Originally posted by freakyfreaky
View Post
-------------------------------------------------------
Read it and weep.
Archive for Wednesday, December 18, 2002
No Straight Answer From the Feds on Armenian Furor
By Steve Lopez
December 18, 2002 in print edition B-1
Just when it looked like the federal government might have to put a barbed wire fence around the city of Glendale for reasons of national security, good news arrived Monday from the crime busters at the U.S. Justice Department.
Armenian nationals do not – repeat, DO NOT – have to report to the Immigration and Naturalization Service for fingerprinting and registration.
It was all a mistake, and Armenians can now return to their normal activities.
Or maybe it wasn’t a mistake.
I can’t tell, and the really frightening thing is that the Justice Department can’t seem to tell either. After rescinding the order calling for Armenians to fall in line and be accounted for, a Justice Department spokesman was asked by The Times about the goof, and here’s what we got out of him:
“I can’t say it was a mistake.”
Well then what was it? And if they couldn’t get this right, and couldn’t at least come up with a credible lie, why should we assume the feds are capable of getting anything else right when it comes to homeland security?
This all began late last week when Armenia, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were added to a list of 18 mostly Muslim nations whose nationals are required to register if they’re male, 16 or older, and here as students or visitors.
This requirement sent the nation’s 1.5 million Armenian Americans into a frenzy, and California, home to half of them, led the outrage campaign.
Californians sent more than half the 10,000 letters of protests filed with the White House over the weekend.
“Not only is Armenia a staunch supporter of the United States, but Armenian people have had a long history of being integrated into the fabric of this great nation,” said Ardy Kassakhian of the Armenian National Committee of America’s Western regional office in Glendale, which has roughly 70,000 Armenians.
“Armenia is also a Christian nation surrounded by Muslim neighbors, and hostile ones at that,” he said. “Does anyone even read history or the newspaper or anything?”
That could be it. This might be a simple case of someone in the Bush administration having flunked geography, and thinking Armenia was a suburb of Tehran.
If someone had made a movie called “My Big Fat Armenian Wedding,” this probably wouldn’t have happened.
Other possible explanations? This was a wink and a nod to Turkey, a strategic ally that has a long history of conflict with Armenia.
Or some mid-level weasel decided it would look bad to have only one other non-Muslim nation – besides North Korea – on the list.
“It’s not geography or history or anything like that,” insisted Harut Sassounian, publisher of the California Courier, a weekly newspaper based in Glendale and serving a national Armenian audience.
“I happen to know through sources in Washington that it was initiated by someone in homeland security,” said Sassounian, who insists there was an overreaction to a report that Armenia’s borders are not “watertight.”
Whose are?
Adding Armenia to the list was all the more absurd, Sassounian said, when you consider that some of its border countries aren’t on the list even though they’ve been suspected of having terrorists in their midst.
“The U.S. government has troops in Georgia right now to hunt down Al Qaeda members, and Georgia is not on the list,” Sassounian said. “It’s all games, politics and self-serving positions.”
If it weren’t, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan would have been the first countries on the list, not the last.
Saudi Arabia harbored or produced many of the Sept. 11 terrorists, and Pakistan is home to schools that are grooming the next generation of anti-American terrorists.
Look, we wouldn’t even need the fingerprinting and registration if the feds hadn’t been asleep at the wheel for decades, and actually kept track of foreigners who were here temporarily.
Now the Bush administration is playing catch-up, still rudderless, but trying to look like it’s doing something useful by rounding up anybody who doesn’t go to the same church as John Ashcroft or Tom Ridge.
Does anybody think there’s a terrorist dumb enough to go down to the local INS office and introduce himself?
In the new world, I don’t know too many people who would object to the government finally reforming immigration controls.
But is it too much to ask for some consistency and logic, or for someone to articulate a coherent policy that doesn’t remind us of internment camps?
Why not put Spain and Germany on the list because of the Al Qaeda operatives in those countries?
Why not all of Indonesia, which has the world’s largest population of Muslims?
Is it religion, geography or trade status that gets you on the list, or is someone in the White House throwing darts at a map?
