NEW YORK/WASHINGTON: Yemen is urging the US government to take in dozens of Yemenis who travelled to Malaysia in recent months expecting to immigrate to the United States, only to find themselves stranded by President Donald Trump’s temporary travel ban.
The ban, which was blocked by lower courts before being partially reinstated by the Supreme Court in June, temporarily bars citizens of Yemen and five other Muslim-majority countries with no “bona fide” connections to the United States from travelling there.
The Supreme Court ruling sharply limited the number of people affected by the ban. Largely unreported has been the fate of one group — thousands of citizens of the six countries who won a randomised US government lottery last year that enabled them to apply for a so-called green card granting them permanent residence in the US.
In a stroke of bad luck for the lottery winners, the 90-day travel ban will expire on September 27, just three days before their eligibility for the green cards expires. Given the slow pace of the immigration process, the State Department will likely struggle to issue their visas in time.
A recent email from the US government to lottery winners still awaiting their visas warned “it is plausible that your case will not be issuable” due to the travel ban.
The lottery attracts about 14 million applicants each year, many of whom view it as a chance at the “American Dream.” It serves as a potent symbol of US openness abroad, despite the fact that the chance of success is miniscule — about 0.3 per cent, or slightly fewer than 50,000, of lottery entrants actually got a green card in 2015.
The programme helps to foster an image of America “as a country which welcomes immigrants and immigration from around the world, but also especially from Africa,” said Johnnie Carson, a former US assistant secretary of state for African affairs during the Obama administration. — Reuters
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