LETTER: Executive order hurts America

To the Editor:

Last month, I received a letter that I immediately knew would change my life. Years of intense academic focus had paid off with an acceptance to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The very next day, I started connecting with my future classmates. Since then, we have worked together on our studies, and begun work on a number of projects including an educational nonprofit. We are a community of hardworking, academically-oriented individuals with not just big dreams but big plans.

But, I was dismayed to learn of the January 25th Executive Order over Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements. Like my peers, I dreamed of having the chance to attend a university like MIT — the most prestigious technical school in the world. I studied and worked hard for years for the opportunity to do so — as did my classmates, including Mahmoud from Syria and Abdulazeez from Iraq.

Like me, they dedicated years of labor to arrive at this point. But unlike me, they are being unfairly targeted and may not be able to attend due to this executive order. These Muslim countries are, just as the US is, home to some of the brightest students and minds in the world. Many of them want nothing more than to bring their talent and potential to the US, where they could have the opportunity to expand and use it.

Our country has prided itself on attracting and cultivating such opportunity, and it has sustained our nation’s leadership science and technology for decades. But this ban on the entry or return of those with visas and green cards bars such talent from the U.S. This ban achieves nothing more than a false sense of security, and according to leading experts does little to protect Americans. What it does irrefutably do, however, is deal a crushing blow to those who stand the best chance of impacting lasting change to their homelands in the Middle East.

— Lucas Arthur

Wasilla