First they came for the Iranians

^ This!

Or if you are into AI, university of Montreal is also a hot bed right now with Mr Bengio.

Canadians will gladly take you, in fact I know an Iranian who just finished his math phd...

Courage! :)

yeah Waterloo has a great program. I've known a few Iranian students who were disappointed by University of Victoria and then went to Waterloo.

I am a naturalized American citizen, born in Iran. Up to yesterday I was giving this administration the benefit of the doubt. But an administration that demands political vetting of scientific results tripped my wire.

Now I am not sure what to make of our President mentioning "citizen, good citizens" in his remarks to DHS. After all, "no one expects the spanish inquisition".

> We will continue to do everything we can to fight this policy and others like it.

You say that, but I'm afraid the implication might be "short of doing anything that matters". Where are the protests? Why aren't people in the streets? Don't make the same mistake Germans did under Hitler. The government relies on each step affecting few enough people that nobody will be bothered enough to march, and after a thousand little steps, you have a totalitarian government.

of course you don't, political elite never represents common folks out there (that includes supposedly evil places like North Korea, Iran, Iraq etc.). americans are, by my personal experience great people.

america's loss, some other place gain (judging from OP description, he won't have big troubles getting someplace else).

to OP - don't worry, seeing where US us steadily going after 9/11, without any attempt to even slow down, there are much better places to live, if you value things like true freedom. as somebody coming from Iran, I would presume so...

I completely agree with you and expressed my best wishes and sympathy to OP - but I'd also like to take a moment to appreciate the irony of your username in this thread! :)

Here is a fully funded program: http://gradschool.cs.uni-saarland.de/

You get 800€ during your master and about twice that during your PhD. The institute is really good and there are two Max Planck Institutes (Informatics and Software Systems) right on campus. The program is entirely in English.

Google even has a location in Germany so if you were planning on getting a PHD in the US and then moving into working for Google most likely you could take the same kind of path in Germany but without the tremendous education debt.

Same in Switzerland. Check out ETHZ or EPFL.

> Please know that the majority of people in the US do not support this policy.

This seems to be false:

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-taps-americans-war...

In the poll, 54 percent of Americans, including about three-quarters of Republicans, about half of independents and over a third of Democrats, said the United States takes in too many immigrants from the Middle East.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/curr...

Among all voters, 46% favor a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States, while 40% are opposed. Fourteen percent (14%) are undecided.

Why? Everyone should not get a visa. Country should have a right to decide whom they let in. I never heard anyone complaining when the rich got visa more easily than poor.

Meanwhile every single one of the 9/11 hijackers would be allowed by Trump to enter the USA.

Decent people in the world are simply more likely to boycott the US as a result of xenophobic "America First" actions like this[1]. As you said, it's the USA's loss; the world is a big place.

[1] On top of the already established bullshit, described in threads like this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13453189

Thanks for those links. I never knew the person behind Fuzzy Sets, a topic highly relevant to the HN crowd. Lotfi Zadeh is one of the giants we stand on.

Foundations for the case you're trying to make are not very persuasive: 3 out of 4 people on this list seem to have moved during a much friendlier Shah's regime, before the 1979 revolution which turned Iran into a theocracy.

I want to second this. I also had a Ph.D. full fund in the USA but I went to Sweden, and why? Well in that time I had an opportunity to work and fund an start up and boy I am so lucky to find my supervisor in Sweden (over a simple phone call).

Compared to the USA, universities in Sweden, offer far more support to for patents and starting your startups. You essentially get all the support and university won't own your work.

You may think what happened to you is bad (and it is) but sometimes it turns to a new and better opportunity.

Come check Toronto. Very immigrant-rich city, very welcoming and very multicultural.

The winters sometimes suck, but I find that brings us all together because nobody likes -10C.

Trump very clearly represents the will of an immense number of people and may represent the will of the majority of Americans in fact. For both Clinton and Trump that representation is far beyond those that actually voted. Clinton's camp will be the first to tell you that supposedly a lot of her supporters didn't vote in the election.

You say Trump represents straight white males (you imply that's all he represents). Trump won the vote of 53% of white women.

Trump won the popular vote in 30 of the 50 states. The popular vote in just two states - NY & CA, neither of which Trump could have ever competed in - determined that popular vote gap.

The facts don't support your premise at all.

I agree with most of what you said, but I don't see why you had to bring sexuality and ethnic background into it. I myself don't fit into the group that you specified, but I can still see that it is a stupid classification. Our opinions and beliefs are not reliant on what group we are categorised into.

Edit: I'm not a trump supporter.

