A big decision in America

According to the text of this draft, which is expected to be signed by US President Donald Trump in the coming days, Syrian refugees will be banned from entering the United States and the issuance of immigrant and non-immigrant visas to citizens of Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, and Libya will be suspended for 30 days.

Part of the order states that this 30-day ban has the potential to become permanent and does not affect the status of people who have green cards or US citizenship.

In this order, Trump announced that if the aforementioned countries do not provide the information requested by the United States, the suspension of visa issuance could be extended.

In fact, based on this order, the White House asks the US Department of Homeland Security to request information from the authorities of the seven countries mentioned regarding the granting of visas to their citizens, and if any governments do not cooperate in this regard, their list should be provided to the White House.

Trump has also suspended the admission of non-Syrian refugees through the United Nations and other international organizations for 120 days, claiming to defend national security.

On Tuesday evening, the US President announced in a message on his personal Twitter account that Wednesday would be a "big day" for US national security.

Trump, who took office on Friday, had said during his election campaign that he would ban Muslims from entering the United States.

Donald Trump is set to sign a law this week banning asylum seekers and issuing visas to citizens of certain countries he deems potentially dangerous. Our country is among the countries that have had visas temporarily suspended and are considered a country with a high risk of sending terrorists to the United States.

The draft order will cap the number of asylum seekers accepted for the current fiscal year 2017 at 50,000, less than the 110,000 people who registered for asylum under the Obama administration. Informed American sources said that the draft order states that the countries targeted by Trump for visa bans are Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen, all of which are countries with Muslim populations.

Details of the draft law banning asylum and visas;
In the introduction to the draft law, Trump introduced himself as responsible for enforcing the Constitution and laws of the United States of America, and said that the draft law is in line with the implementation of the Nationality and Immigration Act and Section 301 of the Constitution, which protects American citizens from the dangers posed by terrorist attacks by foreign nationals.

The first paragraph of the draft bans religious fanatics and those with a history of violence against women and religious bigotry, in addition to people with ties to terrorists, from entering the United States.

Paragraph Two: Policies related to this law, which states that US policy is to protect American citizens from foreigners who are likely to carry out terrorist attacks on this country and to prevent the entry of foreigners who use US immigration law for their own nefarious purposes.

Part Three: Describes the conditions for suspending visa issuance and other immigration benefits for citizens of certain countries. According to the draft:

The Secretary of Homeland Security, the Secretary of State, and the Director of National Intelligence must prepare a report on the information needed for the inspection. This section does not include foreigners who have traveled to the United States on diplomatic visas, NATO visas, or C-2 visas to visit the United Nations.

This section states that in order to facilitate inspections and reduce the workload, entry into the United States of citizens of foreign countries that have previously been identified as harmful to US national interests will be suspended for 30 days.

It has also been stated that all countries will be asked to submit the necessary information, and if they do not provide the necessary information within 60 days, their citizens will be banned from entering the United States by the decision of the President.

Part Four: How to implement unified standards for immigration programs, and it is said that this program should include uniform processes such as interviews to create a database of visa applicant identity information and modification of registration forms such as the questions asked in these forms and mechanisms to ensure that the applicant is who he claims to be and processes to assess the applicant's likelihood of becoming a positive and productive citizen in society, as well as mechanisms through which we can detect the possibility of the applicant's criminal tendencies.

Section 5: Redefining the U.S. Asylum Seeker Program for Fiscal Year 2017. This would suspend the U.S. asylum program for 120 days. During that 120 days, applications will be reviewed to determine what additional processes should be added. These new processes must demonstrate that granting asylum will not pose a threat to the security or welfare of the United States. Asylum seekers who are in the middle of the asylum process will likely be considered after the revised processes are completed.

After the start of the asylum process, priority is given to those who are under religious pressure in their countries and whose religion is proven to be a religious minority in their country.

This section also emphasizes that only 50,000 asylum seekers will be granted asylum in fiscal year 2017 after reviewing asylum review processes, and this is also due to the priority of human rights concerns for the United States.

Section Six: Establishing a safe zone for the vulnerable Syrian population. Based on this draft, Trump has decided to develop a plan to establish safe zones in Syria within 90 days.

