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Trump travel ban comes as little surprise amid barrage of draconian restrictions

by Evelyn Reynolds 6 June 2025, 05:00

Donald Trump’s first travel ban in 2017 had an immediate, explosive impact – spawning chaos at airports nationwide.This time around, the panic and chaos was already widespread by the time the president signed his proclamation Wednesday to fully or partially restrict foreign nationals from 19 countries from entering the United States.Since being sworn in for his second term, Trump has unleashed a barrage of draconian immigration restrictions. Within hours of taking office, the president suspended the asylum system at the southern border as part of his wide-ranging immigration crackdown. His administration has ended temporary legal residency for 211,000 Haitians, 117,000 Venezuelans and 110,000 Cubans, and moved to revoke temporary protected status for several groups of immigrants. It has moved to restrict student visas and root out scholars who have come to the US legally.“It’s death by 1,000 cuts,” said Faisal Al-Juburi of the Texas-based legal non-profit Raices, which was among several immigrants’ rights groups that challenged Trump’s first travel ban. “And that’s kind of the point. It’s creating layers and layers of restrictions.”Trump’s first travel ban in January 2017, issued days after he took office, targeted the predominantly Muslim countries of Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. The order came as a shock – including to many administration officials. Customs and Border Protection officials were initially given little guidance on how to enact the ban. Lawyers and protesters rushed to international airports where travellers were stuck in limbo. Confusion spread through colleges and tech companies in the US, and refugee camps across the world.This time, Trump’s travel ban came as no surprise. He had cued up the proclamation in an executive order signed on 20 January, his first day back in the White House, instructing his administration to submit a list of candidates for a ban by 21 March. Though he finally signed a proclamation enacting the ban on Wednesday, it will not take effect until 9 June – allowing border patrol officers and travellers a few days to prepare.The ban includes several exemptions, including for people with visas who are already in the United States, green-card holders, dual citizens and athletes or coaches traveling to the US for major sporting events such as the World Cup or the Olympics. It also exempts Afghans eligible for the special immigrant visa program for those who helped the US during the war in Afghanistan.But the policy, which is likely to face legal challenges, will undoubtedly once again separate families and disproportionately affect people seeking refuge from humanitarian crises.“This is horrible, to be clear … and it’s still something that reeks of arbitrary racism and xenophobia,” Al-Juburi said. “But this does not yield the type of chaos that January 2017 yielded, because immigration overall has been upended to such a degree that the practice of immigration laws is in a state of chaos.”In his second term, Trump has taken unprecedented steps to tear down legal immigration. He has eliminated the legal status of thousands of international students and instructed US embassies worldwide to stop scheduling visa interviews as it prepares to ramp up social media vetting for international scholars.The administration has arrested people at immigration check-ins, exiled asylum seekers to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador, and detained scholars and travellers at airports without reason. Although Trump’s travel ban excludes green-card holders, his Department of Homeland Security has made clear that it can and will revoke green cards as it sees fit – including in the cases of student activists Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The first Muslim ban was very targeted, it was brutal, it was immediate, and it was massive,” said Nihad Awad, the executive director at the Council on American–Islamic Relations. “Now, the administration is not only targeting nations with certain religious affiliations, but also people of color overall, people who criticise the US government for its funding of the genocide in Gaza.”And this new travel ban comes as many families are still reeling and recovering from Trump’s first ban. “We’re looking at, essentially, a ban being in place potentially for eight out of 12 years,” said Ryan Costello, policy director at the National Iranian American Council. “And even in that period where the Biden administration lifted the ban, it was still very hard for Iranians to get a visa.”Iranian Americans who came to the US fleeing political persecution back home, who couldn’t return to Iran, have in some cases been unable to see their parents, siblings or other loved ones for years. “You want your parents to be able to come for the birth of a child, or to come to your wedding,” Costello said. “So this is a really hard moment for so many families. And I think unfortunately, there’s much more staying power for this ban.”Experts say the new ban is more likely to stand up to legal challenges as his first ban. It also doesn’t appear to have registered the same intense shock and outrage, culturally.“The first time, we saw this immediate backlash, protests at airports,” said Costello. “Now, over time, Trump has normalized this.” More

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‘They are in shock’: Indian students fear Trump has ended their American dream
by Evelyn Reynolds 3 June 2025, 23:01
