to attend next month'sAcademy Awards.His native Iran, which is where The Salesman was filmed, is one of seven countries listed in Trump's executive order that has placed a 90-day pause on visas and immigration to the U.S. The fallout from Trump's immigration crackdown grew on Saturday as a number of non-American citizens realized they were now barred from the country where they were studying or had lived, perhaps for years.It comes as seven refugees bound for the U.S. were stopped from boarding a plane in Cairo on Saturday and 12 migrants were detained in New York overnight because they arrived just after the executive order was signed.
Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, tweeted on Saturday morning thatFarhadi would be banned from attending the Oscars in what has become yet another fallout from Trump's immigration bans.'Iran's Asghar Farhadi won't be let into the US to attend Oscar's. He's nominated for best foreign language film... #MuslimBan,' he wrote.In a statement, a spokesperson for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which puts on the Oscars, said: 'The Academy celebrates achievement in the art of filmmaking, which seeks to transcend borders and speak to audiences around the world, regardless of national, ethnic, or religious differences. 'As supporters of filmmakers-—and the human rights of all people—around the globe, we find it extremely troubling that Asghar Farhadi, the director of the Oscar-winning film from Iran A Separation, along with the cast and crew of this year’s Oscar-nominated film The Salesman, could be barred from entering the country because of their religion or country of origin.' However, he was given slight hope on Saturday night when the American Civil Liberties Union won a stay on the ban. Panic broke out after Department of Homeland Security issued a directive at 4.30pm on Friday enforcing Trump's executive order to close down theborders to refugees and visa holders from a list of banned Muslim-majority countries.In addition to Iran, the other countries on Trump's blacklist are Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Yemen and Somalia. An Iranian-born actress who stars in Farhadi's The Salesman vowed to boycott the Oscars over Trump's immigration bans. Taraneh Alidoosti, the 33-year-old known as the Natalie Portman of Iran, took to Twitter with a message for fans on Thursday.'Trump's visa ban for Iranians is racist. Whether this will include a cultural event or not, I won't attend the#AcademyAwards 2017 in protest,' she tweeted. Farhadi won an Oscar in 2012 for his film A Separation.
The visa ban sparked fear for some refugees who were already on their way to the U.S. when the order came into effect and were detained on arrival. Hameed Khalid Darweesh, one of the Iraqi refugees who was detained for 14 hours at New York, was released on Saturday afternoon.The 53-year-old had arrived in America on a flight from Istanbul on Friday night, just hours after Trumpimplemented the immigration ban. He had worked for the U.S. government in Iraq for 10years as a translator, engineer and contractor and had a valid special immigration visa to relocate to America.Darweesh pumped his fist in the air outside the airport following his release, as a crowd of supporters cheered him on.'First of all I want to thank the people that take care of me and support me. This is the humility, this is thesoul of America,' he told a crowd gathered outside the airport.'This is what pushed me to move - leave my country and come here. America is the land of freedom… America is the greatest nation, the greatest people inthe world.'Asked what he thought of Trump he said: 'I don't know. He's a president, I'm a normal person.'He was travelling with his wife and three children at the time but they were not detained. They were heading to Charlotte, North Carolina to start their new life in America.
Lawyers for Darweesh and another Iraqi Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, who is still detained atJFK, filed a lawsuit on Saturday morning in a bid to have them released.The two men were on separate flights when immigration officials stopped them on Friday night and took their passports when they landed in New York.Alshawi - who was approved for a visa on January 11 - was flying to America to join his wife and son in Texas. WHO EXACTLY IS BANNED FROM THE U.S? Any non-U.S. citizen from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia or Yemen is now barred from entering the United States.That covers legal permanent residents - green card holders - and visa-holders from those seven countries who were out of the United States after Friday, when President Donald Trump signed an executive order with the temporary ban. They cannotreturn to the U.S. for 90 days.There's an exemption for immigrants and legal permanent residents whose entry is in the U.S. national interest, but it's unclear how that exemptionwill be applied.Visa and green card holders already in the U.S. will be allowed to stay.Customs and Border Protection is notifying airlines about passengers whose visas have been canceled or legal residents scheduled to fly back to the U.S. Airlines are being told to keep them off those flights.Source: Associated Press Eleven other refugees are still being held atJFK airport. Protesters gathered outside the airport on Saturday in anger over those being held in detention.Cairo airport officials said seven U.S.-bound migrants - six from Iraq and one from Yemen - were prevented from boarding an EgyptAir flight to New York's JFK airport.The officials said the seven migrants, escorted by officials from the U.N. refugee agency, were stoppedfrom boarding the plane on Saturday after authorities at Cairo airport contacted their counterparts in JFK airport. The action at Cairo airport was the first there since Trump imposed the three-month ban on refugees. Dutch airline KLM says it had to turn away seven would-be passengers because they would no longer have been accepted into the United States.'We would love to bring them there. That's not the problem. It's just that this is what the U.S. sprang onthe rest of the world - that these people are no longer welcome,' Manel Vrijenhoek, at KLM's press office, said. She said the seven, who were from the seven blacklisted countries, were due to fly with KLM from different airports around the world. It is not clear how many refugees or visa holders arealready being detained across the country.
The Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee said there was chaos at airports and in the air following Trump's ban with the organization already receiving calls for help from green card and other visa holders after being refused admission.'Visas being denied immediately. Chaos at airports and in the air. #MuslimBan will apply to green card holders attempting to return tonight,' the ADC's AbedAyoub tweeted on Friday night. Trump's ban puts a 90-day pause on visas and immigration from seven countries including Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Iran, Libya, Yemen and Somalia. The order also puts a 120-day ban on all refugee entries into the country and declares that refugees from Syria are not welcome until further notice. WHAT WILL TRUMP'S ANTI-IMMIGRATION ORDER DO? Ban refugee entries from all countries for 120 days. Refugees can be accepted on case-by-case basis, including if they are a religious minority facing religious persecutionBlock refugee entries from Syria indefinitely.Cap refugee intake at 50,000 per year.Ban visa and immigration entries for 90 days from Muslim-majority countries on banned list, including Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Iran, Libya, Yemen and Somalia.Suspend visa issuance to countries of particular concern.After that period of time, refugees will be accepted only from countries that the State and Homeland Security Departments decide are safe to work with. It comes as Iran's foreign ministry suggested the country would limit issuing visas to American tourists in retaliation for Trump's suspension of immigration and visas.The official IRNA news agency carried a statement by the Iranian foreign ministry on Saturday that said Iran will resort to 'counteraction' to Trump's executive order.'Iran, to defend the dignity of the great Iranian nation,will implement the principle of reciprocity until the removal of the insulting restriction against Iranian nationals,' the statement read.'It will apply corresponding legal, consular and political actions.'The two countries have had no diplomatic relations since 1979 when militants stormed the U.S. embassy. Google urged its staff travelling overseas on Friday to immediately return to the U.S. if they would be affected by the order.CEO Sundar Pichai issued a memo slamming Trump's order saying 100 employees were affected,Bloombergreports. The tech company feared its employees, even though they have valid visas, would be stopped fromreturning to the country.Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg hit out at Trump condemning his anti-immigration bans.'The United States is a nation of immigrants, and we should be proud of that,' Zuckerberg said.
No comments:
Post a Comment