Section 8: Expedite the completion of the entry and exit screening system. It has been stated that the Secretary of Homeland Security should expedite the implementation and completion of the screening system for travelers entering and leaving the United States.

Section 9 of the draft law also addresses visa security interviews, which would require the immediate cessation of the “visa interview waiver” program, which would require anyone seeking a nonimmigrant visa to have an in-person interview.

Section 10: Introduces visa reciprocity, which requires the Secretary of State to review reciprocal nonimmigrant visa agreements to ensure that they are truly reciprocal based on visa classifications, visa fees, and visa validity periods. If a country does not treat U.S. citizens on a visa reciprocity basis, our Secretary of State must treat them in the same manner.

Section 11: Data Collection and Transparency, which requires the American people to be provided with information about the status of aliens every 180 days. This information includes the following:

Information on the number of foreigners who have been charged with terrorism-related crimes in the United States or who have been deported from the United States for this reason.
Information about foreigners who became radicalized after entering the United States.
Information on the number of foreigners who have participated in terrorist acts or expressed support for terrorist organizations.
Information on the number and type of gender-based violence against women by foreigners.

In the first part: The purpose of implementing this law is called the key role of visa issuance in the entry of “persons associated with terrorists” and it is said that this law will prevent the entry of these people. On the other hand, there is no better evidence than the September 11 attacks, after which the State Department coupled the issuance of visas with meticulous inspections of the country’s citizens.

Donald Trump signed the order in what he called a move to combat the entry of terrorists into the United States. In addition to Iran, the names of Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Syria, and Somalia are on Trump's ban list.
It is noteworthy that Trump did not name any countries that have been the main source of terrorism in recent years in his controversial order. For example, who does not know that the Taliban's religious schools in Pakistan are the source of religious terrorist ideas?
There are now thousands of Taliban schools in Pakistan – a network that extends to the most remote villages – where large numbers of children from poor families study and are prepared for or promote violence. Saudi Arabia is also a financial sponsor of these schools.
However, Pakistan, whose citizens have even been involved in terrorist acts inside the United States, is not on Trump's list.
The September 11 attacks were carried out by 19 people: 15 Saudi citizens, two Emiratis, one Lebanese, and one Egyptian.

We should know that successful and efficient Iranians have been and are present in all countries of the world and are very successful in the scientific and commercial fields. By looking at these statistics, we can understand the depth of this issue:
Statistics of Iranians living in America:

Geographical distribution: Most Iranians living in the United States are concentrated in California. Among them, Tehranjals is widely known among Iranians. However, very large groups of Iranian Americans are also located in the states of New York, Texas, Virginia, Maryland, and in the cities of Seattle and Atlanta, and almost every major American university has an Iranian or Persian-speaking student club or association.

Success: Iranians living in the United States are considered the most educated ethnic group in the United States.

According to an MIT calculation, this immigrant group earns 50% more than the average in the United States and is considered one of the most successful groups in American society. According to some sources, the contribution of Iranians to the US economy is $400 billion.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in the 2000 census, nearly 27% of Iranian Americans had a master's degree or higher, the highest among American immigrant groups. And more than 56% of Iranians living in the United States have a bachelor's degree, the second highest among 67 immigrant groups in the United States. However, according to another report, the number of Iranian students in advanced university courses has been declining in recent years.

Active presence in society: Apart from Iranian-American celebrities such as Soheila Vahdati, Pir Omidyar, Bijan Pakzad, Firouz Naderi, Lotfi Ali-Askarzadeh, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Andre Agassi, Ali Javan, Kamshad Koshan, Sina Tamadon (Apple computers), Omid Kordestani, Rudabeh Bakhtiar (CNN), Christiane Amanpour, Katherine Bell, and Anousheh Ansari, who are all known to have been on the news waves, many Iranian-Americans have had a very active presence at the urban level and in their communities.

For example, in 2006 in Texas, Houston residents Giti and Ali Saberion donated $10 million to the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and the mayor of Houston designated June 26, 2005, Keeper Day, in honor of the film The Keeper: The Legend of Omar Khayyam, directed by Houston native Keyvan Mashayek. 

In 2004, Houshang Ansari and Shahla Ansari founded the Center for Stem Cell Research at Cornell University with a donation of $15 million.

