In a letter to the University of California community, UC President Janet Napolitano instructed all international students covered by President Donald Trump’s Order Affecting Visa Processes and Entry into the United States to stay in the country for now and contact the UC office for “additional guidance” in the meantime.
“At this time, we recommend that UC community members from these seven countries who hold a visa to enter the United States or who are lawful permanent residents do not travel outside of the United States,” the statement reads. “We will continue to monitor and analyze the impact of the executive order and will issue additional guidance as soon as possible. Until then, if you are a visa holder or green card holder from one of these countries that is currently abroad, or you have any questions, please contact the International Studies Office on your campus”.
Individual UC campuses followed up with their own statements to students. UC Irvine currently has 154 students enrolled from countries that are affected by the ban. Howard Gillman, UCI chancellor, wrote to his students that he agrees with the Association of American Universities’ statement that Trump’s executive order affecting immigration “is already causing damage and should end as quickly as possible.”
“I want to express my deep concern for our students, scholars and others who will be personally affected by this order,” Gillman wrote. “I am also concerned about the order’s impact on the ability of universities to pursue our mission.”
In the past, the UC has vowed to resist Trump’s impending deportation of illegal aliens in the United States and form “sanctuary cities” as isolated safe havens for UC students who are in the United States without documentation. Ariana Rowlands, a third-year student at UCI, says she thinks the UC schools will attempt to form resistance to Trump’s travel ban as well.
“I do believe the UC System is likely to put up a resistance to President Trump’s executive orders, as the Associated Students at UCI have voted to cut our federal funding significantly if not entirely, in order to become a sanctuary campus,” Rowlands told Red Alert Politics.
Nicholas Dirks, chancellor at UC Berkeley, notified students that they will be offered psychological and mental health services to cope with implications of Trump’s executive order.
“Right now, it is paramount that the students, staff, and faculty affected by this EO find the support that they need,” he wrote.
Rowlands told Red Alert she felt it was polarizing for the UC to assume all students would be traumatized by Trump’s executive order.
“Many students conservative and moderate are fed up of the exhausting, panicked emails the UC System sends up over President Trump,” she said. “This liberal lunacy and hysteria only serves to distance the right and the middle from their cause, and we have been seeing this effect on UCI’s campus as the far left polarizes itself at an exponentially increasing rate and intensity.”
