separation that is occurring in the United States, and in some cases around the world, lessens over time. Although I can admit that Trump was not my candidate of choice for President, he is my President and there is a level of respect that is associated with such a title. I feel as though many of these policies seem ridiculous and far fetched, but most importantly Congress and the Senate and the Supreme Court all feel the same way for the most part. There needs to be some faith placed in the system, a political system that this country was founded upon so long ago, for everyone to find some hope moving forward. Donald Trump is the President of the United States, and we must stand united in taking care of each other and being the nation that everyone has always admired and looked up to.

Last Wednesday, I attended a panel on President Trump’s recent executive orders regarding immigration. I found the panel, and the subsequent question-and-answer session, to be very interesting and informative. Given how much is going on in the world right now, it can be hard to sort through all of the information to find the information that is most relevant to us–that is, the information that has the most direct impact on our lives. Although I personally am unaffected by the recent executive orders, I know that there are many Cornellians that are affected, at least in some way. I felt like that was one of the most beneficial parts of the panel. It provided the information to us from the viewpoint of how it would affect us students.

One of the audience members asked a question about where we should look to learn about how these current events will affect us students–since this is an ongoing issue, it was not possible to give many definitive answers at the panel, and so information updates are necessary. While the news sources that the panelist listed off were not surprising, I was unaware that there is apparently a website that is run by people at Cornell that provides an updated list of all of the relevant information to students. Until learning this, I had believed that the primary way that Cornell was providing information to the students was through the emails sent by President Rawlings, which, while useful, can be fairly vague. I am glad to learn that there is another–an almost certainly more informative–method for students affected by these executive orders to get the information they need.

I greatly admire Cornell’s faculty for putting together this panel in order to educate international students on their rights and the current issues facing immigrants in the United States. With President Trump’s recent executive orders targeting American immigration policies, many have been worried about their situation and in America. Of the many topics addressed in the panel, the one that stuck out to me was the ideological effect of these policies on immigrants and religious minorities.

One panelist mentioned that the increasingly Islamophobic atmosphere in the United States since 9/11 has actually encouraged terrorism. Young Muslims in America feel unwanted, hated, and alienated. Policies that prevent Muslim refugees escaping countries torn apart by American wars from entering the United States have only increased anti-American sentiments.
Interestingly enough, this has also had the effect of creating a growing sense of Jewish-Muslim fellowship. Someone on the panel mentioned that there has been increased anxiety among the American Jewish population in the past year, and there have been more and more occurrences of anti-Semitic verbal attacks. The growing prevalence of anti-Semitic ideologies is likely due in part to the legitimizing of these beliefs though the promotion of known anti-Semites such as Steve Bannon and Richard Spencer. As these two religions, Judaism and Islam, have been increasingly persecuted under this administration, it is only natural that they have developed some form of fellowship.

Something I find particularly fascinating about this development is how it relates to the controversy over the term “Judeo-Christian.” So often Judaism and Christianity have been seen as sister religions, with similar “Judeo-Christian values” and similar histories. However, many Jewish people are uncomfortable with the term, as it erases the years of oppression Jews have experienced at the hands of Christians. Today, Muslims are undergoing discrimination at the hands of majority Christian nations as well, making these two religions more closely linked by their own conflicts with the third Abrahamic religion. I wonder if, as this regime’s openly discriminatory policies continue, the trend towards Jewish-Muslim fellowship will continue as well, and one day “Judeo-Islamic” will become a more relevant term for discussing religion in the United States.

I attended the Immigration Policy Panel Discussion: Understanding President Trump’s Executive Order. The panel consisted of Steve Yale-Loehr (adjunct professor at the Cornell Law School), Brendan O’Brien (director of Cornell’s International Student and Scholars Office), and Raza Rumi (a Pakistani author and visiting lecturer at CIPA). The panelists discussed the Executive Orders issued by President Trump, and what they could mean for members of the Cornell community, and the nation as a whole.

It was a very interesting and compelling experience to learn about the Executive Orders and hear the panel give their professional and personal opinions regarding them.  The media has and will continue to play a large role in how we receive our information, and as the panelists told the audience, it is so important to separate the rumors from the facts.  While it was clear where the panelists stood in regards to the Executive Orders, it appeared to me that the panelists’ goal was more about presenting the facts and informing the audience about the implications and addressing the what-ifs rather than addressing the politics.  Which is not to say that politics did and does not play a role, but today’s discussion was about the people, both those who are directly affected and those who are determined to stand with them.

The panelists themselves mentioned multiple times that they could not give definitive answers to some of the questions (which they noted is why there is so much concern and confusion).  Ultimately, the “take-home message” was about remembering that we all have rights, and understanding what they are (and frankly, remembering the fact that we have them). Perhaps the most impactful part of the discussion for me was hearing the fellow members of the Cornell community ask questions and voice their concerns.  Seeing how the people of Cornell rally and support each other was a very heartening experience, one that I hope to continue to have throughout my time here at the university.

The experts on the Immigration Policy Panel Discussion provided profound insights about the effects the recent executive orders have had and continue to have on countless individuals both within the United States’ borders and beyond them. Raza Rumi put forth particularly a powerful assessment of the message that Trump’s Executive Orders send to the people of Iraq. He explained how the United States has infiltrated Iraqi soil, formed a partnership with its country and its people to fight terrorism, and altered the lives of Iraqi citizens and Iraq’s history. Then, with these Executive Orders, the United States has denied assistance, refuge, and acceptance of the people they have been promising to help. America has involved itself in Iraq’s fate, and in denying Iraqi people the ability to enter the country, the United States sends an emotionally damaging and disheartening message to them. This message unjustly suggests that people who have fought terrorism alongside the United States are dangerous, untrustworthy, and unwelcome. Additionally, the panelists discussed how one consequence of the recent orders is that non-citizens of the United States can be detained and, in some cases, deported if they commit or have committed a crime. Hearing about this consequence, I began to think not only of the effect it could have on countless hard-working individuals and their families but also about what precedence this sets for defining what it means to be an upstanding American. Human beings err, and to suggest that an individual is unworthy of living, working, and raising a family in the United States because of one mistake is to deny the the principles of liberty and continual improvement that America champions. A mother with three children and two jobs, for example, should not lose the right to stay in the United States because she wavered for one moment from the inner strength and discipline constantly required to live her life. Also, seeing the Cornell community rally around this cause and its international students was an empowering experience. I am glad to be at an institution for “any person, any study…from any country.”