MESA Memo on Impact of US Supreme Court Decision on Travel Ban

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Jun 27, 2017
MESA Memo on Impact of US Supreme Court Decision on Travel Ban

MESA Memo on Impact of US Supreme Court Decision on Travel Ban

By : MESA Task Force on Civil and Human Rights

[The following memo was issued on 27 June 2017 by the the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) regarding the Supreme Court`s limited stay in the case that MESA has joined as plaintiff against the Executive Order to Limit Entry of Middle Eastern Refugees and Immigrants]

On Monday, June 26, 2017, the United States Supreme Court issued a limited stay in the case that MESA has joined as a plaintiff, IRAP v. Trump, partially reinstating the revised Executive Order (EO) from March 6, 2017 (for MESA’s statement on EO 13780 see here). The Supreme Court’s decision will allow the EO to go into effect except with respect to those individuals who have a “bona fide relationship” with a person or entity in the United States. The Supreme Court explained that a “bona fide relationship” includes anyone with family in the United States, or anyone who has a relationship with an entity in the United States. The Court also enumerated specific examples of who might qualify as having a relationship with an entity in the U.S., including a student who has been accepted at an American university, or someone who has accepted employment with an American company, or someone invited to give a lecture to an American audience. 

For all others affected by the EO, the ban on entry will take effect in 72 hours after today’s order (on Thursday, June 29). This includes nationals of six countries—Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen—and refugees who do not have a bona fide relationship with a U.S. person or entity. For nationals of the six countries the travel restriction will remain in place for 90 days; for refugees there will be a 120-day suspension of admission to the U.S.
The Supreme Court also announced that it will hear the full legal challenge to the exclusionary travel ban in the upcoming term that starts in October. MESA will continue to act as a plaintiff in that case represented by the ACLU. The exception to the travel ban announced by the Court today should protect current students (including those admitted to begin their studies in Fall 2017), those already employed by American universities and colleges, and those already invited to give academic lectures in the United States. The government will likely issue guidance in the coming days regarding how it will assess whether individuals have qualifying ties to the United States.  The remaining restrictions on entry into the United States and the enhanced screening mechanisms that have already gone into effect threaten the academic community’s ability to sustain critical engagement with colleagues from the affected countries. The countries singled out by the Executive Order are all within the Middle East as defined by MESA. Their citizens have suffered enormous violence and dispossession, and the Middle East Studies academic community has both a professional and an ethical responsibility to defend their rights.
MESA’s Task Force on Civil and Human Rights was established by the MESA Board in November 2016 to supplement the work of the MESA Committee on Academic Freedom (CAF) by addressing threats to the civil rights, human rights and political freedoms of the Middle East Studies community broadly defined. We believe that the exclusions of people from six Muslim-majority countries is discriminatory and does damage to academic institutions in the United States. We continue to believe that the EO is at odds with fundamental principles upheld by MESA including the commitment to the free exchange of ideas. MESA will continue its role in the legal fight against the ban and the threat to academic freedom that it represents.
The Task Force is issuing this updated statement, which revises our earlier statements of January 29, 2017 and March 8, 2017 to alert the Middle East Studies community to the probable consequences of the Supreme Court’s decision.
The current 90-day travel ban applies to foreign nationals from the designated countries who: do not have a “bona fide relationship” with a U.S. person or entity, are outside of the U.S. on June 29, 2017, did not have a valid visa at 5pm EST on January 27, 2017 and do not have a valid visa on June 29, 2017. The new EO also suspends all travel into the United States of refugees who do not have a “bona fide relationship” with a U.S. person or entity for 120 days beginning June 29, 2017.
The travel restrictions do not apply to green card holders (lawful permanent residents) or to dual nationals from one of the designated countries traveling on a passport from a non-designated country. The travel restrictions reinstated by the Supreme Court also do not apply to Iraqi nationals (the EO affecting Iraqi nationals was revoked on March 6, 2017).
The Supreme Court’s stay authorizes a foreign national admitted to school for study or hired for work in the U.S. or invited to serve as a lecturer before an American audience to seek a visa based on their “credible claim” to have a ““bona fide relationship” with a U.S. person or entity. This carve-out should be applicable to many MESA members.
Beyond these exemptions, the Supreme Court’s partial reinstatement of the Executive Order has the following effects, among others, that may have consequences for those in the field of Middle East Studies:

