Cry Me A River Ahmed

Here's a link to a story by Angilee Shah on AlterNet. She really lays it on thick about how foreign students now feel unwelcome in the US because of the stricter standards imposed for getting and keeping a student visa after 9-11. Here are some tidbits from it:

Because so many of the terrorists entered on visas and were not screened in personal interviews, new laws require most travelers be interviewed. Interviews take a massive amount of manpower, which manifests itself in long waits for visa interview appointments with U.S. consulars around the world. For example, the Saudi Arabia consular advises travelers that they will face a minimum six-week wait, but security checks could take several months; in Seoul, the wait is, on average, thirty days.

I'm sorry if a wait inconveniences them, but there is something more precious at stake than their travel plans or education.

International students who are male and between the ages of 16 and 45 and from certain countries face another security clearance hurdle in Visas Condor. Among these countries are those considered "state sponsors of terrorism": Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Syria, and Sudan. A student or scholar can be subject to both Mantis and Condor and thus experience incredible delays. The Los Angeles Times cites the case of an "Iranian nuclear physicist" who took seventeen months (and a much-delayed academic plan) to get his student visa to come to the United States.

Why the HECK would we let an "Iranian Nuclear Physicist" come study in the US!

Recent University of California, Berkeley graduate, Imad Ahmed, is an English citizen who left Pakistan before his first birthday. Last December, at the advice of UC Berkeley counselors, he registered with the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration in a program called NSEERS. The program required non-citizen males from twenty-five countries to come forward under the threat of deportation for noncompliance. Any male between 16 and 45 whose nationalities were from any of these countries had to register by May and April deadlines. Ahmed says that the experience was humiliating; officials took his photograph, fingerprinted him, and requested contact information for his friends and family in the U.S. He recalls a woman who was processing registrants; she said that if he missed a single deadline, "We'll come get you."

Yet NSEERS made Ahmed more fearful than embarrassed. He said that when special registration began, he "was waking up in cold sweats" and had many sleepless nights wondering about what would happen to him. His parents in England told him to keep a low profile; Ahmed did not really know how to do that. He was not speaking out about registration, but he says, "I was afraid to be on my own computer to look at [alternative news] websites. I was afraid that just by default, by being a Muslim and being an international student, I would be blacklisted." Of course, Ahmed was not referring to any specific list (there are so many lists (Visas Condor and Mantis, TAL, no-fly lists, etc.) -- but of an overall fear of the FBI and of a country that seemed to fear him.

I for one am tired of the silence of the so-called majority of Muslims who are "peaceful" and supposedly do not agree with the acts of barbarism committed in their name. To them I say: if you don't speak out against the islamofacist terrorists, then you support them. If you don't help root out the evil in your community, then you share their guilt.

My answer to Ahmed's night sweats, wailing and gnashing of teeth? Don't blame Americans for trying to protect ourselves from a known and quantifiable threat. Blame those who took advantage of us and turned our hospitality against us. For pete's sake BLAME THE TERRORISTS! Someone? Anyone?