[NYTr] ACLU Blasts Visa Refusal to So.African Scholar

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[Undated, No URL, but it's probably at least a week old, since
the American Sociological Assn meeting was last weekend and the refusal
by the State Dept has been in the news for a while. =NYTr]

sent by Riaz K. Tayob (activ-l)

U.S. Policy of Ideological Exclusion Harms Citizens, ACLU Says

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: media at aclu.org

NEW YORK - The American Civil Liberties Union today criticized the State 
Department for failing to respond to a visa application by South African 
scholar Adam Habib. The ACLU said the government's actions suggest the 
Bush administration is excluding Habib because it disagrees with his 
politics.

"The Bush administration is using immigration law to censor speech at 
the border and keep scholars and experts whose views the government 
disfavors from joining the political and academic debate in this 
country," said Melissa Goodman, a staff attorney for the ACLU's National 
Security Project. "By excluding experts like Mr. Habib, the government 
is sending the message that America is afraid of critical thought."

Habib is a renowned scholar, sought after analyst, and the Executive 
Director of the Human Science Research Council's Program on Democracy 
and Governance. He is also a Muslim of Indian descent who has been a 
vocal critic of the war in Iraq and certain U.S. terrorism-related 
policies. Until the government suddenly revoked his visa last October 
without explanation, he had never had any trouble entering the United 
States; in fact, Habib lived in New York while earning his PhD in 
Political Science from the City University of New York.

Habib applied for a new visa in order to travel to the U.S. for an 
upcoming speaking engagement at the annual meeting of the American 
Sociological Association on August 11.  He was invited to speak on a 
panel of domestic and international scholars addressing the topic of 
"Globalization and Resistance." However, because the State Department 
has failed to even give Habib an answer to his visa request, Habib will 
not be able to participate at the meeting.

Over the past few years, the government has prevented numerous scholars 
like Habib from speaking with U.S. audiences simply by failing to make a 
decision on their visa applications in time for U.S. events, leaving U.S 
. conference organizers and audience members unable to engage in 
discussion and debate with the scholars.

Habib's visa was first revoked on October 21, 2006 when he arrived at 
John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. Habib had been invited to attend a 
series of meetings with several institutions including the National 
Institutes for Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 
the World Bank, Columbia University and the Gates Foundation. When he 
landed, Habib was detained and spent seven hours being interrogated 
about his views and links to terrorism. He was then asked if he had ever 
been questioned or interrogated before. Habib told them he had been 
interrogated in South Africa during the apartheid regime for speaking 
out against racism and abuse. The U. S. government then revoked Habib's 
visa, and armed guards escorted him to a plane and deported him back to 
South Africa.

The ban on Habib's admission to the United States has been extended to 
his wife and two young sons, ages 7 and 11. Habib's 11-year-old son, who 
was invited to attend the U.S.'s two-week People to People Junior 
Ambassadors Program, was forced to decline the invitation. In protest, 
his school cancelled the entire trip. Despite numerous efforts to obtain 
some explanation for why Habib and his family's visas were revoked, the 
U.S. government never explained its actions.

"I am deeply disappointed that I was denied an opportunity to critically 
engage with colleagues and fellow academics. All of us, American, South 
African and others should be very worried when a government, especially 
one that professes a commitment to democracy, feels so fragile that they 
are compelled to exclude scholars with critical views from entering 
their country," Habib said. "If the U.S. government continues to act in 
such an undemocratic manner, refusing to allow in outsiders who disagree 
with administration policy, it will continue to alienate large portions 
of the world. Thankfully, there are many U.S. citizens and institutions 
who stand up to such arbitrary behavior. It is they who represent the 
best traditions of what it means to be American."

The ACLU says that the government's practice of ideological exclusion 
impairs the First Amendment rights of Americans by preventing them from 
engaging in face-to-face dialogue and debate with foreign scholars whose 
speech the government disfavors. In 2006 the ACLU filed a lawsuit on 
behalf of U.S. academic groups and Professor Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss 
intellectual who was denied admission to the United States under the 
government's ideological exclusion provision. Ramadan is widely regarded 
as a leading scholar of the Muslim world. When the government revoked 
his visa in 2004, he was prevented from assuming a tenured teaching 
position at the University of Notre Dame.

The ideological exclusion provision is nominally aimed at those who 
"espouse or endorse terrorist activity," but it is vaguely written and 
easily manipulated, said the ACLU. The provision could readily be used 
to exclude foreign scholars who study controversial matters such as 
terrorism and the concept of "jihad" in Islam. In fact, the State 
Department's Foreign Affairs Manual interprets the provision to apply to 
foreign nationals who have voiced "irresponsible expressions of opinion."

The Ramadan case, American Academy of Religion v. Chertoff, is pending 
in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Manhattan.

More information about ideological exclusion is available at:
www.aclu.org/exclusion