When the Alsidnawis sit down to breakfast, more important than any dish on the table are the screens that join them.
Sometimes from a laptop and sometimes from family members’ phones, the faces of 27-year-old Ahmad Alsidnawi, the family’s only son, and 32-year-old Sami Labbad, the oldest daughter’s husband, hover over the food. The two have been stuck overseas, waiting for years to reunite with their loved ones in El Cajon, Calif., a process complicated by the Trump administration’s 2017 travel ban that restricted visa processing for Syrians.
Between fiscal 2016 and fiscal 2019, the number of visas issued annually to Syrians decreased by 64%, from more than 2,600 to fewer than 950, according to U.S. State Department reports. Just 14 of the more than 11,000 visas issued in December 2020 were to Syrians, according to State Department data.
Now that President Biden has put an end to the travel ban — which blocked visas for several nationalities, most from countries with Muslim majorities — the number of visas issued to Syrians should increase. The Alsidnawis are hoping like never before that the U.S. government will act quickly to make their family whole.
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