Some professors and students at Utah's flagship research university say they are undeserving targets of new travel restrictions on citizens of four Muslim nations. And it's more than personal — the national security change, they say, limits the reach and undermines the research mission of the University of Utah.
"This is not just an inconvenience," said Hamid Ghandehari, director of the Utah Center for Nanomedicine. "It's just not right to profile people based on where they come from."
Ghandehari estimates somewhere from 100 to 500 students, faculty and staff at the school are similarly affected.
Under the new law, many who have traveled to Iran, Iraq, Sudan or Syria in the past five years no longer can travel to the U.S. without a visa. The same goes for citizens of those countries, even if they also have an American passport. The change, designed to combat terrorism, sailed through the U.S. House of Representatives with a 90 percent vote.
The legislation will likely restrict Iran-born Ghandehari's current ability to speak in South Korea and Europe six to eight times a year. Until now, 38 countries participating in a reciprocal program have allowed their citizens to travel among those nations for 90 days without a visa. Getting a visa can be a months-long process and requirements differ from nation to nation. Applicants often must travel in person to a consulate office with passport, birth certificate and other documents, such as letters from a school or employer.
The White House on Thursday announced the changes were effective and exceptions may be made for government workers traveling on business, members of humanitarian groups, journalists and possibly for other people making business trips.
"We don't know how these steps are going to be implemented," said Ghandehari, a 1978 graduate of Highland High who arrived in Utah with family as a teenager. "Is it just a check they put on the form? Regardless, I would have to go through a separate process."
He and a handful of fellow U. professors shared their concern at a meeting of the Academic Senate this month. Roughly 70 of their colleagues have joined 5,000 professors in signing a national letter opposing the law.
The national American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) also penned a letter to the U.S. House, saying such a policy "amounts to blanket discrimination based on nationality and national origin without a rational basis."
The U.'s associate vice president for faculty, Amy Wildermuth, agrees.
"It doesn't seem the world would be safer," she said, "because we have [Utah Science Technology and Research initiative] professors who are going to have to go through extra steps to get a visa."
Michael Hardman, the school's chief global officer, wrote in a Dec. 22 letter to all U. faculty of the "collective frustration" and concern for researchers' "ability to travel to share and exchange ideas with your colleagues throughout the world."
But it's unclear whether the college will formally lobby to change the law or ask a judge to toss it. Jason Perry, the university's vice president for government relations, could not immediately be reached Thursday.
In addition to being "alarming in a deep civil liberties kind of way," said physics professor Saveez Saffarian, the change also could hurt recruitment of graduate research assistants.
"You come here, you work hard, you unleash the powers of your brain and then you get your citizenship and you are equal," he has told students in the past.
"If this legislation goes into effect," he said, "that pitch completely disappears."
Saffarian, 40, also will feel its effect. He has Czech, Irani and American citizenship, and takes his two children, ages 12 and 5, to Iran and the Czech Republic on summer vacations.
First-year medical student Maziar Nourian, who was born in the United States to Iranian parents, wrote in an email that "It is insulting that I am deemed different from my colleagues just because of where my parents originate." Iran grants citizenship to any foreign-born person whose father is Iranian.
The law "may affect my dream of working and researching in global health/surgery and becoming an academic physician," which often requires international travel, Nourian said.
Said Ghandehari: "It effectively creates two classes of citizens."
@anniebknox aknox@sltrib.com
Al Hartmann | The Salt Lake Tribune A new federal travel law designed to curb terrorism unfairly discriminates against Iranian Americans and will prevent researchers like biomedical engineering professor Hamid Ghandehari at the University of Utah from obtaining travel visas.
Al Hartmann | The Salt Lake Tribune A new federal travel law designed to curb terrorism unfairly discriminates against Iranian Americans and will prevent researchers like biomedical engineering professor Hamid Ghandehari at the University of Utah from obtaining travel visas.
Al Hartmann | The Salt Lake Tribune A new federal travel law designed to curb terrorism unfairly discriminates against Iranian Americans and will prevent researchers like biomedical engineering professor Hamid Ghandehari at the University of Utah from obtaining travel visas.
Al Hartmann | The Salt Lake Tribune A new federal travel law designed to curb terrorism unfairly discriminates against Iranian Americans and will prevent researchers like biomedical engineering professor Hamid Ghandehari at the University of Utah from obtaining travel visas.
Al Hartmann | The Salt Lake Tribune A new federal travel law designed to curb terrorism unfairly discriminates against Iranian Americans and will prevent researchers like biomedical engineering professor Hamid Ghandehari at the University of Utah from obtaining travel visas.