> I'll be honest, I think Trump is going to cost universities, labs, and businesses a lot of very smart people

This is absolutely terrible for the OP, but is there really a shortage of smart and skilled people? Given the low pay for many scientific positions and notoriously awful conditions for postgrads and the like working in labs, I have my doubts. Maybe the upside is that with the tap of smart people turned down a little, conditions will improve for the people who are left.

Your post is racist, sexist, and factually wrong. Trump represents a repressed ideological view that has failed to be directly engaged, instead preferring othering and slander, as you demonstrated here.

The left-wing in the US is going to continue to lose elections as long as they prefer slander to understanding why people disagree with them and why their racist and sexist platform is falling out of favor.

I am for a lot of progressive policies, but the Democrats jumped the shark in to advocating bigotry, slander, and nonsense.

Recent example: 1 in 10 posters I saw at the women's march was outright sexist, yet 3 in 10 posters were bemoaning the "sexism" of other people for having similar numbers at their marches. Remove the plank from your own eye, etc etc.

Ed: I would genuinely enjoy someone explaining how dismissing the right-wing as sexist is any different than dismissing all of feminism as sexist because there exist sexist feminists.

What is your take on Ireland's situation should the UK race you to the bottom on being a location that provides a tax advantage?

Israeli society, however, is increasingly less and less tolerant of non-Jews. For example: http://www.timesofisrael.com/chief-rabbi-non-jews-shouldnt-b...

But an even bigger problem is going to be the Iranian government, which is really not keen on Iranians consorting with the Zionist entity. Even if the OP by some miracle managed to pull this off, they would run a very real risk of ending up in prison as a suspected Israeli spy.

That is not without danger, I believe. Having Israeli stamps in your Iranien passport...

Deferred until when, exactly? A year? 4 years? 8?

It is unfair to expect the students to put their lives on hold indefinitely. I say they should pursue their education in places that welcome them like Canada or Germany.

Well, Europe has Oxford and Cambridge and?

>It's a bit more interesting wrt. most 9/11 hijackers being Saudis: I think it's pretty much confirmed at this point that it was a deliberate choice by al Qaida, attempting to deteriorate US-Saudi relations.

Saudis have a looooong history of funding all kinds of terrorist groups across the whole muslim world.

Regardless of the hijackers motives, Saudi Arabia is by far the worst country when it comes to exporting and supporting terror. Iran is an island of sanity by comparison, and there are no Shia terrorist organizations nowadays (Hezbollah are not terrorists - they don't blow up random civilians).

"It's a bit more interesting wrt. most 9/11 hijackers being Saudis: I think it's pretty much confirmed at this point that it was a deliberate choice by al Qaida, attempting to deteriorate US-Saudi relations."

I think that Saudi Arabia is one of the biggest problem in the world. In fact, I wish Trump would have banned them too or even suggested a regime change:

1. http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2015/02...

2. http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2015/01...

For Iran I have high hopes. They started the fundamentalist bullshit and I have the impression they may be the first to get rid of it. In fact, there are first signs (German link, try google translate): https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...

Merkel was acting on what she believed to be a moral imperative: that those fleeing danger have a right to asylum. All her decisions follow logically if you accept that premise. I. e. it would make no sense to make such a right dependent on the total number of refugees.

In the specific moment you're alluding to she made the decision to suspend the Dublin rules because they were clearly failing (i. e. refugees were clearly being mistreated by the Hungary regime, and the situation in Greece was deteriorating to the point where both the country and the refugees urgently needed relief). At that point, the basic right outlined above and the Dublin rules were in conflict, and human rights generally trump implementation specifics such as Dublin in these circumstances.

In any case, the Dublin convention governs the burden-sharing between nations and does not impact an individual's relation with these states, or their basic rights. That's comparable to, for example, medical care in an emergency: your insurance company may have all sorts of debt with the hospital, but the doctors are still required to treat your compound fracture.

Neither of those passports makes you exempt from the visa requirement to travel to the US.

Dubai is not in Saudi Arabia. It's in the UAE. However his family have expressed interest in building hotels in Saudi Arabia.

My guess though was the omission has more to do with energy price stability and/or arms exports.

The US gets only 8.1% of its oil from Saudi Arabia now, and that's dropping each year. The US is at last in a position to tell Saudi Arabia where to get off.

Right, sorry, it's linked from the article posted here.

nothing about this last election is logical.

I believe this would be the relevant bit:

"I hereby find that the immigrant and nonimmigrant entry into the United States of aliens from countries designated pursuant to [law], would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, and I hereby suspend entry into the United States, as immigrants and nonimmigrants, of such persons for 30 days from the date of this order."

