Privileged patriots or desperate refugees?

Photo: AFP

Although no one has heard of CAPPS and Galileo, they are part of an ambitious new system for screening passengers. This summer, a Palestinian youth dance troupe was performing in New York. One of the members, Rashed Abu, showed me his United Airlines Boarding Card. On the bottom of each seat was stamped the letters, "AAAA." We could only guess what it meant! Rashed joked that it stood for, "Arab! Arab! Arab! Arab!" Actually, it was probably the highest security-risk rating he could get under programmes like CAPPS. At every stop on their national tour, based on this "AAAA" stamp, the Palestinian teens were taken aside and searched. The word "Orwellian" has been used so often to describe these situations, it has lost its sting.

As Special Registration and other laws targeting immigrants took hold, not everyone is waiting around. Many have left for Canada, hoping to start a new life. Although traditionally more welcoming to immigrants (due to labour shortage), Canada has recently signed the "Safe Third Country" Agreement with the US. This new law states that if immigrants pass through a "friendly third country" (the US), they cannot apply for asylum in Canada. Still, people keep leaving for Canada, Europe, and anywhere they can manage. In parts of Queens and Brooklyn, entire communities of Pakistani immigrants have left, hoping to escape possible INS detention.

Class background is a crucial factor in who feels more vulnerable. Many of the immigrants who are fleeing are the working class backbone of America -- taxi drivers, fruit sellers, newspaper vendors, and waiters. One of my classmates from college also left the US recently. But unlike working class immigrants, he left not out of fear, but "in protest." His return to Bangladesh was also far smoother than that experienced by many of his compatriots.

Saif Ahmed was my classmate at Oberlin College and graduated during the boom years of the 1990s. Saif ended up in the high-tech sector and became a sought-after commodity during the Internet boom. His reaction to the crackdown on terrorism was more relaxed and reflective. Not for him a furtive late night train across the border. Instead, Saif traveled on a comfortable flight back to Dhaka and had time to reflect on an unexpected side-effect of the crackdown.

"The PATRIOT act has made a patriot out of me," said Saif. "I had never considered myself as belonging to any country." Even though Saif's adopted country was America, he rebelled at the Special Registration's focus on Muslim men. "When the choice was offered to fingerprint myself and put myself in a criminal database or go back to my 'home country', I had to go back to the place my parents were born."

Frustration with religious profiling was not the only factor in Saif's self-imposed exile. The Internet boom years had turned into a bust recession, and the high-tech sector was in ruins. Saif was still on an H1-B visa, which meant that future employers would have to sponsor him. Given the amount of scrutiny Muslim men were facing, Saif surmised that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to get sponsorship. Weighing the risks of staying in America, Saif made a decision that was both patriotic and practical. As he explained, "Being treated like a criminal in my adoptive home of thirteen years, I suddenly felt an affinity for Bangladesh -- the nation that can't throw me out."

Most working class immigrants can't even afford the fare back to their home country. They end up in Europe or elsewhere, hostile rest stops on the quest for a friendly landing place. For Saif, a very different avenue opened up. Even before he boarded the British Airways flight back to Dhaka, job offers were pouring in. Arriving back in Bangladesh, Saif was able to pick and choose from competing job offers and, in the end, joined a small animation company as its CEO. Reflecting on the change in his fortune, Saif was sanguine: "I've had many opportunities to evaluate the positives and negatives of my return. What I left behind was a lot of friends and family, the opportunity to make more money, a very relaxed and carefree life-style. What I got in return was the opportunity to create opportunities. It was a fair trade."

Saif's story had some closure. Although he was forced to leave America, he found a place in Bangladesh. In talking about Saif, I am talking about others as well. Graduating from elite colleges, many other immigrants obtained green cards through corporate jobs. As a result, they were never personally subject to the post 9/11 crackdown. It is a crucial factor in understanding a more privileged (and therefore largely silent) position.

But what of the thousands who were not as privileged, who were forced to flee America under the cover of night? Where will they end up? Will they be stuck in a permanent cycle of poverty as they run from one migrant destination to the next?

The original rationale behind Special Registration was to prevent terrorism. After spending millions of dollars of taxpayers' money and disrupting the lives of Muslim immigrants, the programme has now been discontinued! The technocrats have already moved on to Patriot II and CAPPS. Under CAPPS, JetBlue handed over customer information in violation of privacy laws. When the airline was caught, passengers screamed bloody murder and threatened class action lawsuits. After being caught asleep at the wheel during 9/11, the US intelligence organisations are functioning in overdrive to compensate for past failures. Yet, their tactics are based on screening for terrorist strategies of the past, while agile terrorists are surely coming up with new tactics (does anyone really believe that hijackers will use shoe bombs again?).

In a misguided hunt for terrorists, the INS continues to target all Muslim immigrants -- antagonising millions around the world and creating new recruits for fanatical organisations. In the end, this crackdown will only force thousands of law-abiding, working-class families out of the country, spreading more ill-will towards America.

Benjamin Franklin said it best 200 years ago: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Will America remember those words in time?

Naeem Mohaiemen is Editor of Shobak.Org and Associate Editor of AltMuslim.com