July 29, 2022
The Biden Administration has changed immigration rules so that Iranians who are drafted into the Pasdaran will no longer be automatically denied visas to enter the United States.
The Trump Administration in 2019 named the Pasdaran as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization.” That made the organization subject to a host of sanctions. But analysts said all but one of those sanctions were already applied to the Pasdaran under previous decrees. The one new sanction was that no one who had ever been a member of the Pasdaran could ever be given a visa to enter the United States for any reason.
There have been a few well-publicized cases in which men known as critics of the regime have been denied US visas because when they were young and conscripted under Iranian law they were assigned to the Pasdaran. Draftees can be assigned to the regular military, the Pasdaran, the police or the border guard forces.
A new regulation, signed June 8 by Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security, changes that.
It does not name Iran or the Pasdaran, but changes the rules to make clear that the visa ban shall not apply to anyone who provided a Foreign Terrorist Organization with “minimal” or “inconsequential” support and “did not voluntarily and knowingly engage in terrorist activity.”
A US State Department spokesperson could not immediately tell The Associated Press how many former Iranian conscripts have had visa applications rejected.
Immigration attorneys, however, said they have received hundreds of calls from former conscripts.
Several Iranian-born Canadian citizens said they’ve faced additional scrutiny during what were previously quick and easy trips across the border. Amir Abolhassani, a 41-year-old engineer, said he had traveled many times to the United States without a problem as a Canadian citizen, but he was recently stopped by authorities on a trip to North Carolina where his company planned to transfer him for a new job.
Abolhassani was told he couldn’t go because of his conscription more than a decade ago, which he said consisted of two months of basic training and designing water pipelines for the branch. He said he was assigned at random and the service was necessary so he could obtain a passport and leave the country to continue his education.
Now, he and his wife are in limbo because they have already sold their home to make the move but can’t get visas.
“The worst part is that they tell you you are a terrorist,” Abolhassani said. “We have come out of that country because we were against their policies, because we were against their behavior, and now saying, ‘You belong to that system, you belong to that regime, you are part of the organization we have listed as a terrorist organization’ — that is very unjust. That is unbearable.”