  • The restriction of entry to the United States for certain nationals of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen for 90 days.  This restriction could bar students or scholars from these countries from travel to the U.S. for the next three months unless they hold an American passport or green card, are a dual national (with a second nationality from a non-designated country), have been admitted to study at a U.S. institution, hired to work for a U.S. institution or invited to lecture to an American audience, or otherwise have bona fide connections to a U.S. person or entity. Academic institutions should closely follow changes in the interpretation of the Order as legal challenges and agency interpretations begin to unfold.
  • Any nationals of the six listed countries (who are not also U.S. citizens, green card holders or dual nationals) currently present in the U.S. on valid visas should avoid foreign travel as they may face challenges to readmission to the United States. Because of the administrative uncertainty surrounding the implementation of the Executive Order, we recommend that nationals of these countries err on the side of caution. Academic institutions should prepare to support faculty, staff and students legally remaining in the United States until more is learned about the treatment of valid visa holders who seek readmission during the period of entry restriction.
  • Those nationals from the six listed countries (who are not also U.S. citizens, green card holders or dual nationals) currently present in the U.S. with valid visas may be affected by the Order when they seek to renew their visas. The Order refers to restriction of entry and travel of nationals from these countries (rather than suspension of visa processing) but there is no provision to suggest that nationals of these countries will be able to seek visa renewals during the period of restriction of entry. The Supreme Court’s reinstatement of the EO does not directly address this issue. Because the language of the Order is ambiguous, academic institutions should prepare to support affected faculty, staff and students legally in the United States who may be left unable to renew their visas.
  • Applications for admission to American universities at the undergraduate and graduate level may be disrupted by the Executive Order. We advise academic institutions to avoid compromising their admissions standards in anticipation of new immigration policies and to continue to solicit and process applications from the affected countries. We also advise academic institutions to maintain their hiring standards and consider qualified scholars and researchers from the affected countries as candidates in competitive application processes for faculty hiring and selection of post-doctoral scholars.
  • The suspension of refugee admissions to the United States for 120 days (except for those refugees who can make a “credible claim” of a “bona fide relationship” with a U.S. person or entity) may undermine the ability of refugee students and refugee scholars to apply to American universities with which they do not already have a relationship during a period of four months (which may be further extended). This may also affect efforts by many academic institutions to assist scholars at risk through temporary academic appointments. We advise academic institutions to assist scholars and students fleeing dangerous conditions by continuing to admit refugee students and hire refugee scholars, anticipating that visa processing may be possible based on establishing these individuals’ “bona fide relationship” with a U.S. person or entity.
  • The impact of these travel restrictions on campuses across the country can be somewhat mitigated by university administrators who adopt measures to support affected faculty, staff and students. We advise university administrators to maintain a firm commitment to the privacy of personal records, including immigration information, of students and personnel. Under federal law, the enforcement of immigration law rests with federal immigration authorities. Accordingly, campus police may be directed not to participate in immigration enforcement and we advise universities to adopt guidelines to this effect. Finally, the Order may limit the ability of affected individuals to comply with campus procedures and deadlines as they grapple with visa status and entry obstacles. We advise university administrators to interpret all relevant requirements flexibly to maximize the ability of affected individuals to continue their studies and/or employment despite the implementation of the Order.

 

The MESA Task Force on Civil and Human Rights will closely follow the interpretation and enforcement of the Supreme Court’s decision of June 26th, 2017 partially reinstating Executive Order 13780 and provide updated information and guidance as they become available. 
Feb 16, 2011 Lebanon
Jadaliyya Reports By :
Jadaliyya Reports

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 

[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412