as i said, you is fweeeeee

[Guest guest]

U.S. Government Increasingly Blocking Entry at the Border

Because of Ideology, ACLU Says

 

ACLU and NYCLU Release Government Records on " Ideological

Exclusion " Policy

 

NEW YORK -- July 12 -- The American Civil Liberties Union

and the New York Civil Liberties Union today released new

documents that indicate the government is broadly

interpreting and using a controversial Patriot Act power

known as the " ideological exclusion " provision to block

people from entering the country. The ACLU is concerned that

the provision is increasingly being used to target foreign

scholars and others whose politics the government disfavors.

 

" The American public suffers when our government abuses

anti-terrorism laws to shut out voices and ideas that it

doesn't want us to hear, " said ACLU attorney Melissa

Goodman. " America has a rich tradition of robust academic

debate. The government dishonors that tradition when it

censors ideas at the border. "

 

The ACLU and NYCLU obtained the documents through a Freedom

of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed in coordination with

PEN American Center and the American Association of

University Professors (AAUP). Although the documents are

heavily redacted, the records suggest that the government

used the ideological exclusion provision to exclude from the

country, among others, an Italian woman residing in

Colombia, a mother and daughter residing in Canada, a

businessman from Venezuela, and a woman from Costa Rica. The

names of the individuals have been redacted.

 

The ideological exclusion provision permits the government

to exclude anyone from the country who, in the government's

view, " endorses or espouses " terrorism or " persuades others "

to support terrorism. While the provision is nominally

directed at terrorism, the government appears to be using

the provision to censor and manipulate debate, said the ACLU.

 

Other documents released through the FOIA confirm that the

Departments of State and Homeland Security are interpreting

the law broadly. One document states that the law is

directed at those who voice " irresponsible expressions of

opinion. " Another states, somewhat bizarrely, that an

individual can be excluded under the provision even if he or

she endorsed terrorism unintentionally.

 

" It is wholly inappropriate for immigration officials to

keep out people whose politics they don't like, " said Donna

Lieberman, NYCLU Executive Director. " Barring the doors is

not the way a democracy deals with its critics. "

 

Little is known about the specific incidents included in the

new documents, but the ACLU pointed to several recent cases

of high-profile individuals who have been excluded from the

United States for what appear to be ideologically motivated

reasons, including:

 

# In June, 75 South Korean activists were denied visas as

U.S. and South Korean officials met for free trade

negotiations in Washington, DC. The South Korean farmers and

trade unionists had hoped to voice their opposition to the

draft free trade agreement.

 

# In June, Professor Yoannis " John " Milios of the National

Technical University of Athens was blocked from presenting a

paper entitled " How Class Works " at the State University of

New York at Stony Brook. Though he visited the United States

as recently as 2003, upon arriving at JFK airport in New

York he was detained and interrogated about his politics.

After several hours, he was told that he would have to

return to Athens.

 

# In May, London-based Hip Hop artist M.I.A. revealed that

she was denied a visa to come work with American music

producers on her next album. News reports indicate that the

Sri Lankan-born artist was excluded because government

officials concluded that some of her lyrics are overly

sympathetic to the Tamil Tigers and the Palestinian

Liberation Organization.

 

# In March, Iñaki Egaña, a Basque historian from Spain,

arrived at JFK airport with his two children with the

intention of researching Basque people in the United States.

Egaña and his family were detained while Egaña was

questioned about Mario Salegi, a Basque political activist

and writer whom Egaña had intended to study. After being

detained for 24 hours, Egaña and his family were sent back

to Spain.

 

# In Spring 2006, Dr. Waskar Ari, a scholar of race and

ethnic studies and a member of the Aymara indigenous people

in Bolivia, was blocked from assuming a teaching position at

the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Dr. Ari, who earned a

Ph.D. in history from Georgetown University, applied for a

work visa after accepting the Nebraska offer in June 2005.

More than a year later, U.S. immigration officials have yet

to act on his visa application, but have since revoked his

student visa, leaving Dr. Ari inadmissible to the country.

The State Department recently said that Dr. Ari is being

excluded on national security grounds, but it has not

offered any evidence to support this allegation.

 

# In 2005, Dora Maria Tellez, who served as a Parliamentary

leader and Minister of Health in Nicaragua in the 1980s, was

forced to abandon her teaching post at Harvard University

after the government rejected her visa application. Tellez,

who had visited the United States several times up to 2001,

was reportedly excluded because of her role in the 1979

Nicaraguan revolution that overthrew the dictator Anastasio

Somoza.

 

A lawsuit challenging the provision is currently pending in

U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

That lawsuit was filed by the ACLU, NYCLU, AAUP, PEN and the

American Academy of Religion, and charges that the provision

is being used to prevent United States citizens and

residents from hearing speech that is protected by the First

Amendment. The groups filed the lawsuit after Professor

Tariq Ramadan was barred from entering the United States,

where he was offered a teaching position at the University

of Notre Dame. Although the government has since backed away

from its claim that Professor Ramadan is inadmissible under

the Patriot Act provision, on June 23, Judge Paul A. Crotty

ruled that the government must act on Ramadan's pending visa

application, and that it cannot bar non-citizens from the

United States simply because it disagrees with their

political views.

 

" Ideological misuse of the immigration laws has significant

effects on the freedom of academic and political debate

inside the United States, " said Jameel Jaffer, Deputy of the ACLU's National Security Program, who argued

before Judge Crotty. " As the court recognized, the

government cannot use the immigration laws as a means of

silencing its critics and denying Americans the opportunity

to hear dissenting voices. "

 

The Patriot Act's ideological exclusion provision echoes

laws that were used in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s to bar those

who were associated with the Communist Party. Those laws

were used to bar, among many other prominent individuals,

the writers Graham Greene, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Dario Fo,

and Pablo Neruda, and former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre

Trudeau.

 

Attorneys in the FOIA case are Goodman and Jaffer of the

ACLU; Arthur N. Eisenberg of the NYCLU; and New York

immigration lawyer Claudia Slovinsky.

 

The documents released today are online at:

http://www.aclu.org/exclusion

 

 

" NOTICE: Due to Presidential Executive Orders, the National Security Agency may

have read this email without warning, warrant, or notice. They may do this

without any judicial or legislative oversight. You have no recourse nor

protection save to call for the impeachment of the current President. "