The recent revocation of student visas for several international students at Montana State University and the University of Montana puts on display the hypocrisy of our current administration along with an Orwellian injection of thought policing, and possibly the most egregious form of race, religion or nationality-based discrimination. In a Kafkaesque implementation of this revocation, the students received no explanation of why this happened, only that, like other international students, without warning they could next find themselves in a prison in Louisiana. Orwell warned us in 1984 about the Thought Police and Newspeak. Kafka indicted the judicial system in The Trial. Now we have life imitating art.
President Trump and everyone in his administration have repeated the mantra over and over that America “welcomes” legal immigrants. That is a bald-faced lie. Students in Montana with an F-1 or other appropriate student visa are here in the most legal manner. They often pay full freight tuition, which is desperately needed and sought by Montana universities. If you have ever worked in a hospital or high-tech company, you undoubtably will have worked alongside brilliant individuals who first came to America under student visas. Elon Musk may be the most famous (even though ironically it is reported that he may have violated his visa). Most of those people return to their countries after their education, having supported universities with thousands in tuition. But some continue to work in America under other work visas. We have taken in some of the smartest minds in the world under this visa system. Our economy has prospered, and our vaunted technologies have progressed, in no small part, due to these students who became engineers, doctors, researchers and business leaders.
Both MSU and UM cannot disclose the identity of the students who had their visas revoked, but we know where they aren’t from. Hint: they are not from Norway (court filings show one is Kurdish, an oppressed minority in Iran, and one is from Turkey). Not just F-1 students have been affected. Even students with legal permanent resident status, eligible for citizenship, have been detained and processed for deportation.
For the President to contend this is being done to protect against antisemitism is a farce, particularly from someone who said there were “good people” amongst those marching in Charlottesville with Nazi flags and emblems. It is a purge of people based exclusively on what opinions may have been expressed, either in social media or possibly by joining a protest (if not, then it could be even more nefarious, as it could simply be a targeting of people who share a similar regional heritage that can be guessed easily). There is certainly a worthwhile discussion to be had on the difference between criticism of Israel and antisemitism, which is not this discussion. This discussion is about taking action against any person (including imprisonment and deportation) based on either speech or lawful protest, both hallowed rights in America.
Kafka himself could not have imagined the plight of Mr. Abrego Garcia, who, as admitted by the President’s own lawyer in court, was mistakenly scooped up off the street and sent to a black hole internment camp in El Salvador (note to self, do not wear Chicago Bulls gear around ICE officers). The Supreme Court has said it was wrongful, and Mr. Garcia should not have been sent there, and that the U.S. Government should facilitate his return. However, the President of El Salvador said he won’t return him unless asked by our President. Our President contends he is powerless to ask for his return (even though we pay El Salvador millions of dollars to intern these deportees). At least one justice at the Supreme Court has warned the American people that this could happen to any citizen. Maybe we can add Catch-22 to the list of fiction works applicable to this administration.
Orwell’s Newspeak is rampant. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is justifying taking people off the street and incarcerating them even though they have never committed any crime because he has the power to “personally determine” that the views of those people “undermine [a] significant foreign policy objective.” And that is enough for jail and deportation.
Universities are being told they must have “viewpoint diversity” in all of their departments and must comply with government oversight of admissions, hiring, teaching, curriculum and research to make sure this Newspeak “viewpoint diversity” is enforced (apparently, you can’t have diversity when it comes to people, just “viewpoints”). In other words, the viewpoints of the current administration. They are also supposed to assist the Thought Police in finding and deporting international students that exercise free expression. Notably, Harvard University has said “no thanks,” which resulted immediately in their loss of funding and also threats by the President to revoke their tax-exempt status.
Law firms have been strongarmed by the President in personal meetings with threatened bans on government-related work and now cannot take on clients who have constitutional rights infringed by this administration because they are being forced to take on pro bono the President’s causes, which, due to conflict of interest rules, now bars them from taking positions adverse to the President. This is just another way of denying legal representation to the victims of the Newspeak and Thought Police.
The President has threatened to revoke the broadcast license of a television show (60 Minutes) simply because he didn’t like what was said.
The President has banned the AP news service from the White House press pool (because they did not use the Newspeak “Gulf of America”) and refuses to comply with a court order to reinstate their privileges (and has expressed the rule of law defying position that he has the discretion to disregard the court order).
It’s not fiction. Orwell’s Thought Police have come to Montana, upending real lives in stories that could only come from the imagination of Franz Kafka. The international students in Montana who have become victims of the Thought Police deserve our support.
Richard Hegger lives in Somers.