‘Just a regular Friday for Iranians’: US founder says her wedding in Turkey was canceled

Iranian-American founder Kiana Ehsani reacts to new green card rules and shares heartbreaking update on her life. Although she is not a green card applicant and is already a green card holder, Essani said her situation is no better. “Today I was due to travel to Turkey for a wedding,” Essani said, adding that her wedding had to be canceled as all flights to and from Iran were canceled and her family was unable to leave the country.Essani said they chose Türkiye for their wedding because of its proximity to Iran. She was supposed to marry close family members on a boat in the Mediterranean at sunset.Instead of going to Türkiye, she said she stumbled upon the new green card rules that require applicants to return to their home country before they can apply. “This means that every one of my Iranian friends with visas now has to go home (on what flight?) to get a green card??? As if that’s easy? We all know that it’s a huge challenge for Iranians to come back to the U.S. (with months-long wait times for visas and the possibility of never coming back),” she wrote.Essani said she has lived in the United States for 11 years and has held a green card for five years, which makes her eligible to apply for citizenship. But that doesn’t matter because Iranians are now not allowed any kind of immigration due to the ongoing US-Iran war.“For an Iranian, it’s just a normal Friday. These days, when people ask me how I’m doing and how I’m coping with everything, I just say: It’s okay, it’s okay. It will be okay one day. But the reality is: everything is not okay. I am in constant pain. I haven’t seen my family and loved ones in years, I barely hear about their well-being, I worry about them all the time. I just keep my head down and work because it’s the only distraction that saves me from losing my mind. I’m not good. None of us are good. We are just barely hanging on…” she wrote.Ehsani holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Washington and was the co-founder of Vercept, which was acquired by Anthropic.