I went down to the Salvation Army Tuesday afternoon; it could as easily have been a terminal at JFK International Airport. People from every nation, women and men, old and young overflowed the rooms and spilled into the hall. They were in the dining room, the kitchen, in the “Corps Hall” or Salvation Army chapel. Like travelers at an airport, they all had luggage and they were all waiting.
What they are waiting for is a chance to leave the U.S. and enter Canada. They are waiting because Canadian authorities cannot process the immigrant flood quickly enough. In December, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service launched its “special registration” program under which all males over the age of 16 for certain – mostly Muslim – countries are required to present themselves at INS offices, register, be fingerprinted and photographed. In December, men from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria were required to register. When they showed up, 400 of them were arrested, mostly on minor visa violations.
The men arrested had overstayed their visas. Isn’t that wrong? Isn’t that their fault? No, usually it’s not. Most of the men once had valid visas and applied for extensions, but the INS did not process the extension requests before the original visas expired and when the men arrived to register, one branch of the INS arrested them because another branch of the INS failed to do its job in timely fashion.
Once arrested, the men were thrown in jail and deportation proceedings were initiated. It is possible for men detained under such circumstances to get out on bond, but the bond amounts range from $1,500 to $20,000. Some immigrant families scraped together the needed thousands to get their husbands and fathers out of jail. Then what? Now they have to wait months, or years, for the deportation hearings, the point of which are to throw these men out of the country. After arrest and incarceration, these Muslim men face even more prejudice and hardship than before and logically, many have decided to leave the U.S. Of course, leaving the U.S. means forfeiting thousands of dollars in bond money to the INS.
Now it’s Pakistani men who have to register with the INS, next month it will be Indonesians and so the rush to the border is on. Canada, which for years had been a haven for people fleeing political persecution, is overwhelmed. Canadian authorities cannot process the refugees fast enough, so they’re bouncing back from the border and landing in towns like Burlington.
The INS witch-hunt against Muslim men may have started the refugee flood, but people from all nations are caught in it. At the Salvation Army Tuesday, immigrants from Peru and Pakistan, Colombia and Chad, Honduras and Bulgaria sat on their suitcases and waited.
Fleeing political oppression is not as glamorous as it is in the movies. No one is slipping through scenic mountain passes. Mostly they sit and wait for some bureaucrat to get around to doing the next thing. In the meantime, they depend on the kindness of strangers for a meal or a place to sleep. Getting a shower at the YMCA can be a three-hour production.
I spoke with a 17-year-old Pakistani boy. His family came to America to get away from the violence of Kashmir. He left high school in Texas in the middle of his senior year. His family bounced back from the Canadian border, his father was detained by the INS and sent to a jail 200 miles away. The young man is trying to keep his family together, to look after his mother and his younger brother and figure a way to get his father out of jail.
America is a nation of immigrants. The people fleeing America are not terrorists. They came seeking a better life for themselves and their children. If we had allowed them, they would have been the authors of some of America’s greatest future moments. Instead, the INS and the Justice Department are destabilizing America, destabilizing Canada and breeding hatred of the U.S. across the globe.
Remember in grade school, learning about the Holocaust, learning about the civil rights movement? Remember how you told yourself that if you had been there, you would have stood up, you would have done the right thing?
Here’s Your Chance
I went down to the Salvation Army Tuesday afternoon; it could as easily have been a terminal at JFK International Airport. People from every nation, women and men, old and young overflowed the rooms and spilled into the hall. They were in the dining room, the kitchen, in the “Corps Hall” or Salvation Army chapel. Like travelers at an airport, they all had luggage and they were all waiting.
What they are waiting for is a chance to leave the U.S. and enter Canada. They are waiting because Canadian authorities cannot process the immigrant flood quickly enough. In December, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service launched its “special registration” program under which all males over the age of 16 for certain – mostly Muslim – countries are required to present themselves at INS offices, register, be fingerprinted and photographed. In December, men from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria were required to register. When they showed up, 400 of them were arrested, mostly on minor visa violations.
The men arrested had overstayed their visas. Isn’t that wrong? Isn’t that their fault? No, usually it’s not. Most of the men once had valid visas and applied for extensions, but the INS did not process the extension requests before the original visas expired and when the men arrived to register, one branch of the INS arrested them because another branch of the INS failed to do its job in timely fashion.
Once arrested, the men were thrown in jail and deportation proceedings were initiated. It is possible for men detained under such circumstances to get out on bond, but the bond amounts range from $1,500 to $20,000. Some immigrant families scraped together the needed thousands to get their husbands and fathers out of jail. Then what? Now they have to wait months, or years, for the deportation hearings, the point of which are to throw these men out of the country. After arrest and incarceration, these Muslim men face even more prejudice and hardship than before and logically, many have decided to leave the U.S. Of course, leaving the U.S. means forfeiting thousands of dollars in bond money to the INS.
Now it’s Pakistani men who have to register with the INS, next month it will be Indonesians and so the rush to the border is on. Canada, which for years had been a haven for people fleeing political persecution, is overwhelmed. Canadian authorities cannot process the refugees fast enough, so they’re bouncing back from the border and landing in towns like Burlington.
The INS witch-hunt against Muslim men may have started the refugee flood, but people from all nations are caught in it. At the Salvation Army Tuesday, immigrants from Peru and Pakistan, Colombia and Chad, Honduras and Bulgaria sat on their suitcases and waited.
Fleeing political oppression is not as glamorous as it is in the movies. No one is slipping through scenic mountain passes. Mostly they sit and wait for some bureaucrat to get around to doing the next thing. In the meantime, they depend on the kindness of strangers for a meal or a place to sleep. Getting a shower at the YMCA can be a three-hour production.
I spoke with a 17-year-old Pakistani boy. His family came to America to get away from the violence of Kashmir. He left high school in Texas in the middle of his senior year. His family bounced back from the Canadian border, his father was detained by the INS and sent to a jail 200 miles away. The young man is trying to keep his family together, to look after his mother and his younger brother and figure a way to get his father out of jail.
America is a nation of immigrants. The people fleeing America are not terrorists. They came seeking a better life for themselves and their children. If we had allowed them, they would have been the authors of some of America’s greatest future moments. Instead, the INS and the Justice Department are destabilizing America, destabilizing Canada and breeding hatred of the U.S. across the globe.
Remember in grade school, learning about the Holocaust, learning about the civil rights movement? Remember how you told yourself that if you had been there, you would have stood up, you would have done the right thing?
Here’s your chance. What are you going to do?