In Los Angeles, the University of Southern California was the recipient of a $17 million donation from an Iranian engineer in 2007, while the University of California, Irvine received a $30 million gift from Mr. Meraj.

In San Francisco, San Francisco State University received its largest gift ever from another Iranian couple, Neda and Mani Mashauf, in the amount of $10 million, and Swedish Covenant Hospital in Chicago received a $4 million gift. It was another good thing from an Iranian.

Portland State University even named its engineering school after Dr. Fariborz Masih, in recognition of his $8 million gift.

In the field of the theater and film industry, we can also mention Dariush Khonji, the cinematographer of many successful Hollywood films, Amir Mokri, the cinematographer of the Transformers film series, Farhad Safinia, the screenwriter, and Ramin Javadi, the famous Hollywood composer and composer of the series Prison Break and Game of Thrones, and Bob Yari, the Hollywood producer and owner of four film production companies in the United States.

The official Iranian-American population in the 2000 census was over 370,000. This number includes people who voluntarily identified themselves as "Iranian" (or of Iranian descent). However, in the official 2010 US census, this number decreased to 289,465.

But the Iranian Interests Protection Office in Washington, D.C., reportedly claims to have 900,000 passport files from Iranians in the United States. The National Iranian American Council believes the Iranian-American population is over one million. 

However, Iranians have been present in American society for many years, such that the first Iranian to officially accept United States citizenship was Mirza Mohammad Ali Haj Sayyah, who also participated in the Constitutional Revolution.

The level of international respect for Iranians before and after the revolution is very noteworthy: 

The Iranian passport was a universal visa. Its color and appearance were always considered and respected.

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former head of the Expediency Discernment Council, told members of his campaign team for the 2013 presidential election that Iran had honors that could not be hidden, both before and after the revolution, and that Iran was a beloved country.

"I have traveled and driven all over Europe by car. From one country to the next, I just showed my passport. But now Iran has reached a point where people are afraid to take their wives with them on foreign trips because they will be disrespected."

The 1979 revolution and the Revolutionary Export Program, events such as the hostage-taking of the US embassy, ​​the Iranian government's international behavior both in the region and around the world, and its failure to comply with international laws, have suddenly brought the value of the Iranian passport close to zero, drastically lowering it.

It should be noted that, internationally, before the hostage-taking took place, Iran's international image was not so bad. It had become a revolution, and for many Western countries it was interesting that a huge revolution had taken place in a country. But when Western television showed a group of Iranians climbing the wall of the US embassy, ​​blindfolding the American hostages and behaving rudely to them, the image of the Islamic Republic changed completely, and many in the West concluded that the extremists had taken over the Iranian revolution.
In response to the question of how American visas were issued to Iranians during the time of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who was working at the Iranian embassy, ​​Mr. Limbert said: "At that time, we usually gave Iranians a 4-year, multiple-entry visa. The Iranian passport had a lot of validity. Iranians who came to America on student visas and Iranian tourists helped our economy."

During Ahmadinejad's reign, Iran's foreign policy took a very serious turn. Countries like Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Central Asian countries that had signed visa waiver laws with Iran re-imposed visa requirements. During this period, due to his style of speech, Holocaust denial, dealings with neighbors, participation in conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, and interference in neighboring countries and circumventing sanctions, the value of Iranian passports had dropped sharply.

Current status:

According to the classification of Henley & Partners (an international company that operates in the field of residency and citizenship, and this company annually prepares and publishes reports on the validity of passports of different countries in the world, which are known as a measure of the validity of these countries in the world), in 2013, last year, the Iranian passport ranked 86th out of 93 passports in the world in terms of validity. Pakistan, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan are at the bottom of this table.

This issue is widely discussed by some people. To the point where even Hassan Rouhani, in order to get votes from the people, promised, along with other big and strange slogans (none of which were implemented), that he would restore the validity of the Iranian passport! It is clear that this statement has more advertising and propaganda value than anything else. No more. That is, it is useful for collecting votes and chanting slogans.

