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By Felicia Persaud |
New York, June 2003: Immigrant advocates are seeing red over the recent ruling from U.S. Attorney-General John Ashcroft. Ashcroft declared on Thursday, April 17th, that illegal immigrants could be held in detention indefinitely even if they have no known links to terrorism.
Ashcroft's order means that aliens will not be released on bond while immigration judges are deciding their asylum cases, once the U.S. government can show they are a national security threat. The decision was made following the case of Haitian immigrant David Joseph. The immigration judge and appeals board had concluded they did not have authority to deny bond based on the national security concerns cited by the government, which has sought to detain more illegal immigrants since the 9/11 terror attacks.
Joseph was among the 216 Haitians who arrived in Miami by boat on Oct. 29th last year, then leaped from the craft into Biscayne Bay and ran along a major causeway. A total of 100 Haitians who arrived on the same boat as Joseph had been granted bond by judges. Ashcroft's decision will affect them all, except Cubans, who by law, are automatically allowed to stay in the United States if they reach its shores. It is a law that has been bashed as racist and politically motivated.
Now the U.S. Supreme Court has joined the fray and has ruled against legal immigrants or greencard holders. The Supreme on April 29th, ruled that the government can jail legal immigrants who have committed serious crimes so as to ensure they do not flee or commit additional crimes while awaiting deportation.
The 5-4 ruling applies to those permanent residents who have already served time and are on bail pending deportation. Many could end up back in prison to await deportation under this new rule.
It is the latest in the U.S. government's draconian measures targeting immigrants since 9/11.
The rulings, especially Ashcroft's bold-faced order, have left a lot of angry advocates riling against the government's latest treatment of immigrants.
Irwin Clare, the Jamaican-born head of the New York-based Caribbean Immigrant Association, told the Jamaica Observer he's concerned that immigrants "rights are being eroded" in the United States.
The National Coalition for Haitian Rights said it would fight to overturn Ashcroft's order. Dina Paul Parks, the New York-based coalition's executive director, said the decision further erodes immigrants' legal rights.
"If you were lucky enough to get a sympathetic judge you could potentially get released on bond. Now even that prospect is taken away," she told AP.
The concern is mounting because of the wide-ranging effects the law will have for all immigrants, documented and undocumented. Those in detention are mounting too. The Lawyers Committee for Human Rights reports that immigrants from 33 countries will face automatic detention under the new policy.
But officials have justified the new policy in part by stating that at least three terrorists originally entered the United States as asylum applicants,, among them Omar Abdel Rahman, the Egyptian sheik who was convicted in 1995 of conspiring to blow up the United Nations headquarters and other landmarks in New York.
"You see what a quandary this places us in," William Strassberger, an immigration spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, told the New York Times recently. "We feel strongly that we want to preserve the ability of people to seek refuge here. But at the same time, we have to protect the public, and we do have heightened concerns about individuals coming from some specific countries. The thinking is that we don't know who they are."
Still according to a U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees analysis, the Department of Housing Security's detention policy is plainly arbitrary. By detaining asylum applicants, based simply on their nationality, the United States is arguably violating international asylum norms, adds Stanley Mailman and Stephen Yale-Loehr, co-authors of Immigration Law and Procedure and columnists of the New York Law Journal.
What has also been ignored in the new rush to lock-up immigrants, is the undeniable contribution they have many to the American society.
In the recent war on Iraq, 31,000 soldiers were greencard holder who fought for the U.S. Many died in the process, among them Jamaican-American Marine Corporal Bernard Brent Gooden. Yet, even they faced "unnecessary and unfair" restrictions in their efforts to become citizens of the U.S. However, a bill could soon be signed into law that would ease restrictions for immigrants in the U.S. Army who want to become citizens.
The contribution of immigrants extends further. According to a new analysis of 2000 Census data and 2001 monthly CPS surveys by Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studies, neither the dimensions of immigrant participation in the labor force nor the role they played in the 90s boom has been fully appreciated.
And contrary to popular perceptions, the study found that nearly one of every four new immigrant workers also held a professional, management, or technical position in 2000-2001.
"The findings in this report on the growing dependence of American industry on immigrant workers need to stimulate an objective and sustained public policy debate on immigrant labor policies, taking into account both the important and valuable contributions of immigrant workers and the liabilities of some forms of immigrant labor," said Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern and one of the authors of the study.
It is little wonder why many labor and some political leaders have pushed for an amnesty for those undocumented trapped within the borders. As Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum in Washington, pointed out, "Legalization for hardworking immigrants is a key component of comprehensive immigration reform."
House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) seemed to be aware of this reality, when he introduced legislation to legalize millions of undocumented workers. Dubbed the Earned Legalization and Family Unification Act of 2002, the legislation would give legal status to undocumented immigrants who have been in the country for at least five years and have held a job for at least two. A background check also would be required.
But those bills are simply sitting on the shelves of Congress as the George Bush administration has allowed stricter immigration policies to be implemented since 9/11, giving conservatives like Ashcroft, a field day.
The result has been fear, confusion and most of all a backlog in adjustment of status applications, especially since government abolished the Immigration and Naturalization Service and split the agency into two.
"Millions of U.S. employers and families can expect the problems they face with immigration processing to grow even more nightmarish," Margie McHugh, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, said recently.
The noose around immigrants' necks is definitely tightening. Even immigrant women victimized by domestic violence are afraid to call 911 for fear they will be deported. "The Attorney General is putting newcomers in the cross hairs," said Angela Kelley, deputy director of the National Immigration Forum. "These actions hurt community building efforts and fly in face of this nation's proud tradition as a nation of immigrants."