For weeks, Subash Devatwal’s phone has not stopped ringing. Some of the calls have been from distressed students, at other times it is their panicked parents, but all have the same question – is their dream of studying in the US still possible?Devatwal runs an education consultancy in Ahmedabad, the main city in the Indian state of Gujarat. It is one of thousands of such organisations that exist across the country, helping Indian students achieve what many consider to be the ultimate symbol of success: getting into an American university.It has long been a booming business for Devatwal. Families in India will often invest their entire life savings to send their children to study in the US and last year there were more than 330,000 Indians enrolled at American universities, more than any other foreign nationality, overtaking Chinese students in numbers for the first time in years.But this year the situation looks drastically different. As Donald Trump’s administration has taken aim at international students – first implementing draconian screening measures over political views and then last week ordering all US embassies globally to indefinitely pause all student visa interviews – many Indian students and their families have been left in limbo.Trump’s unilateral decision to block Harvard University from admitting international students, which was later blocked by the courts, also caused widespread panic and stoked fears that foreign students at other universities could get caught in the president’s crosshairs.“The students are in shock. Most of them spend several years preparing to study in the US,” said Devatwal. He said many of his clients were now hesitant to pursue a US degree, given the high levels of turmoil and uncertainty following the Trump administration’s new policies. Indian students can expect to pay between $40,000 to $80,000 (£29,500 to £59,000) a year on tuition alone to study in the US.In previous years, Devatwal’s organisation sent more than 100 students to American universities but this year he said the number had dropped to about 10. Instead, families were shifting their focus to the UK and other European countries. A recent analysis by the Hindu newspaper estimated a 28% drop in Indian students going to the US in 2025.View image in fullscreen“Families contribute their savings, take out loans from banks and borrow from relatives, all in the hope that the student will secure a good job abroad, repay the debt, and build a promising future,” said Devatwal. “In such uncertain circumstances, parents are understandably reluctant to let their children take such a risky path.”Brijesh Patel, 50, a textile trader in Surat, Gujarat, said he had been saving money for over a decade to make sure his son could go to a US university, including selling his wife’s jewellery and borrowing money from relatives.“Everyone in the family wanted our son to go to the US for his studies and make something good of his life,” said Patel. His 21-year-old son, who he asked not to be named for fear of retribution by the US authorities, had secured a place at two American universities for his master’s degree and Patel had already paid 700,000 rupees (£6,000) to consultancies who helped with the applications.But amid the turmoil under Trump, Patel said his son was being advised not to even apply for his student visa, due to the uncertainty and high probability of rejection. “We simply can’t take that risk. If our son goes now and something goes wrong, we won’t be able to save that kind of money again,” he said.However, Patel said he was not willing to give up on the family dream just yet. “I am an optimist, and my son is willing to wait a year,” he said. “We’re hoping that things improve by then. It’s not just my son who will be living the American dream, it’s all of us: my wife, our relatives and our neighbours. I’ve struggled my whole life – I don’t want my son to face the same struggles here in India.”The fear among prospective and current students was palpable. Several Indian students studying in the US declined to speak to the Guardian, fearing it could jeopardise their visas.In India, a student selected in December to be one of this year’s Fulbright-Nehru doctoral fellows – a highly competitive scholarship that pays for the brightest students to study abroad at US universities as part of their PhD thesis – said the applications of their entire cohort had recently been demoted back to “semi-finalists”.The student, who asked to remain anonymous over fears it would affect their application, said they had invitation letters from top Ivy League universities for the fellowship, which is considered one of the most prestigious scholarships in the US, but now everything was up in the air. “We are supposed to start in October and our orientation was scheduled for May, all the flights and hotels were even booked, but then it all got cancelled. Now we’ve been informed all our applications are under review by the Trump administration,” said the student.They said it had caused “huge panic and anxiety” among those accepted. “I know a lot of people are going back through their social media, deleting things and doing a lot of self-censoring.”Piyush Bhartiya, a co-founder of the educational technology company AdmitKard, said many parents who had been set on sending their children to the US were rethinking their plans. He cited one example of a student who had been admitted to New York University for the coming year but was instead planning to go to the London School of Economics after the US visa interviews were paused.Bhartiya said Indian students primarily went to the US to study Stem subjects – science, technology, engineering and maths – and so the focus had shifted to other countries strong in these areas.“Germany is the main country where students are shifting to for Stem subjects,” he said. “Other countries like Ireland, France, the Netherlands, which are also gaining substantial interest in the students. At the undergraduate level, the Middle East has also seen a lot of gain in interest given parents feel that it is close by and safer and given the current political environment they may want their kids closer to the home.”Among the Indian students forced to abandon their plans is Nihar Gokhale, 36. He had a fully funded offer for a PhD at a private university in Massachusetts, but recently received a letter saying the funding was being withdrawn, as the university faced issues under the Trump administration.“It was quite shocking. I spoke to people at the university, and they admitted it was an exceptional situation for them too,” said Gokhale.Without the funding, the US was financially “out of the question” and he said he had an offer from the UK he now intended to take up.“For at least the next three or four years, I’m not considering the US at all,” he said. More