I don't know just how entering with a green card qualifies, but "immigrant and nonimmigrant" would seem to cover everything.

As far as actually having the power to do so, everything I've read indicates that the President has extremely broad powers to determine which noncitizens are allowed enter the country.

I'm curious on what basis you doubt their claim. Because if the claim is true, there are many abroad who ought to board a plane home NOW.

So it's "not new" that a green card holder who happens to be in Canada right now might be barred from reentering the country? It's "not new" that a green card holder whose mother falls ill in their home country will not be able to return home after visiting her for a week?

You're right that CBP can fuck you over at their discretion. But as long as you keep your nose clean, they don't. Having green card holders get suddenly screwed over like this just because of where they're from is new.

Wrong. That is not the issue here. In the draft which leaked, it clearly suspends immigrant and nonimmigrant entry to nationals of the listed countries. According to this, a US green card holder who is an Iranian citizen cannot travel back to the US after, say, vacationing in London.

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3415909/Draft-Exe...

In addition, due to the suspension of Visa Waiver Program to nationals of these countries last year, an Iranian-Australian, (or Iranian-German, etc.), living in and a citizen of Australia for 30+ years and hasn't even visited Iran in that period, cannot visit the US visa-free any longer. So that means they need a B-2 tourist visa. Problem is, this E.O. suspends issuance of nonimmigrant visas to these people, so they now no longer have a way to enter the US.

Will he actually sign this E.O.? Apparently it was supposed to be signed yesterday, but didn't happen. He is in Philly right now so I'm not sure if this one's going to happen or not.

OP is not talking about people away for 6 months. These are American residents who might be traveling for a week and suddenly find themselves homeless. If you think that can't happen to you, I have a bridge to sell you.

But to be barred re-entry for less than 6 months is new.

>There is literally nothing that can be done about it for the next 4 years

Actually mass protests to the level of e.g. the French May of 68 might very well bring down a government.

But that is for a determined population.

According to the Brookings Institution memo on the Emoluments Clause[1]:

> if Mr. Trump enters office in what would obviously constitute a knowing and indeed intentional violation of the Emoluments Clause and then declines to cure that violation during his tenure, Congress would be well within its rights to impeach him for engaging in “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

So, it is conceivable that he could be removed within the next four years if he loses the support of Congress.

[1] https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/gs_1216...

There was plenty of time to do something about it. We've been slouching into an imperial presidency for a long time. Democrats could have trimmed it back when they held Congress and the White House. Instead they cheered when Obama said "I have a phone and a pen."

They dismantled checks and balances for temporary tactical advantage because they thought their opponents were a "rump party, mainly confined to the South".

Well, he is a bit of a populist, so if you convince enough people, he'll probably go with the flow, on some things at least.

Technically congress or the supreme court can overturn executive orders, and this has happened in the past.

> pray he does something impeachable

I think it's more than that, it has to be impeachable AND Senate Republicans have to dislike it enough to upset their boss, right? Without Senate Republicans' support there can be no impeachment hearing can there?

Pressure. It may not not be as politically effective, but the weakling Dems need to be pushed in order to fight for us.

I'm reminded of something I read by people who were in the cultural revolution. They always convinced themselves that Mao had bad advisers and they'd get purged soon. Took decades to twig that the problem was Mao himself.

Because they may continue to support that person, mistakenly thinking that the policies they disagree with are from people other than that person.

The AP was not the subject of my scorn.

Meh. Hyperbole bothers me. But as long as you're using a healthcare analogy, allow me to suggest the possibility of negative side effects to the strong medicine. For example it is widely accepted that antibiotics are currently overprescribed, making them less of a strong and powerful weapon against disease over time.

There's a german saying: "It did happen and therefore it can happen again". That could be extended to "It did happen, and therefore it could happen anywhere".

I'm also reminded of Hannah Arendt's theory of the "banality of evil". She basically warned against considering the Holocaust as the result of a singular set of circumstances, describing it instead as a process of many steps, by many (often unremarkable) people, with each step small enough not to trigger significant reactions.

The US is obviously still far, far away from death camps. But the changes in what is politically accepted are already gigantic if you step back. That's a process that has been going on since long before Trump, maybe since Nixon or at the very least GWB. And it includes not just the federal government but also, for example, recent developments in North Carolina.

As a somewhat tangential factoid, that may help to break the shell of the Nazi-cliche and give it back some meaning: I was recently at a festival in Poland and, in the midst of the usual atmosphere created by the beats of electronic music and the somewhat unusual diet that goes with it, I stumbled upon a plaque commemorating the place as the site of "a concentration camp for children aged 6 to 12". You really start to wonder: how much has to happen to a person until they get to the thought, "yeah, those 6 to 12 year olds, we really need to do something about them"?

