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.
