Chaos, fear and anger
Canadian residents among those left in limbo by sweeping U.S. travel ban
Canadian citizens will be allowed to enter the United States even if they also hold citizenship in countries targeted by President Donald Trump’s travel ban, a top Trump adviser told the Canadian government late Saturday.
The word from National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, relayed to the media by Canada’s Washington embassy, ended a day of confusion and turmoil over a vaguely worded Trump policy that had appeared to ensnare tens of thousands of Canadian citizens and abandon 150 years of border tradition.
“The prime minister instructed our national security adviser, Daniel Jean, who was in touch over the course of the day with NSA Flynn to seek further clarification. Flynn confirmed that holders of Canadian passports, including dual citizens, will not be affected by the ban,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office told reporters. “We have been assured that Canadian citizens travelling on Canadian passport will be dealt with in the usual process.”
The Friday had left Trudeau scrambling not only to develop an appropriate response but to figure out what exactly was happening. And it left Canadian communities confused, alarmed and furious, reassessing both their travel plans and their sense of their place on the continent.
“Our community is very devastated,” said Osman Ali, director of the Somali Canadian Association of Etobicoke, before Flynn’s clarification.
The policy had appeared to prevent travel by Canadian students and businesspeople in America. The president of the Canadian Science Policy Centre booked his regular flight to a major American science conference in February. Mehrdad Hariri thought he needed to call Air Canada and cancel, and he was stunned.
“Absolutely shocking,” sad Hariri, a dual Canadian and Iranian citizen. “Absolutely shocking. It’s so disappointing.”
Trump’s 90-day ban, which he framed as an anti-terror measure, is not aimed specifically at Canadians. It is designed to forbid entry by residents of Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and Libya.
But to the astonishment of U.S. allies, the Department of Homeland Security announced early Saturday it did not exempt people who are citizens of those countries and also citizens of countries like Canada, France and Australia, which have never been targeted by such broad restrictions.
Nor, they said, did it make exceptions for people who hold “green cards,” permanent residents who are rigorously vetted.
It was not the “total and complete” Muslim ban Trump promised during a campaign in which he practiced open Islamophobia. But it appeared far more sweeping and punitive than lawmakers, diplomats and lawyers had expected when the details were leaked earlier in the week.
“There has never been a measure like this before,” said Lorne Waldman, a top Canadian immigration lawyer in Toronto, before the clarification.
“One can only assume that they didn’t fully think through all of the consequences of what they were doing in terms of the havoc it’s going to cause.”
“It certainly appears to be unprecedented, and it has certainly been both developed and promulgated in an ignorant and chaotic fashion,” said Robert Remes, a veteran immigration lawyer in Washington, before the clarification.
Some of Trump’s most prominent backers had long suggested that the Muslim ban was mere campaign rhetoric, not to be taken literally. Some Canadian Muslims had assumed the same, then woke up Saturday to learn they had been separated from their families.
“On our end, we were saying, ‘That is ridiculous, that is not going to happen, don’t worry.’ But here we are, and it is happening now,” said Mahmoud Allouch, 26, a University of Toronto engineering graduate who works for a Toronto non-profit and has a sister in Washington he can no longer visit.
Iranian Canadian Congress president Bijan Ahmadi said Trump had chosen religious and national discrimination over “any credible security assessment of each case of someone who wants to enter the United States.”
“We believe that our government and all our politicians, all our MPs from different political parties, should be united on this matter, and should condemn this discriminatory policy that the Trump administration has signed and has implemented,” Ahmadi said.
Ali said Trump had targeted the “poor of the poorest, the weak of the weakest.”
Canadian refugee advocates called on Trudeau to consider changes to a 2004 pact, the Safe Third Country Agreement, which prohibits most people who have been in the U.S. from claiming refugee status at the Canadian border. With Trump’s 120day suspension of all refugee intake, they said, the U.S. no longer qualifies as a safe haven.
Other Canadian politicians spoke out on Saturday. Deepak Obhrai, a Calgary MP and Conservative leadership candidate who was born in Tanzania, wrote on Twitter: “Targeting Muslims for the acts of a few does not fight terrorism.”
Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, another conservative, noted that his province had received 2,000 refugees in the past year.
“We stand ready to assist fed gov’t re: anyone stranded by the US ban,” he wrote.
Toronto Mayor John Tory said the city would continue to welcome immigrants and refugees.
“Our city’s motto is ‘diversity our strength.’ We understand that as Canadians we are almost all immigrants, and that no one should be excluded on the basis of their ethnicity and nationality,” he said in a statement.
An anonymous Trump official told the Washington Post that green-card holders would be approved to enter the country on a “case-by-case” basis.
The official insisted, against all evidence, that there were “few ramifications” to the order.
For Canadians, the ramifications were immediate and serious.
Soroush Ghodsi, 14, is the precocious entrepreneur behind Slik, a web startup aimed at investors. He is in the process of raising $500,000 from venture capitalists. But most of them are American, and he was born in Canada to Iranian parents.
“Because of this order, I may not be able to meet the investors and other VCs we are talking to,” he said. “We even have a commitment from a U.S.-based firm which now seems like I can’t meet anymore.”
Elamin Abdelmahmoud, a BuzzFeed News editor in Toronto, said on Twitter: “I went to the US 6 times in 2016. 2 or 3 times were for work. I’ve been in Canada since Grade 8. But I was born in Sudan, so I’m banned.”