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New immigration law alienates America from asylum seekers
By Sigourney Weaver
In 1982 I worked on a Peter Weir film in the Philippines. I remember looking out the window as we landed and seeing armed guards with submachine guns all over the runway. I became accustomed to being searched every time I entered the hotel and to the armed soldier on our floor.
In the end, our small cast and crew received so many death threats we left the country. A man came up to us at lunch and said, “A van is outside. We have your passports. Do not pack. We will send your things. Get in the van. It will take you to the airport. You will be leaving tonight.”
And wouldn't you know we missed the plane.
But of course I'm an actor and I'm an American citizen. We were only playing at being at risk.
I knew I had America to come home to, a place where my rights were protected. My freedoms insured.
What precious knowledge to carry with me.
I am writing this to help draw attention to the plight of those individuals who do not have this luxury. People seeking asylum here in our country who have suffered persecution in their home countries based on their race, religion, political opinions, nationality or social grouping.
Our Statue of Liberty in New York harbor is perhaps the greatest symbol to all of us of what America stands for: lighting the way for the oppressed to find sanctuary here. It defines us as a nation and a people and I think that has made us great.
“Give me your tired, your hungry, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” I think if Americans knew how these words are now being applied in practice they would be very dismayed.
In 1987, I had the privilege of working for several months in the country of Rwanda. I fell in love with it and with the people — their incredible vigor and joy. I have stayed in touch with a couple of friends there and I know when I go back, I will find a very different world.
Many people I knew are dead — the torture, mutilation, widespread killing, rape, and destruction are beyond anything I can comprehend, but I can comprehend this: A person seeking refuge from oppression in Rwanda or Somalia, or the Congo — who is miraculously able to get to the U.S. — is experiencing the following: he or she is traveling half a world away from the community by which they define themselves.
In essence, they are suddenly faced with the 21st century, with the noise, lights, skyscrapers, a strange language, the bureaucracy.
He gets off the plane and is asked for his papers. He may not have a passport or visa or they may be fraudulent. In many countries, you can't go to the government that is persecuting you to get a passport; then they'll know you're leaving.
Yet under this new U.S. immigration law, if he arrives without valid papers, then he may well be deported. He is now questioned by a uniformed government officer (and believe me a uniform in Rwanda was never a comforting sight). This interrogation can come hours later during which time he may not receive food and water.
He is not told what asylum is or that his survival depends on this interview. There is no one who speaks Kinyarwandan there so communication is a problem, there is no legal counsel to tell him his rights, and he is in a crowded room without any privacy or assurance of confidentiality, describing the brutality he is fleeing. That's some audition.
If he's lucky enough to survive this first hurdle, there's another. He's sent to a prison-like detention center where within only a few days, he'll have to prove more. From a prison at home to a prison in America. Is that the message we as Americans want to send? He will have to document the most personal and horrific details of his oppression in Rwanda; the death and disappearance of his family, of the torture and mutilation he experienced as a prisoner, hiding under dead bodies for days until it was safe to emerge.
Many people seeking asylum cannot do this in a coherent timely way. They are too traumatized. And if their name is on a list requesting asylum here, what will be the repercussions for their family at home?
A few years ago I interviewed several women who had escaped from Chile and Argentina where they had been raped, tortured for months. The shame they felt, the isolation, the terror. These women could not have told a strange man in a crowded room what happened to them even to save their lives. It has taken them years to be able to speak about it.
Everyday our staff members at the Lawyers Committee learn how unwise the new law is and how mean-spirited it is in practice.
“Give me your tired, your hungry, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be breathe free, ... send these the homeless, tempest tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
But perhaps we need to add an asterisk which says, “Once they have passed a secondary inspection and the credible fear test.”
I hope not.
That lamp has beckoned so many people here, let's not dim that light.
Sigourney Weaver is a Board Member of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. This article first appeared on Page 5 of the Immigration Newsman in 1999. <
It's time to repeal unfair, unjust immigration laws
By Max J. Castro
When it comes to immigration, the United States has an unsurpassed record. No nation in history has ever received more immigrants, about 65 million since 1820.
Today the United States receives more immigrants than all other nations combined. More than 10 million immigrants have been welcomed in the 1990s. There are a few other nations, mainly Canada and Australia , that in any given year may receive more immigrants per capita than the United States .
But U.S. immigration policy is more democratic; it does not discriminate against those who lack English or a college degree. But there is another side to the story, a shameful legacy that casts a long shadow over that glorious history.
Call it xenophobia, nativism, racism or plain anti-immigrant animosity, but it always has been there under the surface, at times rising up like a nightmare.
Last century the Irish, for the sin of being Catholic, were the targets of venom and violence. The Chinese were kept out through the aptly named Chinese Exclusion Act. The National Origins Quota Act of 1924 succeeded in ending the great wave of immigration from southern and eastern Europe — and in keeping out Jews fleeing the Nazi horror.
During World War II, Japanese living in the United States , American citizens included, were reclassified as enemy aliens and deprived of their liberty and property. When it comes to immigrants, and to those who come to be classified as aliens, things that just don't happen in America have happened far too often.
This decade has been the best of times, and the worst. It opened with Congress enacting the Immigration Act of 1990, which allowed an increase in legal immigration. Because of the delayed effects of the amnesty provisions included in the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, more immigrants will be admitted in the 1990s than in any other decade in American history.
But by mid-decade, built-up anti-immigrant sentiment caused a backlash, beginning with passage in 1994 of Proposition 187 in California directed at undocumented immigrants. The anti-immigrant wave culminated in 1996, when Congress passed three laws that, under the guise of fighting illegal immigration, terrorism and welfare abuse, targeted legal and undocumented immigrants alike.
These laws belong in the same category as Chinese exclusion, national-origin quotas and Japanese internment. They feature Draconian provisions that result in violations of the most elementary principles of justice, including punishment for acts committed before the laws were enacted and indefinite detention.
The most significant aspect of the 1996 immigration laws, however, is that they radically changed what it means to be a legal immigrant in this country:
Before, green-card holders, many of whom had become Americans in everything but law, were almost first-class citizens, except that they could not vote or hold office (while being subject to taxes and the draft).
After, legal immigrants became fourth-class persons vulnerable to all manner of exclusion — from government benefits, from the basic rules of justice, from the nation many consider their own.
By a cruel irony, the 1996 laws turned a group of Cubans, once among the most favored of immigrants, into one of the worst off among the excluded. Cubans who have committed crimes and have served their sentences cannot be released, according to the interpretation of the law by federal immigration authorities. Nor can they be deported; Cuba will not take them. So they rot in jails waiting for a slow and uncertain review process that may never free them.
What is really needed is to undo the 1996 laws and bury once and for all the nativist impulses that time and again have marred this country's otherwise-proud record as an immigrant Mecca .
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