by Nisa Islam Muhammad
Staff Writer

WASHINGTON (FinalCall.com)�The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights gathered advocates, legal experts and government officials Oct. 12 to address immigration, racial profiling and hate crimes after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"How do we as a nation balance the need to secure ourselves from terrorist attacks with the need to maintain the freedoms and civil rights we cherish so dearly?" asked Commission chairperson Dr. Mary Frances Berry.

"As new laws and regulations are being passed and implemented concerning immigration and other issues, to what extent are freedom and civil rights being curtailed in a manner that might be acceptable during a time, but are not acceptable during any other time?"

Anti-terrorism legislation has drastically changed immigration law. Both S. 1510, the "Uniting and Strengthening America (USA) Act of 2001," and H.R. 2975, the "Provide Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (PATRIOT) Act of 2001" allow for the detention of immigrants on the basis of suspicion and lawful political associations for a potentially indefinite period of time.

"They would give the [U.S.] attorney general the power, for the first time, to designate domestic groups as terrorist organizations, permitting their non-citizen members to be detained and deported without evidence of any involvement in terrorist activity," said Timothy H. Edgar, American Civil Liberties Union legislative counsel.

The measures also expand the government�s ability to conduct secret searches, grants the FBI broad access to sensitive business records about individuals without having to show evidence of a crime and lead to wide ranging investigations of American citizens for "intelligence" purposes, he said.

But many are pushing the new legislation as just the beginning.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, suggested that other changes to immigration laws will include special scrutiny applied to visa applicants from Muslim countries and even to people of Middle Eastern birth, fingerprinting of visa applicants, tracking of foreign students, possible further limitations on speech and affiliation as well as deportation.

"It would be unfortunate if, in our efforts to prevent another 6,000 American deaths�or 60,000 or 600,000�we were inadvertently to deport some foreign citizens who pose no threat to us," said Mr. Krikorian. "But their presence here is a privilege we grant, not a right they have exercised, and we may withdraw that privilege for any reason."

David A. Harris, author of "Profiles in Injustice: Why Racial Profiling Cannot Work," explains, "All the evidence indicates that profiling Arab Americans or Muslims would be an ineffective waste of law enforcement resources that would damage our intelligence efforts while it compromises basic civil liberties."

In the drug war, according to Mr. Harris, racial profiling of Blacks and Latinos failed when many local and state police agencies, led by the Drug Enforcement Agency, cast a wide net to get drugs and guns off the streets.

"When these agencies used race or ethnic appearance as a factor�not as the only factor, but one among many�they did not get the higher returns on their enforcement efforts that they were expecting," said Mr. Harris. "This is because race and ethnic appearance are very poor predictors of behavior."

But Mr. Krikorian does not believe this issue applies to immigrants.

"Whether or not ethnic or religious profiling is an appropriate tool in the government�s dealings with American citizens, there are no civil rights implications of such profiling of foreign citizens overseas. The United States may refuse entry to any foreign citizen, for any reason, at any time."

The USCCR has received over 500 reports of hate crimes. The FBI is actively investigating 130 cases with two first-time ever indictments for hate crimes against Middle Easterners.

"This is not a new problem," said James Zogby, Ph.D, and president of the Arab American Institute. "Negative stereotypes about Middle Easterners have shaped the thinking of Americans. Within hours of watching the attacks, I got my first death threat. My brother got two bomb threats."

The recent hate crimes have taken the form of assaults, vandalism to homes, mosques and businesses, threats and harassment and airplane profiling.

Samuel Podersky, assistant general counsel of the Department of Transportation, which oversees the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA), said the agency has received 11 complaints since Sept. 11, which are being investigated on a case-by-case basis.