6 years ago, while choking under the oppression imposed by President Ahmadinejad and the extensive sanctions that left our educational institutions deprived from any connections with the outside world, I left Iran to follow my dream of advancing our technological civilization. I came to the U.S., learned English within six months and joined Kalamazoo College, Kalamazoo, MI. Finishing within the highest ranks at my institution, I joined the University of Michigan Space Sciences/Engineering PhD program. Today, I am proud to be an American citizen who strives to serve the nation under whose flag I swore and also to help my birthplace nation to achieve the freedom they deserve.
Here at the University of Michigan, similar to thousands of other institutions around the world, Iranian students work hard and treasure the opportunity to freely follow our dreams and help advance our understanding of the world we all live in. This opportunity would have been impossible were we not given the chance to prove to the world that we, the Iranian people, are not defined by the regimes that seek to repress our progress.
I am writing to you to remind you that your executive action banning Iranian people (esp. students) from coming to the U.S. will impede the progress that we hope to achieve. Your executive action will close the doors on to the very people who looked to America as the leader of the free world to give them their voices. Your executive action will embolden those who govern by controlling and suppressing their people. Your executive action will give your opponents the reasons they needed to prove that America is the 'Great Satan' that they always preached it was.
I would like to earnestly ask you to reconsider your executive action and take into account the lives and futures of generations of people you have the power to influence. The progress that the Iranian people have made as a nation is in large due to the trust that the United States of America has invested in us. Please do not turn your back onto the people and the scholars who are your agents of change.
