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11/23/2003 Entry: "Canadian Scholar Confronts 'Ugly Face of America'"

The Washinton Post reported on its November 11, 2003 edition of an ordeal faced by a Canadian Scholar during a recent visit to the Untied States.

A Scholar Confronts 'Ugly Face of America'

Tuesday, November 11, 2003; Page A17

TORONTO -- Muzaffar Iqbal, a Canadian professor, recalls his stomach tightening as a U.S. immigration officer took his passport, bearing stamps from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Kazakhstan, and ran it through a scanner last December. Then the man said: "Come with me, sir."

Iqbal, who was born in Pakistan in 1954 and moved to Canada in 1979, had been invited to Washington by Georgetown University's Center for Christian-Muslim Understanding, to take part in planning a conference.

But now he was being diverted. At a facility at Toronto's Pearson Airport where travelers go through U.S. immigration checks, he was led down a corridor of temporary offices. He came to a room where 10 other people were waiting in various states of agitation.

Iqbal knew that a few months earlier, officials in Ottawa had issued a travel advisory that U.S. immigration officials were paying special attention to Canadians born in Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria. (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen were later added to the list.) Canadians protested. The minister of natural resources, Herb Dhaliwal, who was born in India, called the policy "the ugly face of America."

In the room, Iqbal waited and waited, and missed his flight. Finally, an agent took him to a small room where a sign on the wall said everything would be recorded and videotaped. The agent took Iqbal's passport. "You are a Pakistani citizen," the agent said, according to Iqbal.

"I said, 'No, I'm a Canadian citizen. You are holding my Canadian passport in your hand.' "

"Yes, but you were born in Pakistan." The agent looked at his passport and said, "You've been to Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan."

"Yes."

"What were you doing there?"

"Research," began Iqbal, who founded the Center for Islam and Science in Canada and had done postdoctoral work at the Montreal Neurological Institute of McGill University. He recalled telling the agent that he had traveled to those countries as part of efforts to help develop scientific institutions in Muslim countries.

The agent took Iqbal to a smaller room and said he had to register. He gave him forms and started asking questions about his background. "Then I realized," Iqbal said, that "this was the famous NSEERS," the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, "and I would have to be fingerprinted and photographed. And I realized if you go to the United States, you are supposed to report every move."

He asked an agent: "Do you think I'm a security threat to your country?"

The reply was: "I'm just doing my job. If I don't do it, I will be fired."

"I said, 'I don't want to go to your country,' " Iqbal recalled. "I took my passport and I just left quickly." Iqbal said he has decided to stay away from the United States "until they remove this condition."

DeNeen L. Brown -The Washington Post

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