Washington Diary
Ugliest form of profiling

Columnist Dr Manzur Ejaz discusses the effects of the new INS regulations in the US.

US decision to include Pakistan in the list of risky countries and ensuing registration process has started playing havoc with lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent Pakistani immigrants. Government of Pakistan and their diplomats in Washington DC are paralysed, pleading to the Bush government and making excuses for how and why Pakistanis have been included in the list. Bombing churches on Christmas Eve does not help immigrants’ case either: it, further, justifies why Pakistanis are considered a threat.
A few weeks back Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were included in the list of countries whose male members will be fingerprinted when they approach the US airports. New and old Pakistanis, who are neither US citizens nor permanent residents, will have to register with the US immigration service from January 17, 2003. All Pakistanis who have overstayed their visa provisions, or waiting for their legal status to be readjusted, face a bleak future. Most probably, if the US immigration service does not show any leniency, the affected individuals will be put behind bars and deported.
According to some estimates, about 200,000 Pakistanis will be hit by the new rules. Some are planning to take refuge in Canada while others have no choice but to hide themselves in their houses. It may have a devastating financial effect on millions of families in Pakistan and the country’s receipt of remittances from the US. Most of the remittances are sent by new entrants and not by well-settled Pakistani-Americans. Therefore, the level of suffering, at individual as well as national level, will be much greater than being realised at the moment.
It is learnt that the State Department and the White House had recommended not to include Pakistan in the risk-list but Attorney General, Mr John Ashcroft’s office prevailed and US’ closest ally was not spared of the agony. No one knows which interest groups have played a role in affecting such a decision. Some quarters believe that certain powerful minority religious groups, apprehensive of increasing Muslim voting power, are using security concerns to arrest the flow of migrants from Islamic countries. Muslim community leaders’ bragging, being the fastest growing religious minority, is backfiring according to a Pakistani activist. Nonetheless, Pakistani diplomats claim that they were caught by surprise by the US moves.
Pakistani diplomats’ complacency and failure to anticipate may have done a major damage to the immigrants’ interests in the US. Many community activists wonder if Armenia was taken off the list even after the announcement, Pakistan may have had a fighting chance if the community was alerted in time. However, the new administration at the Pakistan embassy in Washington has decided to keep the community and Pakistani press out of the loop: in the last six months the press was contacted for a couple of times only. Most of the old diplomatic staff, having close links with the community and the media, was transferred and an entire batch of new people was brought in. Obviously, a typical bureaucratic mist has shrouded the embassy after Dr Maleeha Lodhi left town.
Pakistani diplomats’ incapacity to gather timely information and to anticipate the unfolding events can be disastrous. If false assurances or unreal dangers are conveyed back home, a major disaster can wreck the country. Mostly, the diplomats can assess the situation through interaction with their official counterparts in the host country, immigrant community and the press. The US diplomats use all these venues in Pakistan to be real eyes and ears of their country. Dr Maleeha Lodhi and Foreign Secretary, Riaz Khokhar, remained engaged with various immigrant groups and were reasonably successful in mobilising the community and Pakistan media to work for Pakistan. Probably, Ambassador Ashraf Jahangir Qazi has not come out of Delhi mindset where there was no Pakistani community and one had to function through a permanently besieged embassy compound.
Ambassador Qazi did not provide any new insight or information when he called a press conference on the Christmas Eve: an odd time for such an occasion. He continuously dodged the question if Pakistan’s inclusion in the list of risky countries is an indication of a fundamental change in the US attitude? Instead, he went on reiterating the US justification according to which the laws are not against any specific community or country. Who will buy these excuses when only Muslim immigrants are targeted? After all why only two countries, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, were added to the list — Armenia was included and then excluded after powerful lobbying. Other than North Korea, the entire list is comprised of Muslim countries. Mr Qazi’s assurance, on behalf of the Bush administration, that eventually all countries will be included in the list is hardly consoling. The lives, broken by the new devastating immigration rules, will never be same.
Looking from the US angle, Pakistan is a risky country. After all, most of the hijackers and Muslim militants have been using Pakistan as their base. Over the last few months, many innocent Christians lost their lives when their churches were attacked without any provocation. Taliban and al-Qaeda remnants are suspected taking refuge in Pakistan. Therefore, the US apprehensions have genuine basis. However, the problem is that common Pakistanis and other Muslims are bearing the consequences of the actions of militant Islamic groups. It does not matter if they have nothing to do with jihadi groups or most of them are opposed to violent version of Islam. Nonetheless, they have become the victim of circumstances and the US global game. While the Bush administration is manipulated to take steps against Muslim immigrants, Pakistani government and its diplomats are helpless or incapacitated to alleviate the suffering its citizens are facing.

About the Author
The writer is a freelance journalist based in Washington DC
manzurejaz@yahoo.com