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Trump officials deported Vietnamese and Burmese migrants to South Sudan, say lawyers
by Evelyn Reynolds 20 May 2025, 21:33
Immigrant rights advocates have accused the Trump administration of deporting about a dozen migrants from countries including Myanmar and Vietnam to South Sudan in violation of a court order, and asked a judge to order their return.The advocates made the request in a motion directed to a federal judge in Boston who had barred the Trump administration from swiftly deporting migrants to countries other than their own without first hearing any concerns they had that they might be tortured or persecuted if sent there.Lawyers for a group of migrants pursuing the class action lawsuit before US district judge Brian Murphy said they learned that nearly a dozen migrants held at a detention facility in Texas were flown to South Sudan on Tuesday morning.Those migrants included an individual from Myanmar whose lawyer received an email on Monday from an official with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement informing the attorney of the intent to deport his client to South Sudan.The migrant’s lawyers said they learned their client had been flown to South Sudan on Tuesday morning.The spouse of a Vietnamese man who was held at the same detention center in Texas emailed his lawyer, meanwhile, saying he and 10 other individuals were deported as well, according to the motion.The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSouth Sudan, the world’s youngest country, gained independence from Sudan in 2011, and has since struggled with armed conflict and poverty. Between 2013 and 2018, fighting between factions loyal to the current president, Salva Kiir Mayardit, and his vice-president, Riek Machar, killed nearly 400,000 people. More
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Asian countries riven by war and disaster face some of steepest Trump tariffs
by Evelyn Reynolds 3 April 2025, 09:13
Developing nations in south-east Asia, including wartorn and earthquake-hit Myanmar, and several African nations are among the trading partners facing the highest tariffs set by Donald Trump.Upending decades of US trade policy and threatening to unleash a global trade war, the US president announced a raft of tariffs on Wednesday that he said were designed to stop the US economy from being “cheated”.“This is one of the most important days, in my opinion, in American history,” said Trump on Wednesday. “It’s our declaration of economic independence.”He hailed the moment as “liberation day”, but the tariffs are likely to be met with loud protests from some of the world’s weakest economies. One expert said Trump was likely to be targeting countries that received investment from China, regardless of the situation in that country. Chinese manufacturers have previously relocated to countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia not only due to lower operating costs, but also to avoid tariffs.The tariffs come as many countries in south-east Asia are already grappling with the fallout from the cuts to USAID, which provides humanitarian assistance to a region vulnerable to natural disasters and support for pro-democracy activists battling repressive regimes.Cambodia, a developing economy where 17.8% of the population live below the poverty line, according to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), is the worst-hit country in the region with a tariff rate of 49%. More than half of the country’s factories are reportedly Chinese-owned, with the countries exports dominated by garments and footwear.Next worse-hit is the landlocked south-east Asian nation of Laos, a country heavily bombed by the US during the cold war, with 48%. According to the ADB, Laos has a poverty rate of 18.3%.Not far behind is Vietnam with 46% and Myanmar, a nation reeling from a devastating earthquake on Friday, and years of civil war following a 2021 military coup, with 44%.Indonesia, the biggest economy in south-east Asia, faces a 32% tariff rate, while Thailand, the second-largest, has been hit with a rate of 36%.Major US rival and trading partner China has been hit with a 34% reciprocal tariff, on top of the 20% levy already imposed.Dr Siwage Dharma Negara, a senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, said the tariffs on south-east Asian nations were intended to hurt China.“The administration thinks that by targeting these countries they can target Chinese investment in countries like Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Indonesia. By targeting their products maybe it will affect Chinese exports and the economy,” he said.“The real target is China but the real impact on those countries will be quite significant because this investment creates jobs and export revenue.”Tariffs on countries such as Indonesia, he said, would be counterproductive for the US, and the detail of how they would be applied remained unclear.“Some garments and footwear [companies] are American brands like Nike, or Adidas, US companies that have factories in Indonesia. Will they face the same tariffs as well?” he said.Stephen Olson, a former US trade negotiator, said countries in south-east Asia would be forced to reconsider their relationships with Washington. “A closer tilt towards China could be the result. It’s hard to have constructive, productive relations with a country that has just dropped a ton of bricks on your head,” said Olson, a visiting senior fellow at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute.“The world’s largest importer has now essentially hung a sign on its border saying ‘closed for business’,” he added. “We are now faced with two plausible scenarios: Either the impacted trade partners hold firm and retaliate in the hope that Trump will be forced to back down, or they look to cut deals with Trump in order to avoid the tariffs. It is unlikely that either scenario will end well.”Other nations among the hardest hit are several nations in Africa, including Lesotho – a country that Trump claimed “nobody has ever heard of” – with 50%, Madagascar with 47% and Botswana with 37%. Lesotho, a small mountainous kingdom surrounded by South Africa, has the second-highest level of HIV infection of the world, with almost one in four adults HIV-positive.In south Asia, Sri Lanka is facing a 44% tariff. In Europe, Serbia faces a 37% rate.In addition to the reciprocal tariffs on a few dozen countries, Trump will impose a 10% universal tariff on all imported goods. That tariff will go into effect on 5 April, while the reciprocal tariffs will begin on 9 April.The US president has justified the changes by saying they are retribution for countries that have long “cheated” America, and the levies will bring jobs back to the US.But economists have warned the sweeping changes will raise costs, threaten jobs, slow growth and isolate the US from a system of global trade it pioneered, and furthered over several decades.“This is how you sabotage the world’s economic engine while claiming to supercharge it,” said Nigel Green, the CEO of global financial advisory deVere Group.“The reality is stark: these tariffs will push prices higher on thousands of everyday goods – from phones to food – and that will fuel inflation at a time when it is already uncomfortably persistent.” More
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‘Hope in my heart’: displaced Afghans in limbo as White House freezes refugee programs
by Evelyn Reynolds 2 April 2025, 15:00
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View image in fullscreenThe 24-year-old Afghan woman wants to become a surgeon – and she had set her sights on training in the US.She wants to care for other women and girls, so they don’t have to be afraid to visit the doctor – so at least in one crucial aspect of their lives they won’t have to endure the unwanted advances, dismissive comments and blatant disrespect that she’s experienced from many of the men who have always surrounded her, first in her native Afghanistan and now in legal limbo in Pakistan.“I hope a lot that I will be a doctor in the future. I don’t know it will happen, but I hope,” she said. “It means that a woman is powerful, that if she wants to do something, she can.”Yet for the moment, she has no way to attend medical school anywhere. She can barely step outside the apartment in Islamabad where she and her two sisters, her teenage brother, and their mother spend each day terrified that police will arrest and deport them back to face Taliban rule.Simply as a woman in the Taliban’s Afghanistan her lifestyle would be severely restricted, but as Christians the whole family would literally be in mortal danger.Her family has documents from the United Nations Refugee Agency proving that they’re certified asylum seekers, and they were on the verge of getting the green light to come to the US.But to the Trump administration right now, these plans don’t matter – despite volunteer groups in Texas preparing for months to welcome them.To the police in Pakistan, where they are in exile, those UN documents don’t matter either. What matters is that the family is Afghan and is no longer wanted there.“Everywhere is policed. Every day, police come to our house. It’s too difficult for us,” said the woman in an interview over Zoom. The Guardian is withholding the family’s identity while they remain at risk.“In these days, we awake with a fear,” she said of her family. They have already been lying low in Pakistan for three years after fleeing Afghanistan.View image in fullscreenA few months ago, it seemed as though the family was finally on the cusp of relief, soon to fly to east Texas.“They were nearing the finish line. We didn’t have any certainty, they hadn’t actually been approved and travel wasn’t being scheduled yet. But we were right there – everything, all the screening, was done,” said Justin Reese, one member of a group of Texas volunteers who were getting ready to welcome the family.Then, on the first day of Donald Trump’s second term as president, one of his many immigration-related executive orders indefinitely suspended the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) – and with it, the family’s chance at reaching imminent safety.“By every metric, they have played by the rules and they are being treated like this,” said Reese. “It’s very damaging to them individually, and it’s damaging, I think, to the future security of the US, for us to be seen as this mercurial, as this incoherent.”A federal district judge temporarily blocked Trump’s effective ban on refugees coming to the US, offering those on the brink of resettlement a flicker of hope, but a circuit panel has now rolled back that decision, saying only people already approved must be allowed to come. And whether an administration ideologically opposed to refugee resettlement will resume the program at scale – or in any meaningful way – remains an open question, particularly after the state department has tried to terminate essential funding agreements with all of the US’s resettlement agencies for the entire fiscal year. That was even before the prospect of new Trump travel restrictions on Afghans entering the US, and before immigration officials suddenly paused green card processing for refugees already here.