Posted on 10/31/2002 5:35:13 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
Like common criminals, Ottawa residents Tahereh Shahparaki and her husband were made to pose for mug shots, have their fingerprints taken, and provide detailed personal information under interrogation by armed officers.
Their crime, according to a new U.S. law? Being born in Iran.
The Canadian citizens said they were "treated like criminals" when they travelled to the United States from their Ottawa home to spend Thanksgiving weekend with their daughter, who had just moved to Manhattan for work.
"Humiliated and angry," they thought of turning back home in disgust, Ms. Shahparaki said yesterday, but wanted to see her daughter and help her settle in her new home. So they endured the process, introduced as an anti-terrorism measure by the U.S. government .
On the way home, only three days later, U.S. government agents forced the couple through the motions again -- more mug shots, more fingerprints, further embarrassment, Ms. Shahparaki said.
She said the questions asked by the Immigration and Naturalization Service officers were personal, strange, even irrelevant. "I had no choice but to answer them because that's part of their new procedure," Ms. Shahparaki said.
What is your address? When and where were you born? Where do you work? What is your telephone number? What is your business here? Where are you going? For how long? What are your parents' names? What are your parents' birthdates? What did they do?
"Why do they need to know about my parents? My parents are deceased," Ms. Shahparaki said, adding the U.S. official "apologized profusely" for the inconvenience. "What are they doing with this information?"
Calling the system discriminatory, the Foreign Affairs department has issued an unusual travel advisory urging Canadian citizens born in countries targeted by U.S. anti-terrorism policies to think twice about visiting the U.S.
Calls about the new law to the Canadian Snowbirds Association in Toronto are increasing as Canadians start planning to go south for winter.
Meanwhile, a Canadian citizen and a landed immigrant who were held in the U.S. on immigration violations will be deported back to Canada, probably within days, a U.S. immigration official said yesterday, after the FBI failed to establish any links to terrorism.
Reza Zazai, a 25-year-old Canadian citizen originally from Afghanistan, and Khoshal Wahid Nasery, an Afghan national with landed-immigrant status in Canada, had been arrested on immigration violations. They had both previously lived in Ottawa.
Another Canadian citizen, Pakistani-born Unsir Hafeez, 24, faces a hearing Nov. 5.
Under the law governing deportation, they will be banned from re-entry into the United States for between three and five years.
Well, don't come south then. Stay up there in the snow .. and keep your Muslims up there with you.
Why are they dealing with US Customs when leaving the USA?
I was born in the US, and look like a nondescript Angular-Saxon, and I've run into plenty of NightWatch types in border security (even before the 9-11 Massacre).
Good.
... really cold catcher's mitts.
What she "endured" is less hassle than she'd get trying to obtain an Iowa CCW permit in a county with a 'rat sheriff (and more successful- she got across).
I'm a white American citizen. While I've never been finger printed or photographed, I've been asked these same questions every time I've crossed over into Canada. It's not a big deal.
They would have been dealing with Canadian customs but too stupid to know the difference. (Or maybe they just want to rag on the U.S.)
Trying to figure out if you are who you say you are. Trying to make sure you aren't connected to any of a dozen or so radical muslim groups bent on the destruction of America. Trying to make sure you aren't just another bunch of IslamoMonsters out to commit mass murder in the name of your Moon God. Is that clear enough for you?
Because even though nobody in the government will come out and say it, we have been listening to the Muslim street. We know that the people speaking loudest for Islam support religious terrorism.
Sooner or later, somebody will have the nerve to say the obvious: Islam has declared war against all of Western Civilization. It is THEY who have repeatedly clarified this point, even as we try to deny it.
I know that the Canadians considered their actions as a slap against Americans, but I support it wholeheartedly. Keep this Muslim scum in Canada. They have no right to come to America unless we decide to let them in, and that will be under our terms.
Oh cry me a freakin' river. The last time I flew on an airplane, I got pulled out of line while airport security ordered me to remove my coat, remove my jacket, empty my pockets, and take off my shoes while they pawed through my carry-on and passed a metal-detecting rod over my crotch. Meanwhile, two gentlemen of the Mohammedan persuasion (one of them was carrying a large cane that could have concealed a sword) waltzed past the security goons right on to the airplane.
Prolly tried to back across the border. Knickers down, and heads up thru the sunroof.
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