|
CounterPunch
February
8, 2003
Homeland Insecurity
Champaign-Urbana's
International Community Shaken by New INS Rules
By OLIVE LOWELL
While most Americans celebrated the holiday season
with their families, Champaign-Urbana's residents from the Middle
East, North Africa, South and Southeast Asia spent those same
days under stress. Rather than anticipating warm reunions, they
feared imminent separation from their loved ones by the Immigration
and Naturalization Service under provisions of the Homeland Security
Act.
It's always been hard being an immigrant
to the U.S., even though it's also always been a great opportunity.
Even legal immigrants with work permits and all their papers
in order experience an extraordinary level of hassles and red
tape, as they try to negotiate their way between multiple bureaucracies
and often conflicting rules. Since Sept.11, 2001, it's become
de rigueur to cast a suspicious eye on foreigners. Now a new
program, called the INS Special Registration has been put into
motion, requiring the photographing, fingerprinting, and much
closer monitoring of all immigrants; including examination of
their credit/debit card records. But in the panic over the potential
for terrorist attacks on United States, a panic driven by repeated
media reports of bad things that are just about to happen, the
new law is having its first, most intense effects on visitors
and immigrants from countries and regions identified as predominantly
Muslim.
The Special Registration asks men over
the age of 16 who are citizens of selected countries and without
green cards or permanent resident status to report to their regional
INS centers. For international residents of Champaign-Urbana,
that means a trip to Chicago and waiting in long lines. Here
they will have their immigration status checked and be photographed,
fingerprinted, and interrogated. According to immigration lawyers
registrants are asked questions "under oath." A false
statement under oath is a serious violation. The INS agent "records"
the answers. The officer will see travel documents, including
a passport; any other government-issued identification; proof
of residence, and may also ask to see leases or proof of titles;
proof of school matriculation; proof of employment and proof
of insurance. He or she may ask many other, unrelated questions,
including questions about religious affilitiations. Around the
country, minor violations of immigration law have resulted in
severe penalties, including arrest, detention without counsel,
and even deportation. Immigrants who through fear or ignorance
fail to show up for the special registration are in very serious
trouble. In these uncertain situations, some immigration lawyers
are having a heyday, charging clients $10,000 or more for making
representations to the INS.
Civil Rights and immigration activists
nationally are denouncing the special registration as discriminatory,
since it profiles people based on their perceived religion, ethnicity,
or national origin. The INS denies this, but the Champaign-Urbana
international community is experiencing a high level of collective
anxiety because of the number of foreign-born University of Illinois
faculty, academic professionals, graduate, and undergraduate
students from these regions. In the fall semester, the University
of Illinois alone hosted about 4,287 foreign students from 114
countries. At least several hundred faculty and academic workers
here are foreign-born.
Special Registration is a rolling process.
After the December 16, 2002 call-in, which targeted men from
Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Syria, Libya, the INS set a date of January
10, 2003 for the registration of men from Afghanistan, Algeria,
Bahrain, Eritrea, Lebanon, Morocco, North Korea, Oman, Qatar,
Somalia, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Pakistani
and Saudi Arabian men must report by February 21, 2003. To add
to the confusion, the INS continues to amend its lists of suspect
countries. For some reason Armenia was included in the February
group, and then dropped. Other countries including Kuwait and
Indonesia are being added to the call-in registration lists as
we go to press.
After December 16, tension increased
as news spread of blanket detentions and arrests at INS centers,
particularly in Southern California. It was reported that the
INS processing center in Los Angeles ran out of plastic handcuffs.
The news that a 16-year old boy on derivative status (that is,
attached to an adult's residence permit) was taken into custody
by INS at Los Angeles along with 700 other "aliens"
has sent shockwaves among the local international academic body
and throughout the country. In Colorado, seven university students
were jailed for carrying lighter than permissible course loads.
In New York, some legal immigrants have been deported for working
seven hours a week over their allowed limit. A foreign student
was detained for defaulting on a $2000 tuition loan. None of
these legal immigrants were alleged to have committed any other
offense.
It's not just a question of arbitrary
arrest or deportation, bad as that is. While the INS is reorganizing
under the newly created Homeland Security Department, it is also
taking time to update its databases, and so is delaying the processing
of already filed cases for adjustment of status and other immigration-related
applications. The result is that many people in the country legally
are "running out of status" or "falling out of
compliance," and thus falling afoul of the INS for reasons
beyond their control. It doesn't help foreign faculty and students
to feel secure when they hear that the FBI and INS special agents
are visiting their colleagues. On January 28, 2003 The Dawn (Pakistan)
reported FBI Director Robert Mueller has ordered the agency's
fifty-six field offices to develop a demographic profile of their
localities. This includes counting the mosques in their area.
Champaign residents have always wondered
why the small city in the middle of cornfields has an FBI office.
It's probably been there since Vietnam War protests brought the
National Guard onto the quadrangle. But now we have an idea what
its new uses are. Universities draw heavily on foreign-born talent,
and research projects are increasingly internationalized. But
the FBI office may soon be superfluous. Another new program since
requires American universities to take over the job of collecting
immigration information on foreign students, monitoring and enforcing
their status. Essentially, university administrations are becoming
unpaid arms of the INS. At the same time, the University of Illinois
is being asked to "voluntarily" collect and provide
information to the FBI on its foreign student body. How long,
students and faculty wonder, before it's not "voluntary"?
At the University of Illinois, foreign-born
faculty members report tension among them so intense that it
is likely to affect academic and research morale and have detrimental
effects on many of the University's research and teaching programs.
