In response to President Trump’s sweeping executive order on immigration, nearly 50 higher education organizations united Tuesday to urge the secretary of homeland security to ensure that the United States remains an ambition for the brightest students and scholars from around the world.
On Friday, Trump signed the order, which began a temporary ban on allowing people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entering the United States, and suspended admission of refugees for 120 days.
“I’m establishing a new vetting measure to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the United States of America,” Trump said as he signed the order. “We don’t want them here. We want to make sure we are not admitting into our country the very threats our soldiers are fighting overseas.”
While some Americans welcomed the tough measures, others took to the streets in protest and filed lawsuits to block them. Colleges and universities across the country scrambled to track students and faculty from the seven countries listed, even as some were denied seats on planes back to the United States or deported, and to make sense of shifting rules.
“We support efforts to enhance the nation’s security,” Molly Corbett Broad, the president of the American Council on Education, wrote on behalf of 46 higher education organizations. “We also believe that it is in our collective interest to ensure that the United States remains the destination of choice for the world’s best and brightest students, faculty and scholars.
Read more at The Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/01/31/we-fear-the-chilling-effect-this-will-have-nearly-50-higher-education-associations-unite-to-oppose-travel-ban/