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University of Michigan Ford School of Public Policy
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Caroline MacGregor: You're listening to 89.1 WEMU. I'm Caroline MacGregor, and my guest today is Jonathan Hanson. He's a lecturer at Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy with the University of Michigan. And we're here today to talk about the federal travel ban that has just been put in place. But more specifically, we're talking about the ban as it relates to racial bias. First of all, Jonathan, thank you for joining me!
Dr. Jonathan Hanson: Well, thank you! I'm happy to be here!
Caroline MacGregor: President Trump's long anticipated travel ban marks a significant shift in U.S. Immigration policy. What do you think the implications of this controversial measure will be, or how will it affect particular sectors of our society?
Dr. Jonathan Hanson: Well, this is one more step in a broader agenda that is moving against immigration and travel to the United States. I think that this travel ban, in particular, is focused mostly on countries that don't typically send a lot of travelers to the Unites States, compared to many other countries. But we are still talking hundreds of thousands of people who will be now prohibited from coming to the United States, compared to what the normal patterns of travel would be from those places. And there's no doubt that the economic impact on that is significant. If you look at the university sector in particular, there's a lot of concern about a decline in international students. And one thing the travel ban does include is an end to the issuance of student visas from all of these 19 countries that are named. And that's not gonna help the situation at all for universities who rely on international students for significant amount of revenue. And it's just helpful for our economy in general.
Caroline MacGregor: There was a lot of surprise expressed that white South Africans were brought into the country while the travel ban affects countries with generally Black and Brown populations. What are your thoughts about the fairness here?
Dr. Jonathan Hanson: Well, the issuance of the travel ban was not a big surprise because, even on his first day in office, President Trump issued an executive order laying out the groundwork for members of Homeland Security and intelligence agencies to start to identify countries where we felt that vetting of people for visas was not being done effectively enough. But when you point to the issues of the racial composition of these countries, yes, it's clear we're talking about generally countries that are composed of Black and Brown people or that have Muslim populations. It's hard to ignore the fact that President Trump's actions have largely targeted people coming from those kinds of countries and the direct and clear contrast with the way that he's treated white South Africans. I think that's crystallized by the fact that Trump has decided to remove refugee status, or what we call temporary protective status, people coming from countries like Afghanistan or Venezuela or Haiti. And so, ending basically our refugee program, but at the same time, creating refugee status for a new group of people. And we don't need to necessarily get into the details of who's being oppressed and where. That's happening in a wide variety of places around the world, and that's why countries take in refugees. So, Trump's selection of where to offer refugee status is really striking.
Caroline MacGregor: How does this travel ban compare to similar actions taken by past administrations in your mind and what lessons can be learned from these instances?
Dr. Jonathan Hanson: Well, the most direct comparison with the current travel ban is the travel ban that came in the first Trump administration. That one actually required three different attempts before they were able to formulate a travel ban that survived court scrutiny. It was widely called the Muslim travel ban because all of the countries affected were majority Muslim populations, and President Trump's own rhetoric referred to it as a Muslim ban. And this created a lot of scrutiny by the courts, who saw this as a violation of religious freedom, that we shouldn't be focusing our immigration policy based on religion. So, there was some reformulation of the policies. And finally, there was a five to four Supreme Court decision approving the third version of the travel ban. I think what the Trump administration has done now is directly rely on what they learned the first time around. And they've crafted a travel ban that is designed to avoid the legal entanglements that they experienced in the first administration. The list of countries is now broader. It crosses different continents. It's clearly not focused on majority Muslim countries, although many of the countries meet that description. They go into technical details about what kinds of visas are allowed and under what conditions there are exceptions. And so, that sort of meets the legal criteria of the court.
Caroline MacGregor: If you're just joining us, I'm talking with Jonathan Hanson. He's a lecturer with the Ford School of Public Policy, and we're talking about the current federal travel ban. We've been seeing the impact here locally in Washtenaw County. Are you surprised at this? I mean, I know we've had some Chinese nationals that have been accused of doing nefarious things with regards to agriculture. But for students who have just looked forward to and worked hard toward coming to America to complete their education, this is causing a lot of trouble for the universities themselves, as well as the students. What do you feel is about the impacts we're seeing here in Washtenaw County? I mean, here we've got the University of Michigan, we've got Eastern Michigan University, other educational establishments. It doesn't look good, does it?
