Canadian tech boss stranded stateside

Canadian Kasra Nejatian renounced his Iranian citizenship at 17, got a maple leaf tattoo and has been such an outspoken critic of the Islamic republic that he believes he would be arrested immediately if he ever returned there.

He owns a tech company, Kash, with more than a dozen employees in the United States. He’s also extremely Conservative. He spent years as a staffer for former Tory immigration minister Jason Kenney, who has described him as “one of the most hawkish people I know on national security and integration.”

But according to a bluntly worded executive order from U. S. President Donald Trump, Nejatian’s Iranian birthplace now makes him “detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

“This is virtue- signalling security theatre,” Nejatian told the National Post by phone from San Francisco.

Nejatian — who helped form Canada’s own protocol for screening would- be terrorists — said the new order “almost certainly makes the U.S. less safe.”

For one thing, the ban is so blunt that it excludes foreign- born nationals regardless of their loyalty to the United States, he noted.

In a 2008 count of foreignborn U.S. military personnel, there were 97 Iranian- born U. S. service members and 13 from Syria.

Secondly, Nejatian noted the ban does not cover nationals from such countries as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. Not one of the 9/ 11 hijackers would have been barred entry to the United States under the ban.

“It doesn’t actually target people likely to do harm to the United States,” he said.

The order happened to come down while Nejatian was at Kash’s San Francisco offices.

If it had come a week later, it would have stranded him in Canada, cutting him off from the majority of his company’s operations and investors.

“I would have been a lot less calm about it,” he said.

U. S. National Security Adviser Michael Flynn said Friday that the order does not apply to anyone with a Canadian passport, but Nejatian said his own immigration lawyer has advised him against running the risk.

In the past, Nejatian’s Iranian birthplace has been an object of scrutiny for U. S. border guards, who have asked for proof that he has renounced his Iranian citizenship.

Nejatian is now effectively unable to travel home to Canada, since he may be barred re-entry to the United States.

In the short term, the order means he’s missing a wedding. In the long term, Nejatian is having to figure out how to remotely manage the company’s Canadian operations.

He also has to figure out the logistics of a cross-border marriage, because his wife lives and works in Toronto.

“I’m not an anomaly … it’s screwing up thousands and thousands of lives,” he said.

Since the order was made, Nejatian has been co- ordinating efforts to find Canadian work for visa- holding tech workers rejected at the U. S. border. He said the sheer volume of workers coming to him for help in just one day has brought tears to his eyes.

Nejatian said Kash will always retain an office in the United States, but he has already started to explore shifting operations to Canada.