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'War on Terrorism' Hits HomeImmigrants Speak Out"I'm sad and I'm angry. But I am more angry than I am sad," declared Yamira Pineda at The Public's Truth, a community hearing on racial profiling held at the New Covenant Missionary Baptist Church in Chicago. The hearing was one in a nationwide series of forums organized by the Applied Research Center bringing together immigrants and other people of color to talk about the "war on terrorism's" affect on their lives.
Pineda was one of over 130 workers from the Suncast factory in Aurora, Ill. to get fired because the Social Security Administration (SSA) could not locate her number in its computers. Before Sept. 11, the SSA sent out 40,000-100,000 "no-match" letters each year to correct what are often routine administrative errors. In 2002, the Administration delivered more than 900,000 letters and thousands of workers like Pineda were fired. "I worked for Suncast for over seven years. This was not the first time they received these letters. In the past, Suncast simply notified the workers… This time was different. What they are doing is more corrupt than what they are accusing us of," she said. RACIAL PROFILING"Mohammed," an Iranian addressing a speak-out at the Muslim Community Center in Santa Clara, Calif., recounted his jailing after trying to update his immigrant status in compliance with the U.S.'s "war on terrorism." In December 2002, "Mohammed" was among 144,000 people who were photographed and fingerprinted, then grilled by federal immigration authorities about terrorism. The interrogations are part of the government's "Special Registration" program targeting immigrant males 16-years and older from 25 mainly Arab and Muslim countries. The registrations have led to more than 13,000 being deported, mainly for minor immigration violations. "I was taken to the Oakland Airport and flown to Arizona, again to Colorado, and then back to Oakland and finally to San Diego… I was detained there for close to a week," Mohammed testified. "I was consistently shackled and handcuffed, treated maliciously… Being taken away from my family and uprooted from my life without warning or explanation was frightening and surreal." In Los Angeles, Rasheed Alam, a 19-year-old Lebanese American student, described being violently beaten by a group of white men with baseball bats, who called him "sand nigger" as they stomped on his face. The attackers were not charged with a hate crime. In Chicago, Mrs. Nieng told the story of her son, one of more than 2,000 Cambodians who will be deported under a post-Sept. 11 agreement between the U.S. and Cambodia. Her son, a minor, signed away his rights without knowing this would result in his own deportation. "If I spoke English, I'd be yelling my lungs out!" "These are not isolated incidents, but a glimpse into what's happened to thousands of people since Sept. 11," explained the Applied Research Center's Gina Acebo. Resistance to the government's heavy-handed tactics is growing, as indicated by the recent Immigrant Worker Freedom Ride. Some 900 immigrants and their allies traveled across the country on buses to New York City where on Oct. 4 100,000 people staged an historic rally for citizenship, labor protections, civil liberties and legalization for all immigrants. As Mark Joseph, a 17 year-old Iraqi-Lebanese high school student Freedom Rider from Chicago, exclaimed: "It's time for us to stand up, speak out and get together across communities and fight against racism and injustice!" Josina Morita works with the Applied Research Center in Chicago. |
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