Listen if Hitler is the only comparison you think people understand, and you think the only way to convince them that a thing is bad and should be avoided is because, like, Hitler, and because in some racism dream where you get darker than you are and a bunch of majority culture white rednecks confuses you for a terrorist instead of just a normal american of partially Syrian or Italian or Mexican or native American or Guatemalan extraction that's fine. Call trump Hitler all you want. You won't be the first, and apparently you have a fellow traveler as a professor at MIT. Just don't expect me to take you seriously. Not when you're comparing Trump to Hitler for putting a hold on visas of students from a country whose official policy calls for the destruction of Israel and which is actively hostile to the interests of the united states, and who might facilitate potentially dangerous technology transfers to same. Though for the sake of consistency, and to seem less partisan, you may wish to consider similarly comparing Jimmy Carter to Josef Dzugashvili because he put a much longer hold on Iranian student visas in the late 70's.

Your call.

Well, you can't say that Japan is anti-intellectualism at least.

Genuine question, is there an anti-muslim immigration policy in japan or some other force at play?

I don't think we're far away enough

Friend, if witches are causing irreparable damage, shouldn't do everything we can to proliferate a hunt for them?

I think that's a naive view of Trump "supporters". For instance, it seems like Iranian-Americans were split on Clinton v. Trump [0][1]. I've also talked to quite a few people who voted for Trump but do not agree with his stance on borders or immigration. Finally, depicting all the people who voted for Trump as ignorant rednecks is probably not conductive to dialogue.

[0] http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/0...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13489227

>I hope you're right, but at least for the next 2 years, who/what is going to stop them?

The courts. It's our only option. There are multiple pending lawsuits against Trump already. A civil rights group filed suit against him on day one for breaching the emoluments clause of the constitution.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/liberal-watchdog-gro...

Not once in history has there been a quick office reboot ? No way to amend the constitution, to change the planning ?

I'm counting days until impeachment, seriously.

I would also like an answer to this. Most people that are opponents of these sorts of policies live in areas that are represented by senators/congresspeople that have a similar view.

Use the Tea Party strategy: threaten to fund and support primary opposition from the left unless they push back harder.

The GOP only barely has a majority in the Senate. They'll need Democratic support for some things, and as far as I know filibusters are still legal.

Not really.

Typically the first thing interns will do is at minimum gather your zip, if not address. Congressional offices receive a fair amount of out-of-district phone calls and non-constituent phone calls will get you a "Thanks for your concerns, have a nice day!"

And, tbh, I sort of disagree with GP's comment about calling every day. Offices might have a high turnover rate, they might not. The offices most definitely do keep track of who calls and they know who the repeat callers are. A lot of time the repeat callers tend to have mental issues (unsure how else to phrase that)—congressional offices get lots of weird phone calls.

I mean yeah, call about issues. It's the best way, other than a face-to-face conversation. (Assuming, too, that the legislator has their CM or an aide with them to take your contact info.) But calling every day will put you on the "ugh, not this guy" list.

I have called a couple of times and at bare minimum they asked me the zip code I am calling from. Cold logic would dictate that if you are calling from a zip code outside their voting district, they will ignore you. However, imagine you are getting thousands of calls every single day from all over the country. As a human being, can you really stand to flatly ignore that day in day out?

Just give a zip code from that state.

I've wondered about this question myself. Wondering whether a financially well-resourced group would just use money to get access as an easier and more efficient approach to influence of a member of Congress. That to simulate an avalanche of calls from concerned citizens by paying people to call is a less financially efficient method to get influence. (I'm just speculating.)

Al Hayat has a pro Saudi bias. But even if we left that aside the article opens with the claim that Iran sponsored militias equal in atrocities that is of ISIS -- which is obviously false.

Not sure if you speak arabic or if you're from the middle east but hate for Shiites from Sunnis are more extreme than their hate for Israel -- in fact many clerics actively ask for genocide against them.

Killing is different than terrorism, US military is involved in killing in many countries as well!

I agree. But I am far more outraged at our government getting involved in foreign wars and dropping bombs all over the world than I am in them not letting people into the country from countries we are bombing. I think most people would have the same feeling if they thought about it carefully.

That is likely for theirbsupport of Hamas for their role in trying to expand their hegemony in the Middle East and their conflicts with Saudia Arabia and Israel. Iran is not a part of global jihad.

That's definitively an act of war but I would not call that a terrorist act. I think to qualify as a terrorist act it needs to be directed at: 1. Civilians and 2. Time of peace.

