Ali Khaledi-Nasab
Yahoo News recently interviewed Ohio University graduate student Ali Khaledi Nasab in a story on “School’s out, but universities are still fighting for their international students in wake of travel bans.”
Khaledi is a graduate student in the Physics & Astronomy Department.
The Yahoo News story dealt with the “thousands of international students whose summer plans were put in limbo earlier this year by two successive executive orders prohibiting entry into the U.S. by citizens of several Muslim-majority countries for 90 days….After federal judges blocked the nationwide enactment of the first ban and then of its successor, the U.S. Supreme Court announced Monday that it will hear arguments in the case this October. In the meantime, the justices upheld the ban for foreigners who have no relationship to the U.S. and who have not previously visited the country. Those with ties to America, presumably including students at American colleges, will be allowed in, for now.”
Ali Khaledi, a graduate student at Ohio University, had planned to build a life in the U.S. after completing a doctorate in physics. But with the introduction of the travel ban and an increasingly volatile political climate, he’s wondering whether he should pursue opportunities abroad instead.
“There’s a cloud of uncertainty above my career,” Khaledi said. “When I came to the U.S., I was planning on staying here, doing research, having a family at some point. Now I’m really wondering [if] this is a place that I want to be.”
Khaledi pointed to a shooting earlier this year in Kansas, where an Indian man was shot and killed in a bar because the shooter believed he was Iranian.
“These types of incidents make me wonder,” Khaledi said. “I changed my lifestyle, I try to avoid going places that I can’t see a lot of international students because I am afraid. What if they don’t like the way I look?”
One of Khaledi’s friends, a doctoral candidate from Iran, left the country to visit home despite his fear that he won’t be allowed back in. His father has had two surgeries, and it might be the last time he is able to see him. Even though his family downplayed his father’s condition and urged him to stay in the U.S., Khaledi said his friend is still choosing to return home.
Read the rest of the story in Yahoo News.
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