NEW YORK -- Columbia University is moving ahead with a scholarship program for Syrian college students displaced by civil war, despite concerns that some students will be blocked from attending.
The program, which has already allowed a handful of students into the university, recently announced it was seeking a second round of applications from Syrian students.
About 230 Syrians have applied this time, with the enrollment period still open, compared with 275 applicants the previous year.
Unless U.S. policy changes, though, potential students would face a challenge getting into the country. Restrictions put in place by President Donald Trump's administration bar Syrian citizens from getting any visas, including student visas, with only limited possibility for case-by-case exceptions.
College administrators are holding out hope that the U.S. Supreme Court will loosen or strike down those restrictions. The justices are scheduled to hear arguments on legal challenges to the rules later this month, with the timing of a ruling uncertain.
In the interim, "what we concluded was, we go forward," said Bruce Usher, a professor at Columbia Business School who worked to create the scholarship program. "What we do is educate people. If we find that certain applicants are unable to attend ... hopefully they'll eventually be able to get a visa."
The latest version of Trump's travel ban includes six countries -- Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria and Yemen -- along with certain Venezuelan government officials. Chad had been on the list but was removed recently.
Citizens of those six countries are generally barred from getting visas that would allow them to come to the U.S. permanently. The rules for visas for temporary visitors, like tourists or students, vary among the countries, with Syrian citizens blocked from getting any. There are limited possibilities for exceptions or waivers, such as for a Syrian holding dual citizenship with an unrestricted country.
Those rules were not in place when Columbia University created the program in 2016.
The school gave scholarships, which include free tuition and housing, to four Syrian students in the program's first year and hopes for a similar number in the next round.
To qualify, students must have been displaced and must currently be living in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey or the United States. Applicants also must meet Columbia's regular academic admission requirements.
Columbia sophomore Qutaiba Idlbi, 28, was among the students who got a scholarship in the first round. Idlbi, who is studying economics and political science, said he left Syria in 2011 after being detained by government security forces over his political activities.
He has been in the U.S. since 2013, but he said that if it hadn't been for the scholarship, he would never have been able to afford school and may have had to leave the country.
"Education is not only a key for work, but it is basically something to implement, to make a change in the world," he said.
The travel ban on Syrians, he said, feels like betrayal. He said his people are in need of American help and military support.
Supporters of the travel restrictions, which have gone through several revisions because of previous legal challenges, acknowledge they will pose hardships to some people who can't get visas to study or visit relatives. But they say the rules are necessary to screen out potentially harmful travelers.
"There's no question that might inconvenience people that might want to go to universities or medical treatments or other things, but it was a notion that there was a real threat there and that was an acute threat," said James Carafano, national security expert at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
Syria, he said, has been destabilized by war, raising questions of whether it can keep the kinds of records needed to properly identify travelers.
A Section on 04/16/2018