Dr. Jonathan Hanson: It's a very bleak picture right now. And it's not just the travel ban. It's a whole set of policies that are making it difficult for students to get visas and then some very high-profile cases where student visas were revoked and people were actually arrested on the streets and put into detention. It's really cast a pall over the entire university where many students are really terrified about what was happening. But let's kind of break it down into the different parts, and let's first start about, like, what is the economic impact of having international students in places like Washtenaw County? So, let's start with the University of Michigan. We're talking about 8,600 international students. That's about 16% of the student body. Most of those are graduate students--about 72%. And then at Eastern Michigan, there's another 635 or so international students enrolled. Between the two universities, that's over 146 countries represented. And the economic impact of having all of those students here is enormous. You know, studies estimate that's at least half a billion dollars being contributed to our local economy, probably five or so thousand jobs being supported, and we just can't overlook the important role that these students play in supporting our economy and just making Washtenaw County a great place to live. Just think about everything that a student needs. They need housing. They need to pay for food. There's retail, transportation, health insurance. All of the sectors of the economy are benefiting from that. And then, when you go to the question that you posed about for many students, what's the effect on them? For them, this is a dream. You know, coming to the United States for graduate education is a dream of so many people. And what's really sad about what's happened over the past six months is that this dream is being tarnished. People are now becoming scared of coming to the United States for education. The travel ban itself is just a small component of that. If you look at the number of students who are coming from these 19 countries that have been identified, that's not all that many students in the grand picture of the University of Michigan's perspective. It's just literally about a hundred of those students would come from these affected countries, mostly from Iran and Venezuela. But the broader picture is far more disturbing. And about the impact, we're worried that students are simply, even if they're not coming from a place that has a travel ban, they won't get their visas processed in time. Or worse, they'll just be deterred from coming to the United States altogether and choose to go to Canada or the United Kingdom or some other country, because we've just made the United States a hostile place to come for education. So, those are the concerns, and they sort of resonate throughout the university community. And certainly, they would have an impact on Washtenaw County as a whole.
Caroline MacGregor: What are your predictions as far as new poll data in the future on this ban? You know, Trump, obviously, got support initially, but we see what's going on in L.A. What do you think is going to happen in the public mindset moving forward? And then, what challenges, administrative and logistical, will the government face in actually implementing this travel ban?
Dr. Jonathan Hanson: Well, predicting the future, of course, is always a bit hazardous. But what we are seeing from the most recent polling data suggests the American public is turning against Trump's immigration policies. And when you look in particular at deportations and the law enforcement actions that are happening in cities like Los Angeles, opinion is, at best, mixed--sort of 50-50. But with deportation policies in particular, opinion is negative for Trump. That suggests what's happening now will continue to mobilize opposition to what the administration is doing. The acts of violence that we're seeing in some of our cities, a mixture of small number of protestors and some things, but significant violence by police against citizens who are protesting peacefully. I think we've all seen on social media people not doing anything particularly disturbing, getting shot by rubber bullets. I mean, these kinds of stories will accumulate and lead to greater opposition to what's happening. With the administration of the travel ban, that itself is not particularly difficult at ports of entry. And even airlines help by refusing to board passengers on U.S.-bound flights, unless they have an appropriate passport and visa. Of course, illegal border crossing is harder to control, but the number of travelers that we're talking about is not enormous from these 19 countries compared to the broader scope of travel. So, I don't think it's a big administrative lift for them to implement this ban.
Caroline MacGregor: I've been speaking today with Jonathan Hanson. He's a lecturer at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. And we've been discussing the federal travel ban in respect to how it has possibly ignited racial bias. There's a big debate there. Thank you for joining me today!
Dr. Jonathan Hanson: Very happy to be here! Thank you!
Caroline MacGregor: This is 89.1 WEMU-FM Ypsilanti.
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