U.S. Wants Prints Of Muslim Visitors
The Justice Department announced yesterday that it will require thousands of students, workers and other men from five Muslim countries who are temporarily residing in the United States to be fingerprinted and photographed, the latest step in its program to register visitors from countries linked to terrorism.
Authorities launched the registration program less than two months ago at airports, where they began gathering extensive information from arriving citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria — countries allegedly involved in terrorism — and other people suspected of links to terror.
Now the program will be expanded to include male citizens of those countries who entered the United States before Sept. 11, 2002, and plan to stay until at least mid-December, officials said yesterday.
Justice Department officials said they expected the program to affect fewer than 5,000 men.
The registration program is part of efforts undertaken after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks to better screen foreign visitors, authorities said. In this case, their fingerprints will be checked to determine if they are wanted in connection with terrorism or other crimes.
The registration program affects a tiny percentage of the tens of millions of tourists, students, business people and temporary workers who come to the United States each year. But it has already caused a diplomatic row with Canada, because it also applies to people who have passports from two countries, such as Syria and Canada.
U.S. groups representing Muslims and Arab Americans have denounced the plan as ethnic profiling.
Hussein Ibish, spokesman for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, noted that none of the Sept. 11 hijackers came from the five Muslim countries included in the new initiative, and said that only Sudan had much of a relationship with the al Qaeda terrorist network.
“This just looks like a list drawn out of political convenience,” he said.
Jeanne Butterfield, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the program would be a burden on visitors and yield few positive results.
“They’re telling us this will make us safe from terrorists. But the terrorists aren’t the ones who are going to come forward and register,” she said. Under the plan, anyone who fails to register could be deported.
A Justice Department official said visitors from the five countries were being summoned because the nations are on the State Department’s list of official sponsors of terrorism. But the list of those required to register would probably grow, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Men from Iran, Iraq, Libya and Sudan were subject to fingerprinting at airports even before the latest anti-terrorism measures took effect, Justice Department officials said. But until recently, those prints were not entered into the new, computer-based system used to screen for terrorists, officials said. In addition, the new program requires visitors to provide much more information, including their cell phone numbers and exact dates of travel.
Under the new measure, which takes effect Nov. 15, men ages 16 and older from the five nations must register with a U.S. immigration officer by Dec. 16. They must present travel documents and proof of residence, such as school registrations, and be interviewed, fingerprinted and photographed. They must check in with authorities once a year.
The measure applies only to visitors, not political asylum applicants or immigrants who have “green cards” that grant them permanent legal residence.
Kathy Bellows, assistant dean in the international student office at Georgetown University, said some schools are concerned that their students from the five countries might have to travel hours to an Immigration and Naturalization Service office. That was not the case in Washington, she added, where foreigners can register at the INS office in Arlington.
She said students had generally complied with new anti-terrorism measures without complaint.
“I’m hoping they don’t feel it’s so much an invasion of privacy as an American would feel it is. We honor privacy as a part of this culture. But for them, they’re saying, ‘We’re guests, we’re happy to comply,’ ” she said.
(From Washington Post)
November 11th, 2002 at 5:51 pm
Now, what exactly is wrong with racial profiling? It helps catch criminals. For example, serial killers are almost always white males. So when they go looking for a serial killer, they usually focus their search on white males and this helps catch the guy faster so that fewer people get killed. The same reasoning goes for terrorists in airports. Young Middle-Eastern men are much more likely to attempt to hijack a plane than, say, elderly Asian women are. So it makes sense to scrutinize Middle-Easterners more carefully.
Though, I will say that this piece of legislation isn’t really aimed at stopping terrorism, but merely at giving the public a false impression that something is being done. 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9-11 were from Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia is excluded from the list of countries being profiled. Oh well.
November 12th, 2002 at 12:10 am
I see nothing wrong with this system its not really racial profiling because there are white middle easterners such as the Iranians as well as arabs. They go after people from certain COUNTRIES not specific races!
November 12th, 2002 at 2:44 pm
Leaving the issue of whether this is legal, a violation of rights, moral, etc. alone for a minute, I agree with Rurik’s sarcastic comments regarding the efficacy of this. Not only are the not going after Saudis, Yemenis, etc., but they’re only going after males. There have been, for instance, female suicide bombers, and some of the Chechens in the Moscow theater were women.
November 12th, 2002 at 4:23 pm
Have there been female suicide bombers? That’s the first I’ve heard of it. Still, we’re much more likely to be attacked by males, though.
November 15th, 2002 at 2:09 am
There have been several female suicide bombers in Palestine and women have been involved in almost all terrorist and freedom fighting groups (Leila Khalid is one who springs to mind from the 1970s Palestinian terror campaigns such as plane hijacking).
If doing this for terrorism why not murder, drugs and rape? Why not just fingerprint and photgraph everyone?
Over the last ten years Approximately 150,000 American citizens have been murdered inside America and another 100,000+ have died from drugs overdoses. The vast majority of perpetrators (killers and distributors) are between the ages of fifteen and thirty, male and American. Sooo, clearly if fingerprinting everyone with a skin color or race type similar to that of a terrorist is worth doing, then doing the same for every adult American male between the ages of fifteen and thirty must make sense?
Fingerprinting all the Muslims from countries where terrorists are not known to abound while omitting those from countries that are seems crazy. Except of course Saudi funds Bush’s oil cronies and the defense industry while Yemen presumably helps fight terrorists by torturing them at America’s request.
INterestingly Israel, that has committed espionage against America and has also committed acts of international terrorism, is not listed. Neither is Britain, where al-qaeda sympathisers and trained fighters are known to exist in significant numbers. Nor is France, which has millions of Muslims and one of whom is in American hands for trial on terrorism charges, and which, as a nation, has committed acts of international terrorism.
November 17th, 2002 at 2:52 am
Interestingly enough, the vast majority of serial killers are white males. Of those, the vast majority of the most gruesome serial killers are also white males. Should we register white males to keep from being eaten or mauled a la Dahmer?
Additionally, the one extremist group existing inside America that vocally supported the Trade Center bombings consists entirely of white people. I speak, of course, of the neo-Nazi group the National Alliance, which has been linked to innumerable acts of terror against people of Jewish ethnicity and people of color. Yet I doubt I’ll hear Rurik or Ann Coulter calling for a round-up of white males in rural West Virginia, where the Alliance is headquartered.
Racism is wonderfully skewed social relation.