Banned.

That’s what a lot of people from the Middle Eastern states are. Are you wondering from where?

From the United states.

But why should the country of “freedom” take the right to choose  people who can’t live in the same circumstances that we wish for everyone else?

Why should we leave young and talented artists or promising students in a country that does not have a proper education system to support those children, teenagers and even adults? These might be people like someone who lives with us this summer. Someone who left everything behind to pursue proper education. But can you imagine leaving everything behind?

Mustafe A. Dahir is one of the 700+ students who attends Exeter Summer. He is fromSomaliland, which is an independent region in the north of Somalia. Mustafe is the only one from his country here this year.

For the past 27 years

Somaliland wanted to be its own country. Unlike the rest of Somalia, Mustafe’s  hometown is more peaceful and has a stable government. In the past Somaliland was a British colony and Somalia an Italian colony.

But in comparison to the other students, his residence permission isn’t as “easy” for him as it is for others.

That is caused by the new banning policy of the American President.

Particularly countries that have a large populations of Muslims suffer under Trump’s new restrictions. The Supreme Court accepted Trump’s restrictions with a vote of 5-4. He already proposed other restrictions but none of them were approved, until now. Already there are a lot of international critics who say the restriction is not constitutional. Immigrants and or visitors from Syria, Libya, Iran, Yemen, Somalia, Venezuela and North Korea are banned from the United States. These are the seven countries that are affected by the Travel Ban. But Venezuela’s leadership is also targeted in the Travel restrictions. In contrast to previous years when dozens of Venezuelan students attended Exeter Summer, this years there are only two.

All immigrants are banned from the U.S. but visitors require extra permission.

One of these people with extra permission is Mustafe. He has an F1 visa that allows him and other international students to stay in America for their study-period plus an extra of 60 days. But as soon as he leaves the United States he has to reapply for a visa to get the permission to travel back.

Additional to that Mustafe can only leave America in the summer. Due to these two aspects he hasn’t seen his family and friends from home for two years. Thats because he has attended a private school in Connecticut since June 2016.

For the sake of his education, Mustafe left everything behind. He would have gone back to Somalialand in 2017 to visit his family and friends but he couldn’t because at that point the restriction against Somalia came out and he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to come back to America.

But this year he didn’t have a choice due to the fact that he needed to visit colleges and study for his SATs. These two aspects combined with the fact that he can only visit his home during the summer are the reason why he hasn’t seen his family and friends in two years.

Only imagining living with those circumstances may make most teenagers homesick or sad but this turns out to be Mustafe’s reality and he has learned to prepare himself properly to master main barriers like living in a new country with a different culture, religion, language and educational system.

Hearing this case we wonder why the destiny of such a young person gets so badly influenced by our current policy. The contention of the American President why the habitants of the restricted countries are banned is that the security rules of these states are too lax and do not correspond to American standards. Another one of Trump’s arguments are the terror attacks of 2001.

According to him he just wants to protect Americans against foreign terrorists.

But none of the terrorists from 2001 were from any of those banned states. In fact they were from Saudi-Arabia, Egypt and the Lebanon.

Also since the policy does target immigrants and refugees it should be said that none of the terrorists from 2001 were refugees.

After three years in a foreign country Mustafe will finally be able to leave America and see his family, friends and hometown again. But as Mustafe said: “I am looking forward to going back home and watching the stars at night.“