Repeal of ‘Muslim ban’ spurs optimism

ISTANBUL — Danah Harbi went to another doctor’s appointment this week without her fiance, as she has for most of her six-month pregnancy, as she has for all manner of appointments and engagements during their long, forced separation. Maybe they will be together when the child is born this spring, but the last few years have been cruel and capricious, and the future has been hard to predict.

Harbi, 38, lives in Falls Church, Va. Her fiance, Mashaal Hamoud, 34, a Syrian national who lives in Lebanon, has been unable to obtain a U.S. visa for several years because of the Trump administration’s 2017 ban on entry to people from a group of Muslim-majority countries, including Syria. The couple had done their best to work around the restrictions. Harbi, an optometrist, traveled to Lebanon several times but was forced to curtail those trips when she learned she was pregnant.

President Joe Biden, as one of his first acts, on Wednesday repealed what critics called the “Muslim ban,” offering hope to thousands of families affected by the Trump-era regulations, if not an immediate solution, given the enormous volume of visa and waiver cases that must be resolved.

The ban initially applied to seven countries — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen — but Iraq and Sudan were taken off the list after a court challenge. (Six Asian and African countries, including Sudan again, were added to the list last year.) The Trump administration said the measure was needed to combat terrorism.

Refugees, their advocates and many others around the world saw something else: anti-Muslim bigotry. The ban heaped hardship on people who had already had their fill, including survivors of conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. For a time, many of the ban’s victims — doctoral students, professionals and blue-collar workers — were stranded around the world, their lives upended.

“I didn’t think the travel ban was going to impact us,” Harbi said. But from the beginning, Hamoud’s application process was beset by delays. After delivering the required documents, the couple said they heard nothing.

“As time went by, I realized that this isn’t about keeping us safe,” Harbi said. “As an American, I felt like we were being discriminated against.”

Now she is more hopeful. “He’s such an incredible person,” Harbi said of her fiance. “I can’t wait for him to prove that to everyone that prevented him from coming here because they thought he was a threat.”