Kate Selby is from Tucson, and attended the protest with her 2-year-old daughter, Ada, on her back.
“I’m here today to protest the proposed border wall and also the ban on immigrants, particularly Muslim immigrants. I find it unconscionable and completely against American values … So I’m very afraid for that, and very angry. So I’m doing what I can, and hopefully inspiring her to do what she can too.”
“You know how they say after you have kids things get scarier? I hadn’t really had that moment until this election happened and suddenly a man was elected president who, if I found out he was in the same room as my daughter, I would want to go run and grab her out of that room. He’s terrifying.”
Goli Bagheri is writing her graduate dissertation in Tucson, but is a UT Austin student. Her parents are from Iran.
“[I’m here today] because fuck Donald Trump! Because this is horse shit! This ban is horse shit, and aside from all of his ridiculous policies this one hits home because he singled out Iran and seven other nations that have nothing to do with terrorism whatsoever.”
Saba Keynejad is a graduate student in geo-physics. From Iran originally, she moved to Tucson in 2012.
“I’ve been here for five years, and I haven’t been back to see my family because I wasn’t sure if I go back if I can get back into the country or not. Even before Trump. But now we can’t, and he just bans everything.”
“[My family is] all in Iran, none of them are here. My mom, my sister … We cannot go back, we’re afraid of getting back, and now we cannot invite them here. I’ve missed them so much, since the first day.”
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Caitlyn Shin is a neuroscience senior, born in South Korea, who moved here when she was 10.
“I think the biggest thing is the fact people think this ban is a refugee ban and it’s not. I have a permanent residency, it took eight years for that permanent residency … It doesn’t make sense that as a Korean permanent resident of the United States I’m allowed to go in and out of the country and be back whenever I want, and for somebody else who could be the exact same student, a university student, just because their country of origin is Syria or wherever the ban might be.”
“I just feel like people have no grasp of how immigration works. They have no idea what it takes to be approved as a refugee. It takes 18 months–more than that usually. I think it takes half a million dollars for a family of four to immigrate to the United States. Our family is a family of four. It hits close to home.”
Chloe Fandel grew up in Boston and south France. She lives in Tucson now.
“[The immigration process] is horrible. My mom is French and she had a green card for a really long time and she finally tried to get citizenship a couple years ago and it was so hard. She’s married to an American, has two kids who are American, has a job with a company that was sponsoring her and it was still a nightmare to get her citizenship and she was living here with a green card for years and years.”
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Jordan Krummel is doctorate student in Anthropology from Albuquerque, New Mexico.
“I think personally Senator McCain in an American hero and so far he has been one of the only conservative people to speak against some of the insanity that’s been going on. To ban people who have been suffering, to ban people who are in worse homes, to ban small children, infants, that’s not American, not at all. And we need someone to recognize that and say that there’s a better way.”
Maralisa Vingelli, originally from Finland, has been in U.S. for 25 years and is a citizen.
“I could never have imagined that somebody would tell me that I cannot come to this country. What kind of country are we now, that we are stopping people who are not terrorists from coming to this country? I know people who are stuck in some places now. They were people from my own country coming to do research and now five of them cannot come because of the ban because they were born in Iran, but they are all scientists … This is not the right way to do it.”
Riyam Mohammad, a refugee who moved to the U.S. 18 years ago, is originally from Iraq.
“I just think it’s ridiculous how close-minded people are. We’re closing our doors to the most weak and needy right now. We need to let who we can in. I just don’t understand how people are for this ban because it’s for our national security, but when everyone we’re letting in is families in need or children with no food or clothing. When I came here as a refugee I didn’t struggle nearly as much as they did which just makes me so angry that people can be so ignorant about the issue.”
“I’m 29. I was 11 when we moved here. That’s another thing people don’t understand is that the immigration process and entering the United States as a refugee could take up to five years, sometimes longer. We immigrated here from Syria and it took us four and a half years to have a completed file and have a background check, all of the things we needed to have be approved. It’s a very long process and people don’t think about that.”
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