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The University of Regina is feeling the impact of a Donald Trump imposed U.S. travel and immigration ban against seven Muslim-majority countries.
U of R President Vianne Timmons said there are currently 91 students from countries affected by the ban.
“They are nervous and anxious even to identify themselves as from those countries,” she said.
Timmons said besides students, several members of the university’s faculty and staff attend conferences in the US, which helps them advance their careers.
“This is not an issue in the United States that doesn’t touch us. It touches us deeply. It touches our students, it touches our faculty and staff, it touches our neighbours,” she said.
“We need to say this is not acceptable in our world.”
Graduate student Zeinab Azadbakht is Iranian-Canadian, and has lived in Canada for the last nine years.
Azadbakht is working on her PhD at the University of New Brunswick and currently lectures at the U of R in her field of geology.
She told reporters Friday her husband and many of her Iranian colleagues do not have Canadian citizenship. They are now worried about what might happen if they attend a geological conference in Seattle later this year.
“I wanted to go and present in that conference, but now I kind of feel that I don’t have to go because other people from my country cannot go and present,” she said.
“That’s the biggest impact that this ban had on the academic part of our lives.”
The concern now is in stark contrast with Azadbakht’s personal experience in Canada.
The academic said she’s never personally experienced negative sentiments toward her Muslim beliefs since moving from Iran nine years ago.
“I would be afraid to walk in the US, in certain places, wearing the hijab. This is my belief and I shouldn’t be feeling like that,” she said.
More than 800 Muslim students currently attend the U of R.
In addition to those Azadbakht knows in Canada, she said other colleagues and family living and studying in the US are nervous about travelling back home to visit for fear they will not be able to return to America.
Azadbakht believes the US is losing out since America will depend on these same individuals in the future as part of its society.
The U of R said the ban could result in an increase in applications from international students. While it’s not something the university has directly seen yet, the school’s president anticipates numbers to rise.