“I don’t know how you get to a place of suspending refugee resettlement as policy without a series of ideological turns that I don’t understand how to unwind,” Reese said.Before the ascent of Trumpism, USRAP enjoyed widespread bipartisan support for myriad reasons: its protection of American allies and related benefits to national security; its solidarity with “frontline states” such as Turkey and Colombia that are taking in so many of the world’s displaced people; its signal to other nations that the US cares about human rights.In fact, even before the refugee resettlement program was written into US law, organizations cropped up across the nation in response to the atrocities of the second world war – and the US’s role in rejecting refugees early on who then became victims of the Holocaust. These agencies welcomed displaced people from around the world, many fleeing communism from the Baltic states, Hungary or Vietnam.After Congress established a more universal, standardized refugee framework, general support for resettlement continued, even following the 11 September 2001 attacks that reshaped much of the US immigration system. Sometimes, scandals would arise within the program, but administrations would address them and move on.Then, in 2015, Trump ran for president and soon started trumpeting a narrative that refugees posed a security threat to American communities, despite them being some of the most thoroughly vetted newcomers in the country.“There [was] already a kind of deteriorating bipartisan support,” Yael Schacher, director for the Americas and Europe at Refugees International, the humanitarian organization, recalled of that moment.By fiscal year 2020, the first Trump administration had gutted the US’s refugee resettlement infrastructure and set the annual ceiling on refugee admissions at 18,000 – the lowest cap on record.When Joe Biden took office, his administration eventually rebuilt resettlement capacity in the US, with more than 100,000 people welcomed in his last full fiscal year in office.To do so, Biden made innovations, such as an initiative called the Welcome Corps, which invited Americans and green card holders to form private groups and financially sponsor refugees for resettlement in the US.“I think the idea of the Welcome Corps was that it was politically foolproof,” said Schacher, and that “because it relied on private funds and private individuals to step up … that these folks would push back against the Trump administration and make sure that folks still come. And they would step in if government funding was withdrawn. I think it remains to be seen if that’s actually going to work politically.”Reese and his family knew that they wanted to participate in the Welcome Corps. A software developer by trade, he had spent the better part of a decade learning about the politics and policy of offering refuge.Just before the coronavirus pandemic gripped the US, he traveled to Greece to serve in a refugee camp with 20,000 residents representing 40 different nationalities. The corner of camp where he volunteered hosted mostly Afghans, and he returned home to east Texas with new friendships and phone numbers from within that community.So when Kabul fell to the Taliban and the US withdrew troops from Afghanistan in 2021, his phone started buzzing with alerts from worried Afghans whose loved ones were still stranded in danger. He sprang into action, attempting to cut through red tape to try to get desperate families in Afghanistan on US evacuation flights. It was frantic and exhausting.View image in fullscreen“Everything felt like an inch away and then a mile away at the same time, because you just knew if you just were smart enough or well-resourced enough, then you could make this happen,” he remembered.Simultaneously, the Afghan family of five he would eventually try to resettle through the Welcome Corps was fleeing Afghanistan for Pakistan. The Taliban’s return to power was the final straw that dashed any hope they had for stability in their homeland, though it was hardly their first brush with persecution.As members of the Hazara ethnic community, their people had long been victims of massacres and genocides, including by the Taliban at the turn of the 21st century. Having converted from Shia Islam to Christianity, the family had been targeted by their neighbors, beaten and forced to move many times. And as a household in which the patriarch died about a decade ago, the women had been subject to constant unwanted attention and harassment from unscrupulous men.“We miss, a lot, our country,” one of the daughters said. “We miss our memories that we had. But unfortunately we can’t go back because I have lots of bad memories from Taliban … situations, and it makes me sad.” As she described the family’s experience, she wept.Her family met Reese in person when they were all in Islamabad in late 2023. Until then, they had been names on a list for Reese, names he was still trying to help find refuge. After getting to know the family face to face, he wanted to bring them to his own community, where he thought their life experiences would resonate with people.He found willing volunteers back in east Texas. With 10 members, Reese’s Welcome Corps group is far larger than required and includes a veteran who served in Afghanistan, a missionary’s kid who grew up in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a couple whose children work with Afghans abroad, and others uniquely equipped to help.Offers of housing and other support flowed in. And Reese’s commitment to sponsor the Afghan family made a huge difference in their lives, even as they remained in a precarious situation abroad. They suddenly felt as though they were waiting in Pakistan for a reason, and they stopped worrying as much about their future while imagining safety together in the US.“It made my family so happy,” one of the daughters said. In Texas, she hoped, “we can continue our studies and we can continue our lives without any worries”.Now Reese’s garage is full of donated household items from an online wishlist to outfit what would have been the family’s new home in Tyler, Texas. It’s unclear when or if the family will ever arrive – news Reese had to deliver personally.“I have a hard time talking about how it made us feel without being angry because I do feel that it’s not just unnecessary and harmful, but strategically incompetent,” he said. “I don’t believe that anybody involved in turning [USRAP] off had to deliver phone calls like the ones that we had to over the last few weeks.”Despite the setback and the increasingly serious threats of deportation the family faces in Islamabad, one of the daughters expressed gratitude for “brother Justin”, as she calls Reese, and appreciates at least hearing an update on their case.Trump’s actions have made her “sad, but I hope”, she said, adding: “I have hope in my heart that this program will open again.” More
