The Supreme Court has reinstated a limited version of US President Donald Trump’s temporary order banning travelers from six Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. The court will hear a legal challenge to the ban in October.
The Scotus decision, announced on June 26, casts doubt on the fate of students and scientists from these countries who hope to study or work in the United States.
It bars citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from traveling to the United States unless they have a “bona fide” connection with a person or entity in the country, Scientific American reported.
Such a relationship should be formal and documented, the court said. Examples include a person with an offer of admission from a US university or someone who has accepted a job offer from a US company or organization.
"But that wording leaves room for interpretation," says Brendan Delaney, an immigration lawyer at Leavy, Frank & Delaney in Bethesda, Maryland. “Until there is some degree of certainty in how they’re going to apply this language, if I were a research scientist affected by this, I would be reticent right now,” he says.
All US visas are granted at the discretion of immigration officials, who will now have to determine whether applicants from the six travel-ban countries have a “bona fide” relationship to the United States. Delaney notes that even after the government awards a visa, there is no guarantee that the person who receives it can cross the border into the United States. He hopes that US immigration officials will soon clarify how they are interpreting the Supreme Court decision.
“Right now, we’re back into a wait-and-see pattern,” Delaney says.
Knock-On Effects
But no matter the eventual outcome of the case before Scotus, many researchers worry that uncertainty surrounding immigration to the United States—and perceptions that the country is unwelcoming—may have already driven away some international students and scientists.
“This is a big worry and concern, not just for the individual nations that have been specified [in the ban] but a broader concern that I certainly have heard people from all over the world,” says Katharine Donato, a sociologist at Georgetown University in Washington DC.
She is beginning a research project that she hopes will quantify the impact that the policy has had on international students’ enrollment in US universities.
"There is little, if any, historical precedent for such a shift in immigration," she says.
According to a March 31 white paper from the Institute for International Education in New York City, more than 15,000 university students—mostly in graduate programs—and 2,100 scholars currently in the US are from the six countries named in Trump’s executive order.
Countdown Clock
Trump said last week that the travel ban would take effect within 72 hours if the Supreme Court lifted injunctions on its enforcement that were put in place by lower courts. In a statement on Monday, he called the court's decision “a clear victory for our national security”.
The president signed his first attempt at a travel ban into law on January 27. That order blocked citizens of seven countries—the six affected by the ruling, plus Iraq—from entering the United States for 90 days. It also barred refugees for 120 days, and Syrian refugees indefinitely.
Scientists and students were among those caught up in the ban's messy aftermath. Many who had accepted jobs in the United States or had plans to study at US universities were unable to enter the country as planned, and some US visa holders who had left the country on travel were temporarily barred from returning.
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