Tears of Scots vet trapped by Trump
Scottish vet reveals her heartbreak after being stopped from entering US May refuses to criticise president’s shameful immigration crackdown
A Scottish university vet told of her heartbreak at being one of the first people banned from entering the US under Donald Trump’s shameful immigration crackdown.
Hamaseh Tayari, who works at Glasgow University, said she could not stop crying over her ordeal as the ban on refugees entering America
sparked worldwide chaos. Airlines have been forced to turn away passengers from seven Muslim countries affected.
Hamaseh, who has an Iranian passport, was due to f ly home to Glasgow after a week-long holiday in Costa Rica with her boyfriend.
But she was refused permission to board her flight because it went via New York and she would need a transit visa, which was revoked under Trump’s executive order.
She said: “This has shocked me. We just discovered [what Trump did] at the airport when we went to check in.
“I want people to know this isn’t just happening to refugees. I am a graduate and have a PhD. It has happened to a person who is working and pays tax.”
Hamaseh, who grew up in Italy, joined Glasgow University as a resident in veterinary anaesthesia in November 2015.
She and her boyfriend were trying to find another route home yesterday. A flight to Madrid tomorrow will cost them £2000 and they still have to find a way from there to Glasgow.
She said: “It will cost me a month’s salary just to get home. I am destroyed. I did not know I could cry for so long. It feels like the beginning of the end. I’m really afraid about what’s going on.”
Posters on Facebook were last night suggesting a crowdfunding scheme to get Hamaseh back to Scotland.
Trump’s executive order bans all refugees for four months. It also bans anyone from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen entering the US for 90 days and indefinitely halts anyone from Syria.
Trump says the ban is needed to keep out “radical Islamic terrorists”. His order suspended a programme that last year resettled about 85,000 people displaced by war, pol itical oppression, hunger and religious prejudice.
In retaliation, Iran has said it will stop US citizens entering the country.
Two Iraqi refugees were detained in New York. Their flight was en route to JFK Airport when the ban was introduced. Haneed Khal id Darweesh, who had worked as a US Army interpreter, was released yesterday afternoon. The other man, Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, remains in detention.
Oscar nominee and Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi will not be able to attend the Academy Awards.
Internet giant Google are recalling staff working overseas to the US and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has also condemned Trump’s order.
The American Civil Liberties Union have filed a suit challenging the order.
However, Theresa May refused three times yesterday to criticise Trump’s immigration ban. The PM, on a visit to Turkey, was left severely embarrassed in front of the country’s prime minister Binali Yildirim, who condemned it.
After being questioned on the issue at a joint press conference in Ankara, May said: “The US is responsible for US policy on refugees. The UK is responsible for UK policy on refugees.”
Turkey, a Muslim country, is host to almost three million Syrian refugees.
Yildirim said: “This refugee issue is a global issue. We cannot turn a blind eye and you cannot solve this by building walls.”