Home Page

Press Center 2008

Press Center 2007

Press Center 2006

Press Center 2005

Press Center 2003-2004

Islamic charities

Anti-Muslim smears
 

News Day - July 19, 2004

Immigrants say post-9/11 crackdown persists

By Robert Polner

Nearly three years after 9/11, New York immigrants, their determined advocates and Catholic clergy told an emotional forum Monday (7/19/2004) that the effects of heightened enforcement of immigration laws are felt every day.

Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, who leads the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens, said that though it has "done very little to improve domestic security," the federal clampdown continues to generate delays for people seeking green cards, bigger hurdles for foreign-born families attempting to reunify or simply remain together and an ever-present fear of a summary and even secretive detention and deportation.

"Many might condemn the presence of as many as eight million un-documents in this country," said DiMarzio, who organized the forum attended by more than 100 people at St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights. "Yet we accept their hard labors, their contributions to the well-being of our society. We can't have it both ways."

DiMarzio and other critics of what they call hard line policies toward new immigrants -- including those who emigrated from Arab or Muslim countries of the Middle East and South Asia -- said the government needs to create channels to obtain legal status as well as a way to appeal detention or deportation orders.

"Legal immigration is becoming more and more difficult, more time consuming, and so expensive it is beyond the reach of many," DiMarzio said. The current apparatus "is an immoral system that must be changed."

During nearly three hours of discussion, several immigrants broke down as they recounted the removal of heads of households, years-long wait for legalization interviews or fears of going public with accounts of fraud at the hands of for-profit immigration specialists.

A Haitian parishioner of Monsignor Rollin Darbouze's church in Flabbush had to be talked into seeking treatment for a broken hip from a Brooklyn hospital by her sister, a U.S. citizen, he said. "In my 35 years as a clergyman, the lives of immigrants in this city and particularly in Flatbush have never been more difficult," said Darbouze, of Holy Innocents Church. "The fear of being deported has become common. The distance many immigrants feel from the rest of society has become more pronounced."

Navila Ali, 20, of the Bronx, was overcome by emotion as she recounted her father's deportation to Bangladesh this past February. She went quiet for almost two minutes, gathering herself; someone in the audience shouted encouragement: "It's OK." Ali said her father was detained and sent back on short notice to his homeland after he had failed to respond immigration inquiries that she says never reached him. It was left to her mainly to support her younger brother and sister, ages 9 and 10, with two jobs….

http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/bronx/nyc-immi0720,0,5557890.story?coll=nyc-manheadlines-bronx

New York Times - July 20, 2004

From Immigrants, Stories of Scrutiny, and Struggle

By NINA BERNSTEIN

As a Muslim immigrant growing up in New York, Navila Ali, 20, felt safe and almost American until Sept. 11, 2001, she said yesterday, speaking out at an unusual public hearing led by the bishop of Brooklyn to highlight the impact of enforcement crackdowns on the city's immigrants.

Ms. Ali's father, a bookseller, was required to register with the government simply because he was from Bangladesh. He dutifully reported to immigration authorities, she said, and like thousands of other Muslim or Arab men, he was detained and deported last year. His family stayed behind.

"I'm the oldest of three children, so everything is on me," said Ms. Ali, a college student, breaking down at the microphone as she faced the bishop, Nicholas DiMarzio, and a phalanx of community organizations. "I've been here 12 years, and I always thought in my soul and heart, I'm American. I thought this was the best place for protection. But I don't feel that way anymore."

Such sentiments are sweeping immigrant communities in New York, Bishop DiMarzio said, and not only among Muslims, who have borne the brunt of antiterrorism measures. A wide spectrum of foreign-born residents feel the ripple effects, from ballooning immigration application backlogs to the denial of driver's licenses for longtime immigrant workers who cannot prove that they are working legally.

"Things are worse than they've ever been, and I've been involved in immigration for 30 years," the bishop said in an interview before the three-hour forum, at St. Francis College in downtown Brooklyn. The forum was co-sponsored by the New York Immigration Coalition, an umbrella group and advocacy voice for more than 200 organizations that work with newcomers and support more lenient immigration laws.

"The human impact is the issue - people are suffering," the bishop said. "Some of it is the unintended consequences of 9/11, but we have to do something about it. It's immoral. It's just wrong."

The forum underscored that the post-9/11 crackdown on immigrants is forging unusual alliances between left-leaning civil liberties groups and religious conservatives. Bishop DiMarzio headed the United States Bishops' Office of Migration and Refugee Services and served as bishop in Camden, N.J., a heavily immigrant city, before taking over the Brooklyn Diocese last year.

One speaker at the forum, Artemio Guerra, executive director of the Fifth Avenue Committee, a South Brooklyn advocacy group, stressed that it was the Clinton administration that enacted a stringent 1996 immigration law authorizing more detention and deportation and less due process. "What we're seeing is 1996 on steroids," Mr. Guerra said.

Among several immigrants whose testimony was showcased yesterday was a Hispanic street vendor who said she had become fearful of seeking police help, a Pakistani father of two fighting deportation and the chairman of a Sikh temple in Queens who said he was cursed and assaulted by a fellow passenger on a Greyhound bus because of his turban.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/20/nyregion/20immigrant.html?pagewanted=print&position=

New York Daily News - July 20th, 2004

Bishop calls for revamping laws enacted after 9/11

The Catholic bishop of Brooklyn and Queens called on the federal government yesterday to revamp laws enacted after 9/11 that make life difficult for immigrants. "The system is broken. We need to review our present immigration laws and overhaul them," said Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, head of the Diocese of Brooklyn, at a public hearing on immigrant concerns at St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights.

"Immigrant New Yorkers are facing adversity from all sides," added Margie McHugh, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition. Laws targeting people based on their national origin or religion have torn apart families and pushed undocumented immigrants further to the margins of society, McHugh said.

DiMarzio pledged to work with immigrant advocates to protect newcomers' "dignity and safety," and said he has asked to meet with Tom Ridge, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Gov. Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg to discuss immigrant rights.

The Diocese of Brooklyn, which includes both Brooklyn and Queens, comprises 1.8 million Catholics, more than half of whom are immigrants, according to the office of Catholic Migration.

Here are some problems the bishop and the advocates said immigrants face:

The federal special registration program that required Muslim and South Asian men to sign in with the government has been halted, but more than 13,000 men across the nation face deportation. This would sunder thousands of families, advocates warn.

Record delays for immigrant services have ensued because manpower was diverted to enforce special registration, affecting those applying for naturalization and green cards.

"They've put all their eggs in the enforcement basket, neglecting to provide services for immigrants," said Norman Eng of the New York Immigration Coalition.

It's now impossible for undocumented immigrants to get a driver's license. In February, the Department of Motor Vehicles began a crackdown on motorists without valid Social Security numbers, sending out more than 100,000 notices to New Yorkers.

Government policies that target Muslims and South Asians have helped to create a hostile environment for many immigrants, said Muzafar Chishti, director of the Migration Policy Institute.

Brooklyn clothing merchant Gurdayal Singh, 42, said he was attacked and insulted on a bus ride from Pennsylvania to New York last November. A belligerent bus passenger called Singh a "son of Bin Laden" and later assaulted him in a rest-stop bathroom. "This is not only my story," Singh said. "It happens to many innocent people, every day."

http://www.nydailynews.com/boroughs/v-pfriendly/story/213695p-184017c.html