Let's know... Some Iranian government officials and officials also have American passports, but they hide them: 

The green card issue of another member of the Paydari Front took shape in the 11th presidential election. With the introduction of Bagheri Lankarani as the front's main candidate, news of his American green card and his father's presence in the United States emerged.

In response to these words, Bagheri Lankarani said that they spread rumors that our family is a formality to destroy me by this means, while we have a satisfied family and we consider this to be a blessing from God. They even asked me again why I have a relationship with my father. I will say this for the first time that after becoming a minister, Hojjatoleslam Golpayegani saw me on the sidelines of a meeting and said that now that you have become a minister and your father is also abroad, do not think that you should cut off your relations, but rather that your relations should increase and religious duty dictates this, so I have maintained a relationship with my father based on religious duty!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Circumventing US laws
The green card of Mohammad Nahavandian, the President's Chief of Staff, was first discussed in 2006, when he traveled to the United States in the guise of senior advisor Ali Larijani, then secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, and the Financial Times newspaper claimed that he met and consulted with American officials and senators.

The trip took place at a time when it was announced that Iran and the United States were holding talks on Iraq, and some believed that Nahavandian had gone to the United States to lobby for Iran’s nuclear program and had established good connections. At the time, Ali Larijani explained about his advisor’s trip to the United States that “since the United States does not issue visas to Iranian diplomats, we used Mohammad Nahavandian’s trip to the United States to convey our concerns to Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s representative to the United Nations.” The Iranian Foreign Ministry officially announced that Nahavandian’s trip was personal and had nothing to do with relations between the two countries. The Washington Times revealed that Nahavandian holds an American green card, and the US Department of Homeland Security wrote: “There was no reason to deny Mohammad Nahavandian entry to the United States last month.”

At the time, when faced with questions about Mohammad Nahavandian's presence in Washington, then-US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice referred to Nahavandian as a senior diplomat and said that her government would try to understand the legal basis of the issue and take appropriate action. Rice's statement probably meant that the US was considering revoking Nahavandian's green card.
Mohammad Nahavandian was a revolutionary fighter in his youth. At the age of 26, after the explosion at the office of the Islamic Republic Party, he became the deputy coordinator of the Ministry of Commerce and then the deputy director of planning and programming of the Ministry. But then he left there due to disagreements with others and went to Qom to continue his Islamic studies. And 2 years later, in 1982, he went to America. In America, he established an institution called Islamic Research and Information in Washington and established contacts with 40 Islamic centers in America for cooperation between them. As a result, a council was formed called the Islamic Cooperation Council, which held meetings in a state every month. He spent 8 years in America with his family and received a master's degree and a doctorate.

Mohammad Nahavandian is not the only figure in Hassan Rouhani's team whose green card rumors are swirling these days. The Iran Nuclear website recently published a story and wrote that a key member of Mr. Rouhani's foreign policy team had planned to completely exile himself and settle in the United States a few months ago. According to the report, he appeared at the US consulate in one of Iran's neighboring countries about 3 months ago and completed the necessary interviews to receive a permanent residence permit.
This claim was not proven, but Mohammad Zarif, Hassan Rouhani's choice for the Foreign Ministry, was questioned about the rumor of having a green card in the National Security Commission meetings. Zarif explained that I have never had a green card and do not have one, while I have been eligible to receive it for 10 years; my family and children live in Iran when they could not be in Iran; after returning to Iran, I have never traveled to the United States, while I had invitations from three prestigious American universities to teach !!!!!!!!!!!!

Finally, it should be said that Mr. Trump's decision will not only prevent many families from seeing each other, but will also have a negative impact on the processing of the cases of many asylum seekers in Turkey.

According to Trump's new draft plan, the admission of refugees to the United States will be suspended for 4 months. Only after this period will refugees be accepted, after careful review by the US government and security and intelligence agencies, and only from certain countries. The entry of refugees from the war-torn country of Syria will also be banned.

Many Iranians who left Iran in the months and years following the Green Movement went to Turkey and from there applied for asylum in the United States. Some of them are still in Turkey waiting to be allowed to enter the United States.

"This will likely only benefit smugglers with their exorbitant prices and increase the illegal entry of refugees into Europe. The bigger picture is that America's humanitarian responsibility for refugees will be shifted onto the shoulders of Europe, especially Germany."