I'm not sure we should make it a competition!

Great point, guildwriter. To extend that thought - it never ceases to amaze me the expectations people have regarding America. For example, if we were at war with China, Russia, whoever - no one would be shocked if those countries denied our citizens entry until the conflict was over. But reverse it and there is outrage.

Similarly, I have no expectation that I would ever be able to, for example, travel to another country on "vacation" and just stay indefinitely after my visa expired. I would never think that would fly. I fully expect that at some point I would be facing either serious charges or a quick deportation, possibly with the stipulation that I was never allowed to return - or that violating the visa a second time would mean a jail sentence. Yet here in America, that's just people "trying to live the American dream", rules and laws be damned. Violating the sovereignty of a nation should always be taken seriously.

Obama's position clearly states that the Iranian government is the issue. Trump's clearly says "We don't want your kind in our country"

We should go even further. A bunch of lines were drawn post WW1 to punish Germany and her allies. There wasn't much thought put into it beyond short term gain and it created some awful situations like that of the Kurds in Iraq.

As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, Mosaddeq had scant respect for democratic norms - look into how he conducted his parliamentary votes.

I wonder what the world would like like if western nations hadn't meddled so much in other's affairs.

That would actually make a really good TV series: "What the World Would Have Looked Like - Episode 3: Germany Wins World War 2". Of course there are numerous theories for each, but that's ok, just state that at the beginning and say this is just one of many possible theories, it's just for fun. I'd watch that type of show for sure.

This is being exacerbated by the increasing factionalism within the US itself. I'm starting to understand better and better why Washington warned us of political parties in his farwell address

"Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight) the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and the duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another."

Hah. I was thinking this morning that Trump could be the US's Nero.

Interesting, I did not know that. Thank you. Interesting argument wrt educational dogma in the Middle East. I know it's a problem in Indian higher education.

Why flagged it? Something this important!

>What I think is even more stupid though is how the left is trying to compare Trump to Hitler

Right, you're going to get those comparisons if you praise China for the Tiananmen Square massacre, praise dictators like Kim Jong Un and Putin, suggest a national registry for everyone of a particular religion, suggest banning people from entering based on their religion(which is what he initially said, before tracking back after criticism), develop a culture of anti-intellectualism, frequently boast about IQ and genes, and deny statements you made when there is undeniable proof that you made them.

Let's not forget the only major politician to bring up Nazi comparisons- Trump, when he compared US intelligence to Nazi Germany.

>we wants to give greater access to the press of diverging viewpoints

The only new "news" outlet he wants to give access to is breitbart, a site which has had headlines like "Would you rather your daughter have Cancer or Feminism" and "Gay rights have made us dumber, it's time to get back in the close". These are not diverging viewpoints. These are the only piles of rubbish that actually support Trump, which is why he is more comfortable with them than the New York Times. What left leaning news outlet has he given more precedence to?

> He wants the average citizen to have greater access to firearms which is our final defense against a tyrannical government, while the left have been fighting to take away peoples 2nd amendments rights

I'm not sure how background checks take away the right to own guns, nobody on any side can take away the people's right to own guns without a judiciary decision. The only way a politician can take away the guns of citizens is by pushing forward something unconstitutional like Stop and Frisk, which Trump supports.

In the age of nuclear weapons, guns are not useful in overthrowing a tyrannical government. Nothing is, but what comes closest are modes of unsupervised communication to organise people. Of course, Trump is a supporter of mass surveillance.

>He wants to de-regulated the economy by quote "75%"

I'm not sure what you mean, but the biggest problem with the economy today is the unparalleled levels of inequality. Trump of course wants to drastically cut taxes for the rich.

It's understandable to dislike Obama or Clinton. I don't like a lot of their policies either. But Trump carries over everything that is bad about them and adds a whole lot more. He is not a reasonable alternative.

They did horrible things: "The new administration introduced a wide range of social reforms: unemployment compensation was introduced, factory owners were ordered to pay benefits to sick and injured workers, and peasants were freed from forced labor in their landlords' estates"

One shudders at the thought. Good thing UK and US could put an end to suchlike. A king is better.

Jesus Christ. This comes up every time. Read up on Mossadegh. He would have been overthrown regardless of what the UK or US did. He was seriously unpopular at the time.

"Engineered a coup" was more like Diem in Vietnam. Tacit approval more than orchestrating something that would otherwise never would have happened.

Yes, but we find ourselves in this situation now, the current U.S. administration certainly had nothing to do with the coup. Bad decisions maybe were made but we cannot continue to blame U.S. policy as a whole over those mistakes.

The Iranians right to freedom and the control of the region and its resources.