June 11, 2008. I
joined several Arab and Muslim representatives who provided oral
and written testimonies before the New Jersey Blue Ribbon
Panel on Immigration Policy. NJ Governor Jon Corzine created the
Panel last year and we at the AAF issued a press release
welcoming its creation and mission. We especially noted the
inclusion of Arab American,
Samer Khalaf, as one of the
panel members. The panel is comprised of more than
two dozen members, representing leaders from faith-based
organizations, education, commerce, civil rights groups, fair
housing, employment and health care, among other areas.
Doublets, New Jersey has a half-million-people
immigration problem. These illegal immigrants are both a source
of great contributions to the State’s coffers and ethnic mosaic
but admittedly they also comprise a growing demand for its
dwindling resources. While most tend to think of illegal
immigration as a pressing social matter for Latinos, for Arabs
and Muslims the matter is engulfed in a web of security concerns
and a historically based anti-Arab resentments.
I stated to the panel
that Arabs and Muslims face a problem with
legal
immigration. Very few Arabs enter the US illegally although some
do overstay their visas. Security hurdles and processing delays
coupled with deliberate restrictions on visa issuance to
students, tourists, and business people from Arab and Muslim
countries are the issues that need to be addressed in any policy
formulations.
The issue of immigration has exceedingly
complex variables. While we uncritically consider it a federal
matter, it is indeed a local concern. These people
regardless of their legal status demand and actually deserve
humane treatment and that their basic needs as relate to
education, employment and health be addressed compassionately.
States like NJ are finally recognizing the urgency of both
developing the needed resources and also enacting public
policies to deal with the new arrivals.
We recall the horrors visited upon so many of
our community who after the 911 attacks became the target of a
national witch hunt, culminating in the interrogation of over
a100,000 people simply based on their ethnicity. Yet thousands
more were detained not because of any terrorism related
charges but for minor immigration related infractions. The
treatment these people received in Department of Homeland
Security (DHS)-contracted prisons tell of much abuse and denial
of basic human rights.
To this end, American
Arab Forum along with Rights
Working Group will kick off a
new campaign to hold the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
accountable with the
"Night of 1,000 Conversations."
Thousands of people across the country will gather in homes,
offices, coffee shops and places of worship to discuss how the
overreach of DHS is undermining the civil liberties and human
rights of people living in America.
We call upon DHS to take much-needed action to
uphold the human rights and civil liberties of people living in
America. The Rights Working Group is asking DHS to take the
following actions:
1)
End immigration raids that lock up people without due process
2) Ensure humane detention conditions
and access to a trial
3) Provide fair and efficient
mechanisms to end the backlog in processing citizenship
applications by September 2008.
I have written on some
of these issues. Here is a link to a piece, titled s, Embrace
Foregin students, about restrictions on
visa to students.
In the op-ed, I urged a revaluation of both the economic and
political benefits of encouraging more Arab and Muslim students
to study in the US. Here is another link to another piece,
Immigration hurdles remain for Muslims and
Arabs ,I wrote about the hurdles
facing permanent residents who wish to become Americans citizens
and the unreasonable delays they must face. Here is another one
about the fallacy behind
deputizing police officers as immigration
agents.
It should be noted that had it not been for the continued influx
of immigrants into NJ (both legal and undocumented), the State's
population would have lost no less than a million people in the
last decade. This assessment was provided as part of a landmark
survey by two Rutgers University professors titled, “New
Jersey: A Statewide View of Diversity." I
lamented
the point that Arabs and Muslims do exist in NJ but only as
targets of espionage investigative missions by the FBI and other
law enforcement agencies.
