The Muslim Ban, MENA Migration, and the Shattered Dream of America
The Center for Arab Narratives (CAN) and the National Network for Arab American Communities (NNAAC), both institutions of ACCESS, are issuing a series of reports on the impact of the infamous “Muslim Ban,” first enacted as executive orders at the very beginning of the first Trump administration in 2017.
The Muslim Ban has had immense and lasting impacts on the Arab and MENA communities in the U.S.
The first report, available now, from CAN and NNAAC uses federal statistics on refugees and Lawful Permanent Residents (LPRs) to show how the Muslim Ban impacted or affected migration from Arab, MENA, and some Muslim-majority countries. The data shows that the direct detrimental effects lasted for five years—even beyond the tenure of the Trump administration.
The second part of the report, to be released in April, will focus on the stories of migrants and their families, as well service agencies that were preparing to help resettle the refugees that never came.
Takeaways from the current report:
- The data shows that the different iterations of Trump’s Muslim Ban had a major negative impact on the migration patterns of Arab, MENA, and some Muslim majority nations.
- Syrian and Iraqi communities were particularly affected. In the years leading up to the enactment of the Muslim Ban, Iraqi and Syrian refugees were being re-settled in the U.S. in large numbers, which was understandable given the scale of the crises occurring in the region. For example, in FY 2016 there were 22,467 combined Syrian and Iraqi refugees admitted to the U.S., compared with 238 in FY 2018.
- The Muslim Ban’s actions against refugees and refugee resettlement had deleterious effects beyond the countries named in the ban. For the countries that comprise the MENA region, there were 98,313 obtainments of Lawful Permanent Residence in FY 2016. After the effects of the Muslim Ban, there were only 49,059 in FY 2020.
- Assessing the full impact of the Muslim Ban will require a qualitative approach—exploring stories from the migrants themselves and the service organizations that work to settle them once they have arrived.