It’s now the turn of an Indian journalist to be a victim of America’s Islamophobia.
Zia Haq, an assistant editor with Hindustan Times, was part of a seven-journalist delegation invited to participate in a week-long technology and farm show that began on August 28 at Iowa in the United States. The US embassy here suspended the processing of his visa on unexplained grounds, and Haq had to drop out of the tour at the last minute.
The HT journalist says on his blog that he has been singled out, “All other journalists in the delegation were promptly granted visas…What prompted this? My religion? My faith? My views? [But] I have never been a consistent, rabid or vocal opponent of America...” The other journalists were able to reach the US for the show. Haq was told that his visa application had been suspended for further administrative processing under Section 221(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
Section 221(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act reads:
No visa or other documentation shall be issued to an alien if
- it appears to the consular officer, from statements in the application, or in the papers submitted therewith, that such alien is ineligible to receive a visa or such other documentation under section 212, or any other provision of law,
- the application fails to comply with the provisions of this Act, or the regulations issued thereunder, or
- the consular officer knows or has reason to believe that such alien is ineligible to receive a visa or such other documentation under section 212, or any other provision of law: Provided, That a visa or other documentation may be issued to an alien who is within the purview of section 212(a)
- if such alien is otherwise entitled to receive a visa or other documentation, upon receipt of notice by the consular officer from the Attorney General of the giving of a bond or undertaking providing indemnity as in the case of aliens admitted under section 213: Provided further, That a visa may be issued to an alien defined in section 101(a)(15) (B) or (F), if such alien is otherwise entitled to receive a visa, upon receipt of a notice by the consular officer from the Attorney General of the giving of a bond with sufficient surety in such sum and containing such conditions as the consular officer shall prescribe, to insure that at the expiration of the time for which such alien has been admitted by the Attorney General, as provided in section 214(a), or upon failure to maintain the status under which he was admitted, or to maintain any status subsequently acquired under section 248 of the Act, such alien will depart from the United States.
“The US embassy may well assert that they did not reject my visa outright but only subjected me to additional background checks. I would want to tell them, a visa delayed is visa denied,” asserts Haq.
His is not the first such case. In September 2008, US authorities similarly delayed processing the application of Haider Hussain, Editor of Assam's largest daily, Axomiya Pratidin. Hussain was part of the media delegation accompanying Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the US and France.
The Haq incident comes close on the heels of Vijay Kumar, a documentary filmmaker from India, being arrested at Houston Intercontinental Airport on the afternoon of August 20 for carrying brass knuckles in his checked baggage along with “jihadist books” and publications written in Arabic and more than $10,000 in cash. Quite ironically, Kumar was in Houston to lecture a Hindu organisation about Islamic fundamentalism and the books packed in his checked luggage were educational tools.
A judge hearing the case of Kumar only on Saturday last ordered his "voluntary departure" from the country. The immigration judge denied him a bond and asked him to leave the US within 90 days. Voluntary bond means that his departure as an “alien” from the US would be without an order of removal. “Voluntary departure” is different from deportation in that the accused can seek visa for US again. Now that, usually, never happens.
No, Indians are not the only ones to be victims of American paranoia. A delegation of Pakistani military officers recently abandoned a trip to the US after being mistaken for terrorists and ordered off an airliner. The eight officers were on their way to a meeting at the US military’s Central Command. They had boarded a United Airlines flight from Washington to Tampa on August 30 but were taken off the aircraft because of comments made by one of the men.
Pakistani officials said the officer, weary from the journey to the US, had remarked, "I hope this is the final plane to the destination" causing a female passenger, who believed he was threatening the aircraft, to panic. The officers were ordered off the aircraft and interrogated. Humiliated, they called off the trip.
One need not be told how US leaders and their media would react if an American were to be meted out such a treatment by India or Pakistan.