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Village in India where Harris is ‘daughter of the land’ on edge as US election looms
by Evelyn Reynolds 31 October 2024, 09:00
Kamala Harris may never have visited Thulasendrapuram, a sleepy village in south India, but its residents claim to be some of her most devoted fans.It was here, in among the verdant rice paddies and groundnut farms of rural Tamil Nadu, that Harris’s grandfather PV Gopalan was born. Though more than a century has passed since then, residents have proudly claimed Harris as a “daughter of the land”.The outcome of the US election next week, where Harris is running as the Democrat party’s presidential nominee, has the community on edge. At the local tea shop, local gossip has been pushed to one side to make way for chatter over the challenges posed by Harris’s opponent Donald Trump and the trends from crucial swing states.Banners and billboards bearing Harris’s face and wishing her good luck in Tamil, the local language, have also been erected across the village and daily pujas [prayers] are held at the local temple to ensure her victory.“Whether she wins or not is irrelevant to us. The fact that she is contesting is historic and makes us proud,” said M Murukanandan, a local politician.Harris has often spoken about the formative influence of her mother Shyamala Gopalan Harris’s Indian roots. Gopalan Harris was born in the south Indian city of Chennai, and went to university in Delhi but moved to the US at 19, after getting accepted to the University of California, Berkeley for her masters. She would go on to become a celebrated breast cancer research scientist and her success – overcoming the racism she regularly faced as “a brilliant 5-foot-tall brown woman with an accent” – is often cited by Harris as a great source of inspiration.View image in fullscreenDefying expectations to return to India for an arranged marriage, in 1963 she married Donald Harris, an economics graduate from Jamaica, and remained living in the US till her death from cancer in 2009. However, as Harris wrote in her memoir, “we were raised with a strong awareness of and appreciation for Indian culture. All of my mother’s words of affection or frustration came out in her mother tongue.”It was Harris’s passing reference to a phrase she said was often used by her mother “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” that came to be one of the defining moments of her presidential campaign, setting the internet alight with memes.Harris has also spoken of the south Indian food she grew up eating at home, with a particular fondness for idli and dosa, and said as a child they would visit both the Black baptist church and the Hindu temple. She was also taken for several trips to her Indian family in Chennai. It was here that Harris recalled long walks with her grandfather Gopalan, along Chennai’s famous beach, where he would speak to his young granddaughter of the importance of fighting for civil rights and equality. Harris last returned to Chennai beach to scatter her mother’s ashes in 2009.There are no relatives of Harris’s family left living in Thulasendrapuram and all that’s remaining of the ancestral house where her grandfather was born is a vacant plot of land. However, he is still remembered fondly in the village as a well-read man with progressive values and a passion for activism that he passed down to his daughters, Shyamala and Sarala.Villagers were keen to emphasise how her family’s ancestral ties to the village remained present. “We all still feel a connection to Kamala,” said 80-year-old N Krishnamurthy, a retired bank officer.Harris’s aunt Sarala still lives and works in Chennai and has visited Thulasendrapuram several times, where villagers refer to her as chithi, an affectionate term meaning younger sister. The wall of the local Dharmasastha Temple are inscribed with Harris’s name after her aunt donated 5000 rupees (£45) towards its renovation a decade ago in her honour.Murukanandan, the local politician, said he and several others in the village had recently contacted Sarala to convey good luck messages from the residents of Thulasendrapuram and express their hopes that one day Harris would finally visit them. “She agreed to pass on our wishes,” he said. “We also asked her to encourage Harris to visit our village after winning the election. We hope everything will be possible.”View image in fullscreenHarris’s presidential campaign has also inspired a flurry of village development in her honour. A new water tank, to collect and harvest rainwater for the village, is under construction which will have a plaque bearing Harris’s name. A new village bus stop, named after Harris, is also being built.N Kamakodi, chairman of a local bank that is helping fund the renovation, said Harris’s rise to prominence thousands of miles away in the US was helping to uplift the local village. “We need to celebrate our daughter’s rise to power in any way we can,” he said. “If she wins the election, we will install more public utilities to honour her achievements and legacy. She is a source of pride and a lasting identity for us.”Yet in the US, the impact of Harris’s Indian heritage among the Indian American diaspora – now the second largest immigrant group in the states – remains more debatable, with her Black identity widely seen as much more significant. Historically Indian American voters have overwhelmingly been Democrat but a survey released this week by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace indicates that support for the Democrats is on the decline from 2020, even with Harris on the ticket.According to the survey, 61% of registered Indian American voters intend to vote for Harris, but since 2020 there has also been a slight increase in those who intend to vote for Trump. The gender difference was particularly notable: 67% of Indian American women intend to vote for Harris, compared with 53% of men.Yet as the villagers of Thulasendrapuram were keen to point out, around 250 families from the village had emigrated to the US for jobs in recent years, many for work in the software industry, and several were now registered to vote in the upcoming elections.“These families likely have at least 10 votes in favour of Harris,” said local farmer Jancy Rani. “So, the village is contributing modestly to her success.” More