In fact, the heads of the National Institutes of Health and the
National Academy of Sciences have complained to the Bush administration
about the special registration's effects on their national programs.
Currently, Pakistanis applying for visas
to attend graduate school in the United States are being rejected
at a rate of 90 percent. Faculty of all nationalities are worried
by a drop in foreign student enrollment from the Middle East,
North Africa, and Pakistan at the UIUC; they're concerned to
hear colleagues abroad say they would not think of visiting or
applying for a job at an American university under such circumstances.
A number of UIUC teachers and researchers have had to cancel
pre-scheduled home country visits and overseas research presentations.
Some foreign graduate students at the threshold of completing
their masters and doctoral thesis find themselves worried whether
they can complete their work. And more personal level, funerals
and weddings in home countries are going unattended. . At the
University of Illinois, most of the international faculty and
graduate students live with their loved ones and families, so
the new registration policy is also spreading pain to parents,
spouses and school-age children. Some Chinese students who went
home for the Christmas break remain stuck there, unable to return
to their work, friends and family.
A small group of faculty and the Antiwar
Antiracism Effort (AWARE) have petitioned Chancellor Nancy Cantor,
university administrators and local congressional leaders to
recognize the gravity of the situation, and the demoralizing
effect it is having on the local international community. They
also argue that the call in registration process is likely to
reinforce the negative image of the U.S. of suppressing minorities,
particularly those from Muslim countries regardless of their
U.S citizenship, permanent or temporary resident status. As evidence,
they present the flight of thousands of Pakistanis from the United
States to Canada, people in fear of deportation or racist retaliation.
Is all this an "unintended consequence"
of heightened security? Or is it simply another way to intimidate
vulnerable people, especially people who might see things differently
or have an alternative perspective to add to the public debate
on an even wider war in the Middle East? What crafty terrorist
would show up at an INS processing center to be photographed,
fingerprinted, and interrogated? Why does John Ashcroft think
women can't be terrorists? If the INS really wanted to bring
uncontrolled immigrants to heel, why not call in the Irish? Because
Boston, New York and San Francisco would be paralyzed within
a day.
AWARE and Citizens Academics for Fair
Immigration Laws (CAFIL) have demanded that the University administration
strenuously protest the new registration regulations to the Bush
administration and urge the rollback or at least the slowing
down of the rolling call-in process. Senators Edward Kennedy,
Russ Feingold and Congressman John Conyers have sent a letter
to Attorney General John Ashcroft demanding a complete halt to
registration and a review of the law. So far, the University
of Illinois administration has held sympathetic meetings with
concerned faculty, but there has been no apparent progress on
rollback of the law at the federal level. For now, some of Champaign-Urbana's
most valuable community members are living with the heightened
insecurity created by our now even more irrational immigration
laws.
Olive Lowell
lives in Pesotum, Il. She can be reached at: lowell@counterpunch.org.
Today's Features
Linda Heard
Powell
at the UN: Spiel, Stunts and Special Effects
Anthony Gancarski
Peggy
Noonan, Space Case
The Columbia and the Manufacture of Tragedy
Robert Fisk
You Wanted
to Believe Him: Powell Does Beckett
Robert Jensen
Powell
at the UN:
Smoking Guns and Big Guns
William Hughes
Colin
Powell's Big Flop
Ali Abunimah
Dissecting Powell's Speech:
Hearsay and Old Allegations
Phyllis Bennis
Powell vs. Blix
The Case for War Remains Unmade
Rahul Mahajan
Responding
to Colin Powell
Is This All You've Got?
Paul de Rooij
Where Are the Incubators, Gen. Powell?
Website of the Day
Iraq:
the War Game
Keep CounterPunch Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- CounterPunch Special:
The Persecution of Gershon Legman by Susan Davis: Smut, the Post Office, Commies
and the FBI;
- Reeling Democrats: Is Pelosi the Answer?
- Gandhi v. Hitler: the Secret Race for the Nobel
Prize;
- Sullying Mario Savio's
Memory;
- Lynching Then and Now;
- Earn While You Learn: Chris Whittle and Child Labor;
The Case of the Pompous
Professor;
- The Class Struggle in
Boston: All that
Effort, But What Did They Get?
Remember, the CounterPunch website is
supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide
web audience is soaring , with about seven million hits a month
now. This is inspiring, but the work involved also compels us
to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make
a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe
Now!
Or Call Toll Free 1 800 840 3683
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|
February
1 / 2, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Railroading
Rosenthal; PeeWee and the Sex and the Sex Police
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Star Whores: Astronomers &
Apaches on Mt. Graham
Dian
Hardison
Former NASA Engineer: "I Fucking Warned Them"
Jerry Kroth
Jung & the Shuttle: Symbol &
the Sychronicity with the Columbia Disaster
Dave
Lindorff
Bush
& HItler: The Strategy of Fear
Behzad Yaghmaian
Report from Istanbul: the Peace
Movement in Turkey
Alan
Maass
Emptying Death Row
Forrest Hilton
The Weight of Forgetting: the Bolivian
Blockades in Context
Kurt
Nimmo
Inventing Crimes: FBI/CIA Entrapment
Matt Taibbi
Iraqt-Up: At Peace Rallies, Hundreds
of Thousands Go Missing
Jeremy
Scahill
Live
from Baghdad: FoxNews: Paying Saddam
Don Atapattu
Songs of Protest
Brian
J. Foley
An Immodest Proposal
Lawrence McGuire
Poker at Camp David
Adam
Engel
Just
Do It: Outrunning the President
Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
|