mauve

Khizr Khan, the Pakistani immigrant and father of a fallen US Soldier, who spoke against the proposed Muslim travel ban during the 2016 campaign was apparently told today that his "travel privileges are being reviewed" and that he can't leave the country to give a talk in Canada.

I'm not clear that this is related, but it seems strangely coincidental that it happened the same day the new EO was signed.

Is there even a procedure for banning someone from leaving the country, outside of a judge's order for someone on bail or facing indictment? Or maybe he's been told that he won't be allowed to reenter the US, but he's a citizen and not from one of the countries covered by the order.

http://www.salon.com/2017/03/06/khiz...-under-review/

lonelycrowd

Well, calling Abu Dhabi this morning was just as much of an exercise in futility as calling the Kentucky Consular Center yesterday. Two of the locally-employed persons I managed to talk to seemed unaware that there even had been an executive order today, and they were completely unwilling to escalate my inquiries to a career foreign service officer. So much for a flawless roll-out this time...

GUWonder

EO 2.0 goes toward showing what a disaster and foolish development the first version of the "Muslim ban" was. It speaks to utter incompetence unleashed in the end of January.

Yes there are, in at least some ways.

Passports and/or applications for passports can be administratively denied/revoked/reviewed. This applies under some sets of circumstances even absent court orders/court involvement aimed at a specific individual..

Prior applications for (and behavior under) US visas (or even US visa waiver program), US permanent residency, and naturalization can also be reviewed administratively and then used to go after the person. This applies as much to Khizr Khan as it does to those naturalized like Trump's first ex wife and Trump's current wife, but "discretion" is used in determining who to target and not target for such things.

But maybe it was a Global Entry revocation that got him concerned?

GUWonder

Khizr Khan's Global Entry -- and Precheck -- privilege has been compromised administratively?

84fiero

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/0...toronto-235727

Some articles have stated that they attempted to contact Canadian officials for comment, but so far I haven't seen where there have been any statements by Canadian agencies in response to the queries.

GUWonder

Canada's not giving him problems, as he's admissible to Canada unless and until his US passport and/or naturalization is revoked.

His comment is directed at his relationship with the US Government. I no longer have any doubt about this.

But Khizr Khan's situation is not a result of the "ban" EOs that are at the heart of this thread.

Xyzzy

If I were Khan I'd have gone to the airport and at least attempted t take the trip. Failure there would have garnered a lot more publicity for him than an out-of-context message about his travel privileges being revoked.

GUWonder

Maybe he doesn't want to be called for creating a media circus and voluntarily backing out of travel to Canada after being checked in for the flight and being boarded? He's currently admissible to Canada unless and until his US passport or naturalization is revoked. He can validate the status of his US passport by contacting State. If he wants to know if his passport has an adverse notation in TECS, there are some ways to figure that out too or even already know it.

When Global Entry and/or PreCheck get revoked or suspended, some people get worried. In some such situations, it makes sense to remain in the US rather than risk getting stuck outside of the US by positioning one's self outside of the US.

I won't go into this too much at the moment at least, but when the USG flags down someone in GE, noticing a GE problem in GOES can be a sign that the passport has been flagged/restricted and that there may even be other underlying problems in the mind of some of those in government.

84fiero

http://www.syracuse.com/us-news/inde...es_review.html

WilcoRoger

It's a constitutional right for citizens to leave and to return to the country. The constitution guarantees that noone can be stripped of citizenship, born or naturalized.

True, not the constitution of the USA.

GUWonder

US naturalized citizens can be stripped of US citizenship under a limited set of circumstances. Usually the government doesn't care to do this for most such situations where those circumstances apply, but other times the government does take action and do so. Suspected war criminals who have been naturalized as US citizens have sometimes been subjected to efforts to strip them of US citizenship.

https://www.uscis.gov/policymanual/P...e12-PartL.html

Commenting publicly with details can undermine one's own ability to defend one's own interest against a governmental claim/action.

TWA884

Please let's get back on topic which is the executive order restricting the entry to the US of nationals of certain Muslim majority countries.

If you wish to discuss Khizr Khan's situation, please start a new thread (and save the political commentary for OMNI/PR).

Thank you,

TWA884
Travel Safety/Security co-moderator

WilcoRoger

Guys, I just wonder if there's more (much more) hype than substance about this whole thing. As all 7 (now 6) countries require a visa to visit the US, it would have been a simple matter of instructing State not to issue visas to citizens of these countries. With this latest reiteration greencard holders, etc are exempted from the ban, anyway.

________

By the way - Trump refers to 9/11 (which happened over 15 years ago). The perpetrators were Saudis, Lebanese and Egyptians. Are these countries on the banned list? Well, no.

catocony

This is all about reinforcing the paranoia. Fear the world, vote for me, I'll protect you. This is his way of fulfilling that promise. Nothing more.

lonelycrowd

That's very easy to say, but it's having very real consequences for USCs like myself whose plans for the future centered around visa cases that could be lost forever if not adjudicated within this year's diversity visa cycle, which will be impossible if the review period is extended far beyond 6/15 or permanent exclusion is sought for Iran. If my brother-in-law cannot migrate in the end now that State has dangled the diversity visa before us, I will likely be under pressure to uproot my career to some other Anglophone country and take the human capital in which the USG has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in grant money with me. Or, we'll sink our and our families' life savings into whatever remains of the EB-5 program, which, as those who follow visa maters may know, is no guarantee of a visa. And I'll be forever pissed that this had to happen because our rank in the lottery queue was six days too late.

Right now what we want most is clarity from State about where we stand and what hoops we would have to jump through if we go for a waiver. Our senator is now involved, but Abu Dhabi continues to refuse to answer our inquires and their locally employed staff behave as if nothing has happened. All we have is a painfully vague email from State's "Global Support Strategy" contractor (Computer Sciences Corp., with the street address of an office park Chantilly, VA listed in the email) telling us to check Consular Affairs' main website for updates before attending our interview. Is this what T-Rex had in mind when we were promised a smoother roll-out?

I get your point - it's well established at this point that this is not an example of evidence-based policymaking in action. But there's real pain involved, especially for those of us in a limited time window for the diversity visa program.