Any­one who has ever ap­plied for a visa to the US knows ful­ly well that the em­bassy doesn't just hand them out. It's a process that in­volves the ex­pen­di­ture of a con­sid­er­able amount of time and mon­ey, and tests the lim­its of a per­son's pa­tience.

Even af­ter be­ing ap­proved, stand­ing be­fore an im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cer at the port of en­try is not al­ways a wel­com­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. This is es­pe­cial­ly the case if you are pulled aside for a sec­ondary/back room in­spec­tion. Hav­ing been sub­ject­ed to those on more than one oc­ca­sion, what they call an in­ter­view seemed more like an in­ter­ro­ga­tion. My fa­ther al­ways says that if you have done noth­ing wrong, then you have noth­ing to fear. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, his ad­vice pro­vid­ed lit­tle com­fort dur­ing those times when the prospect of be­ing de­tained and de­port­ed be­came all too re­al.

Sim­i­lar feel­ings of trep­i­da­tion have de­scend­ed up­on Arabs world­wide fol­low­ing Pres­i­dent Trump's ex­ec­u­tive ac­tion tem­porar­i­ly bar­ring en­try to trav­ellers from cer­tain Mus­lim coun­tries. It's a sce­nario that has left many for­eign­ers, and even some Amer­i­cans won­der­ing if the door of im­mi­gra­tion will now be hard­er to get through and may even­tu­al­ly close.

Be­fore I go any fur­ther, let me be clear–the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca has the sov­er­eign right to pro­tect its bor­ders. This in­cludes de­ter­min­ing and set­ting the cri­te­ria for who is al­lowed in­to the coun­try and who is kept out. It is al­ready the stan­dard pol­i­cy of em­bassy per­son­nel and bor­der pro­tec­tion agents to treat every­one want­i­ng to en­ter the US with the sus­pi­cion of in­tend­ing to stay per­ma­nent­ly. But some Arab na­tion­al­i­ties, Chris­t­ian and Mus­lim alike, are now fac­ing the added sus­pi­cion of ter­ror­ism, and the re­sult­ing dra­con­ian mea­sure of be­ing au­to­mat­i­cal­ly de­nied en­try.

How­ev­er, it should be not­ed that this is not the first time that such a re­stric­tion has been en­act­ed for rea­sons of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. Eu­ro­pean Jews flee­ing the per­se­cu­tion of Nazi Ger­many were not read­i­ly ac­cept­ed by the US be­cause the Gov­ern­ment feared they could be act­ing as spies. Once the Sec­ond World War had end­ed and the Cold War was in full swing, Con­gress passed the Mc­Car­ran-Wal­ter Act in 1952 which was aimed to cur­tail im­mi­gra­tion from Com­mu­nist coun­tries.

More re­cent­ly, in the wake of the Iran Hostage Cri­sis (1979), then de­mo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­dent Carter is­sued ex­ec­u­tive or­ders that banned all Ira­ni­ans from en­ter­ing the coun­try and in­struct­ed any of their na­tion­als on stu­dent visas to re­port to im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials to face pos­si­ble de­por­ta­tion.

So why all the fuss about ban­ning and de­port­ing peo­ple now, es­pe­cial­ly when it in­volves brown-skinned, prone-to-vi­o­lence for­eign­ers? Trump-sur­ro­gates and some Re­pub­li­can law­mak­ers have de­fend­ed this pol­i­cy, stat­ing that it was the Oba­ma ad­min­is­tra­tion that iden­ti­fied these "coun­tries of con­cern" in the first place. The brouha­ha is thus be­ing de­scribed as lib­er­al pro­pa­gan­da and "so­cial jus­tice war­riors" run amok.

But putting aside the le­gal and moral im­pli­ca­tions, this ban is a com­plete con­tra­dic­tion of what Amer­i­ca claims to rep­re­sent. Apart from tout­ing it­self as "the land of the free", there is al­so the nur­tured im­age of be­ing a bea­con of hope for those in search of a bet­ter life. See­ing the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty has been ro­man­ti­cised as part of the im­mi­grant ex­pe­ri­ence and part of the na­tion­al iden­ti­ty of ful­fill­ing the "Amer­i­can Dream".

It is the prover­bial "shin­ing city up­on a hill"–a land of laws and op­por­tu­ni­ty, where strangers who ar­rive with noth­ing, through hard work can achieve any­thing. They may not all be shin­ing suc­cess sto­ries, but the ma­jor­i­ty do con­tribute, be they taxi dri­vers and kitchen staff, to small busi­ness own­ers and teach­ers. And, yes, some may even turn out to be crim­i­nals who in­tend to com­mit acts of ter­ror. But if the US is go­ing to stop eat­ing ap­ples be­cause a cou­ple spoils the bunch, then they are go­ing to miss out on the pos­i­tive ben­e­fits that the rest pro­vide.

Since im­ple­ment­ing the or­der, chaos and con­fu­sion have gripped air­ports, con­sulate of­fices, and court rooms, with too many ques­tions and too few an­swers as to how it's sup­posed to work. The haste in which it was im­ple­ment­ed shows not on­ly a lack of thought and prepa­ra­tion but the will­ing­ness of the US to com­pro­mise its own val­ues.

Though it was done for the sake of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, it was mo­ti­vat­ed by fear and not by rea­son. The law can­not be de­void of jus­tice, and it is un­just to treat peo­ple from an en­tire coun­try or an en­tire re­li­gion with scorn and mis­trust. Amer­i­ca must ul­ti­mate­ly rec­on­cile what it wants to be–an open, plu­ral­ist so­ci­ety, or one that's fear­ful and closed off to the world.

There's a po­em en­graved on a bronze plaque that's mount­ed in­side the low­er lev­el of the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty's pedestal. Ti­tled The New Colos­sus, and writ­ten by Em­ma Lazarus, it fa­mous­ly reads, "Give me your tired, your poor, Your hud­dled mass­es yearn­ing to breathe free." Part of what makes Amer­i­ca great are the peo­ple who want to live there and be­come cit­i­zens them­selves. But for some, that hope has been torn asun­der. And the torch of La­dy Lib­er­ty has been ex­tin­guished.

Ryan Hadeed