NEW YORK--Maziar Hashemi, a naturalized U.S. citizen who lives in Massachusetts, has been told by doctors that his best hope for surviving a rare form of blood cancer is a bone marrow transplant. President Donald Trump’s travel ban could make that impossible.
Bone marrow transplants require a close match between donor and recipient. A few months after his diagnosis last September, Hashemi, 60, learned that his brother in Iran, Kamiar Hashemi, was a rare 100-percent match. The only problem was Kamiar’s nationality.
The latest travel ban, issued as a presidential proclamation and implemented on December 8 after months of legal wrangling, bars most travelers to the United States from Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Chad and North Korea, as well as certain government officials from Venezuela. Although the ban allows for case-by-case waivers to be granted, including for medical need, Kamiar Hashemi has so far been denied a visa.
Attorneys who regularly deal with visa issues say the waiver process is opaque. Visa applicants aren’t allowed to apply for waivers; they are simply granted or not without explanation. U.S. officials won't say how they make their decisions or how long they generally take.
A U.S. State Department official told Reuters that since the ban took effect, more than 375 waivers have been approved but he declined to say how many total visa applications have been filed from countries covered by the ban. He said he could not comment on the specifics of Hashemi’s case.
Kamiar Hashemi began the visa application process soon after learning he was a match for his brother. In February, the 57-year-old small business owner traveled to Armenia to be interviewed at the U.S. embassy there, since there is no embassy in Iran.
Later on the day of the interview, Kamiar’s brother back in Massachusetts checked the status of the application on the State Department's website. A pop-up window announced in bright blue letters: "Refused."
Waivers can later be granted to applicants initially refused for visas, according to the State Department, so Maziar Hashemi continued checking the website each day, but his brother’s status hasn’t changed. He hired an immigration lawyer, Mahsa Khanbabai, hoping she might smooth the way.
The Trump administration has said travel restrictions are needed to protect the United States from terrorism. Critics have challenged the latest ban, as they did previous versions, saying that it discriminates against Muslims. Six of the eight countries included in the current ban are majority Muslim.
