Stay at home, Europe
Handcuffs? Interrogation? Woe to the foreigner who arrives in America without the proper credentials
By Eric Pape
Like other British Citizens, Ali Hasan did not require a visa when he landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport in May. An employee of Human Rights Watch, he was en route to the organization's New York headquarters. He had travelled to America repeatedly on the same British passport. Yet on this trip, an immigration official took Hasan aside because his passport read Born: Karachi, Pakistan. As he was fingerprinted and photographed, Hasan explained in his impeccable Oxford accent he was a British citizen who had lived in the United Kingdom since he was 12. Came the response: "You are obviously not British enough."

The United States may have been built on welcoming the tired, poor, huddled masses, but now the door is slamming even on the educated elite. These days, the Statue of Liberty might as well hold up a sign that says Go Back. Since 9-11 the United States has introduced a series of measures aimed at better screening and monitoring of foreigners, going so far as to register males between 16 and 45 from "countries of concern" (chiefly Arab, Muslim and Middle Eastern nations, as well as North Korea and parts of sub-Saharan Africa). Even European passport-holders accustomed to sailing through immigration are increasingly facing suspicion and, often, outright hostility when they arrive. As America pulls up its welcome mat, it is in danger of further alienating some of its closest allies. "Even foreign-exchange students from France are being rejected by host families," says Clyde Prestowitz, author of "Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions." "I can't imagine anything dumber than such a superficial, primitive, emotional reaction. "

For years, some 27 countries, most of them in Western Europe, enjoyed what is known as the Visa Waiver Programme, which allowed their residents to visit America on business or pleasure for up to 90 days without a visa. No longer. Beginning Oct. 1 all Europeans must possess a new machine-readable digital passport if they want to enter the United States without a visa. Otherwise, they must obtain a visa-in person - from a U.S. Embassy or consulate. (Residents of Greece and Turkey will need a visa regardless). The plan was written up before 9-11 and scheduled to go into effect in 2007. But it was pushed up after the terrorist attacks, leaving many foreign governments scrambling. So far, only about 20 percent of French citizens have the new passports. Few Italian, Swiss or Spanish citizens have them, either. And in Germany, though the new passports are relatively common, changes in the visa procedures have created other hassles. One German IBM employee, accustomed to renewing his visa by mail from his New York home, had to travel back to Germany to deal with immigration authorities and spent nearly a month waiting for his renewal.

In U.S. immigration lines, ethnicity and religion aren't the only reasons visitors are being targeted. Sometimes it's simply a question of possessing the right visa. When French television journalists Stephanie Pic, Michel Perrot and Alexandre Alfonsi recently arrived at Los Angeles International Airport to cover a videogame trade show, immigration authorities detained them and said they needed journalistic visas. After being vigorously frisked, fingerprinted and photographed, they were handcuffed and interrogated. The French Consulate offered little comfort. "They told us we weren't the first ones to go through this and that they couldn't do anything, but that we shouldn't argue," recounts Pic. Well past midnight after more than 10 hours in the airport - the three were transported to an immigrant detention center that had glass cells, no blankets and metal toilets. The next day they were flown home. Pic says she wouldn't dream of returning to the United States now - even with the proper visa. "We are journalists who were there to do our job," she says. "We didn't come to kill the president."

American travel and tourism lobbyists fear that such horror stories may spur Europeans to go elsewhere. Even before the new measures went into effect, tourism to the United States had collapsed in the wake of 9-11, falling 12 percent from 2001 to 2002. Terrorism, SARS, the struggling global economy and the war in Iraq all conspired to keep people home. As a result, the travel industry has been lobbying the State Department to delay some of the new requirements and to add resources to guarantee that the new visa processing goes smoothly. The industry has much to lose; according to Edward Fluhr, a legislative lobbyist at the Travel Industry Association of America, travellers from Visa-waiver countries spent $39.6 billion in the United States in 2000, accounting for 57 percent of overseas tourist spending.

Others say the decline in tourist dollars will be the least of America's woes. "The much bigger problem is that U.S. graduate schools in science and technology practically live on foreign students," says Prestowitz. Indeed, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, an estimated half-million foreign students were enrolled in higher education in the United States last year, mainly in engineering and the sciences, and many go on to bolster the U.S. work force. But the dividends from international students in the United States go far beyond that; many global leaders who were educated in the United States spread knowledge of American lifestyles and values as well as spreading good will toward the country.

That's liable to change if Saif Malik's experience is any indication. Last year the 19-year-old Pakistani native was accepted to the prestigious University of Pennsylvania. Though he quickly received tentative approval for a visa, it didn't arrive until January - five months into the school year. By then, he was told to renew his paper work, which had "expired", costing another three months. He missed the entire school year. He's hoping things work out this fall.

Fallout from the new policies is already taking its toll on America's reputation. Balakrishnan Rajagopal, director of the Programme on Human Rights and Justice at MIT, says that many foreign students come to the United States to live in "a more open society" and are disappointed to find it just as closed to them as the ones they left. Singling out students "makes Muslims - and even people who can be mistaken for Muslims - extremely fearful," he says. Further more, Muslim faculty members are increasingly afraid to speak out or engage in social or religious activities, since it is well known that the FBI is monitoring mosques. "All that the people are trying to do is exercise their religious freedom, but it comes to be seen as a seditious activity," says Rajagopal.

Hasan says he wouldn't blame fellow Muslims for shunning the United States altogether. "Anyone with a minimum of self-respect will avoid coming here unless they absolutely have to," he said. ("The security policies are") ritual humiliation of a class of people who would be the natural allies of the United States and what it stands for." After his ordeal at JFK, he was interrogated all over again when he registered, as required, at the federal building in Manhattan: What religious organizations do you belong to? Have you been jailed by the Pakistani government? He was quick to note the irony of the questions: after all, Human Rights Watch hired him in part to track government oppression and human-rights violations - in Pakistan
-Newsweek

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