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Biden ‘privately defiant’ over chaotic 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal, book says
by Evelyn Reynolds 16 February 2024, 14:42
Joe Biden is “privately defiant” that he made the right calls on the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in summer 2021, a new book reportedly says, even as the chaos and carnage that unfolded continues to be investigated in Congress.“No one offered to resign” over the withdrawal, writes Alexander Ward, a Politico reporter, “in large part because the president didn’t believe anyone had made a mistake. Ending the war was always going to be messy.”Ward’s book, The Internationalists: The Fight to Restore Foreign Policy After Trump, will be published next week. Axios reported extracts on Friday.Ward adds: “Biden told his top aides, [national security adviser Jake] Sullivan included, that he stood by them and they had done their best during a tough situation.”Ward quotes an unnamed White House official as saying: “There wasn’t even a real possibility of a shake-up.”The US invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, a month after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. The Taliban, which had sheltered the leader of al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden, was soon ousted but fighting never ceased.Figures for the total US death toll in the country since 2001 vary. The United States Institute of Peace, an independent body established by Congress, says that 2,324 US military personnel, 3,917 US contractors and 1,144 allied troops were killed during the conflict. More than 20,000 Americans were wounded.“For Afghans,” the institute goes on, “the statistics are nearly unimaginable: 70,000 Afghan military and police deaths, 46,319 Afghan civilians (although that is likely a significant underestimation) and some 53,000 opposition fighters killed. Almost 67,000 other people were killed in Pakistan in relation to the Afghan war.”Hundreds of thousands were displaced. Furthermore, according to the Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs at Brown University, “four times as many [US] service members have died by suicide than in combat in the post-9/11 wars [including Iraq and other campaigns], signaling a widespread mental health crisis”.Biden entered office determined to withdraw, and in late summer 2021 US forces pulled out, leaving the defense of the country to US-trained Afghan national forces.The Taliban swiftly overran that opposition, and soon scenes of chaos at Kabul airport dominated world news. Tens of thousands of Afghans who sought to leave, fearing Taliban reprisals after a 20-year US occupation, were unable to get out. More than 800 US citizens were left behind, notwithstanding Biden’s promise on 18 August that troops would stay until every US citizen who wanted to leave had done so.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWard, Axios said, quotes a senior White House official as saying: “There’s no one here who thinks we can meet that promise.”On 26 August, 13 US service members were killed in a suicide attack. Three days later, a US drone strike killed 10 Afghan civilians, seven of them children. No Americans faced disciplinary action over the strike, which a US air force inspector general called “an honest mistake”.According to Axios, Ward also details extensive infighting over the withdrawal between the Departments of State and Defense.Biden, Ward says, tended to favour the state department, having been chair of the Senate foreign affairs committee, and to be wary of the Pentagon, having been vice-president to Barack Obama through eight years of inconclusive war. More
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Henry Kissinger’s role in Bengali massacre | Letter
by Evelyn Reynolds 4 December 2023, 17:28
Jonathan Steele’s obituary of Henry Kissinger (29 November) omits reference to his part in what the author Gary J Bass calls “one of the worst moments of moral blindness in US foreign policy”, when in 1971 he advised President Richard Nixon to side with Pakistan’s military dictator, Gen Yahya Khan, in his war with Bangladesh, then East Pakistan.In his Pulitzer prize-finalist book on this “forgotten genocide”, The Blood Telegram, Bass describes how Kissinger and Nixon repeatedly ignored the pleas from the US consul general in Dhaka, Archer Blood, who was desperately cabling his superiors with reports of the massacre of thousands of civilians in the city. Pakistan was using US-made tanks, weapons and ammunition to crush the Bengalis.Senator Edward Kennedy declared this “one of the greatest nightmares of modern times”, but Kissinger used every power he (and Nixon) possessed to cover up their role. To this day, most Americans are oblivious to the appalling stain on their country’s history, in which as many as 3 million lives were lost.Robert EvansFormer MEP and chair of European parliament South Asia delegation More
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Joe Biden calls for stable US-China relationship during south-east Asia tour
by Evelyn Reynolds 10 September 2023, 17:05
Joe Biden’s national security tour of south-east Asia reached Hanoi, Vietnam, on Sunday, where the president called for stability in the US-China relationship against an increasingly complex diplomatic picture in the region for his country.“I don’t want to contain China,” Biden said. “I just want to make sure that we have a relationship with China that is on the up and up, squared away, everybody knows what it’s all about.”Biden also said that China’s recent economic downturn may limit any inclination to invade Taiwan.“I don’t think it’s going to cause China to invade Taiwan – matter of fact the opposite, probably doesn’t have the same capacity as it had before,” he said on Sunday during a press conference in Hanoi.He added that the country’s economic woes had left President Xi Jinping with “his hands full right now”.The president’s remarks came after a meeting with Nguyen Phu Trong, the general secretary of Vietnam’s ruling Communist party, in the nation’s capital designed to secure global supply chains of semiconductors and critical minerals, which would offer a strategic alternative to China.“I think we have an enormous opportunity,” Biden said of the visit. “Vietnam and the United States are critical partners at what I would argue is a very critical time.”The meeting came during a multi-front diplomatic push to shore up international support for Ukrainian resistance to Russia’s invasion and enunciate a policy toward China that both encourages trade and reduces the potential for US-Chinese conflict.The complexities of the administration’s approach were illustrated on Saturday, a day before Biden landed in Hanoi, when the New York Times reported that Vietnam is in talks with Russia over a new arms supply deal that could trigger US sanctions.Reuters said it had seen – but could not authenticate – documents describing talks for a credit facility that Russia would extend to Vietnam to buy heavy weaponry, including anti-ship missiles, anti-submarine aircraft and helicopters, anti-aircraft missile systems and fighter jets.Earlier, at the G20 summit in New Delhi, India, western leaders failed to reiterate an explicit condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The summit declaration referred only to the “war in Ukraine” and lamented the “suffering” of the Ukrainian people – an equivocation that indicates a growing lack of international consensus.Less than a year ago, G20 leaders still issued a strong condemnation of the Russian invasion and called on Moscow to withdraw its forces.Biden’s secretary of state, Antony Blinken, attempted to smooth over the disparity, telling ABC’s This Week that world leaders meeting in New Delhi had “stood up very clearly, including in the statement, for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”.Blinken said that virtually every meeting participant “is intent on making sure there is a just and durable end to this Russian aggression”.It was clear in the room, he said, that “countries are feeling the consequences and want the Russian aggression to stop”.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said: “The vast majority of G20 countries have supported multiple UN resolutions that call out Russia’s illegal aggression.”Jean-Pierre said the New Delhi communique “builds on that, to send an unprecedented, unified statement on the imperative that Russia refrain from using force for territorial acquisition, abide by its obligations in the UN charter, and cease attacks on civilians and infrastructure”.The comments came as a CBS News poll found only 1 in 4 Americans think Biden is improving the US’s global position. According to the survey, 24% thought Biden was making the US stronger, 50% said weaker and 26% that he was not having much effect.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJust 29% said they were optimistic for the prospects of world peace and stability in the world, and 71% said they were increasingly pessimistic. Asked if the Biden administration was being “too easy” on China, 57% agreed.On CNN, Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley slammed the Biden administration’s policy toward China, describing the country as an “enemy”.“China has practically been preparing for war with us for years,” Haley said. “Yes, I view China as an enemy.”Haley said China had bought 400,000 acres (162,000 hectares) of US soil and the largest pork producer in the country, and continues to steal $600bn a year in intellectual property while spreading propaganda. She pointed to Chinese drones used by US law enforcement and to the crisis caused by Chinese-sourced fentanyl that “had killed more Americans than the Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam war combined”.“How much more has to happen for Biden to realize you don’t send cabinet members over to China to appease them?” she said, referring to the recent visit of the US commerce secretary, Gina Raimondo, to Beijing.The administration’s effort to present a coherent picture of US foreign policy toward its two most vexing issues – China and Russia – continued Sunday with vice-president Kamala Harris telling CBS News that a planned meeting between North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and Russia’s Vladimir Putin “would be a huge mistake”.“When you look at Russia’s unprovoked war on Ukraine, and the idea that they would supply ammunition to Russia – well, it’s predictable where that ends up,” Harris said. “I also believe very strongly that for both Russia and North Korea, this will further isolate them.”Harris also spoke to an emerging concern that China’s president, Xi Jinping, who skipped the G20, may decline to attend the Asia-Pacific economic cooperation leaders’ meeting in San Francisco, California, in November.Last week, China’s security agency hinted that a meeting between Xi Jinping and Joe Biden in San Francisco will depend on the US “showing sufficient sincerity”.China’s ministry of state security said that the country “will never let its guard down”.The comments came after Raimondo said the US did not want to decouple from China but that American companies had complained to her that China had become “uninvestible”.Asked how important it is for Xi Jinping to come to America, Harris remarked that “it is important to the … stability of things that we keep open lines of communication”. 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Joe Biden calls for stable US-China relationship during south-east Asia tour

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