And can we really trust Canada?
*
Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at [email protected].
--------------------------------------------
Don't recall Turkey being put on that list.
If a white christian nation categorizes other christians, of which you are a member, as white, and then group you with muslims after declaring a war on islamo-muslim fascists, then how white are you?
How many Armenians are in the U.S.? In the world? Talk about a white minority.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjVZaZ4o6_4
Read it and weep.
Archive for Wednesday, December 18, 2002
No Straight Answer From the Feds on Armenian Furor
By Steve Lopez
December 18, 2002 in print edition B-1
Just when it looked like the federal government might have to put a barbed wire fence around the city of Glendale for reasons of national security, good news arrived Monday from the crime busters at the U.S. Justice Department.
Armenian nationals do not – repeat, DO NOT – have to report to the Immigration and Naturalization Service for fingerprinting and registration.
It was all a mistake, and Armenians can now return to their normal activities.
Or maybe it wasn’t a mistake.
I can’t tell, and the really frightening thing is that the Justice Department can’t seem to tell either. After rescinding the order calling for Armenians to fall in line and be accounted for, a Justice Department spokesman was asked by The Times about the goof, and here’s what we got out of him:
“I can’t say it was a mistake.”
Well then what was it? And if they couldn’t get this right, and couldn’t at least come up with a credible lie, why should we assume the feds are capable of getting anything else right when it comes to homeland security?
This all began late last week when Armenia, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were added to a list of 18 mostly Muslim nations whose nationals are required to register if they’re male, 16 or older, and here as students or visitors.
This requirement sent the nation’s 1.5 million Armenian Americans into a frenzy, and California, home to half of them, led the outrage campaign.
Californians sent more than half the 10,000 letters of protests filed with the White House over the weekend.
“Not only is Armenia a staunch supporter of the United States, but Armenian people have had a long history of being integrated into the fabric of this great nation,” said Ardy Kassakhian of the Armenian National Committee of America’s Western regional office in Glendale, which has roughly 70,000 Armenians.
“Armenia is also a Christian nation surrounded by Muslim neighbors, and hostile ones at that,” he said. “Does anyone even read history or the newspaper or anything?”
That could be it. This might be a simple case of someone in the Bush administration having flunked geography, and thinking Armenia was a suburb of Tehran.
If someone had made a movie called “My Big Fat Armenian Wedding,” this probably wouldn’t have happened.
Other possible explanations? This was a wink and a nod to Turkey, a strategic ally that has a long history of conflict with Armenia.
Or some mid-level weasel decided it would look bad to have only one other non-Muslim nation – besides North Korea – on the list.
“It’s not geography or history or anything like that,” insisted Harut Sassounian, publisher of the California Courier, a weekly newspaper based in Glendale and serving a national Armenian audience.
“I happen to know through sources in Washington that it was initiated by someone in homeland security,” said Sassounian, who insists there was an overreaction to a report that Armenia’s borders are not “watertight.”
Whose are?
Adding Armenia to the list was all the more absurd, Sassounian said, when you consider that some of its border countries aren’t on the list even though they’ve been suspected of having terrorists in their midst.
“The U.S. government has troops in Georgia right now to hunt down Al Qaeda members, and Georgia is not on the list,” Sassounian said. “It’s all games, politics and self-serving positions.”
If it weren’t, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan would have been the first countries on the list, not the last.
Saudi Arabia harbored or produced many of the Sept. 11 terrorists, and Pakistan is home to schools that are grooming the next generation of anti-American terrorists.
Look, we wouldn’t even need the fingerprinting and registration if the feds hadn’t been asleep at the wheel for decades, and actually kept track of foreigners who were here temporarily.
Now the Bush administration is playing catch-up, still rudderless, but trying to look like it’s doing something useful by rounding up anybody who doesn’t go to the same church as John Ashcroft or Tom Ridge.
Does anybody think there’s a terrorist dumb enough to go down to the local INS office and introduce himself?
In the new world, I don’t know too many people who would object to the government finally reforming immigration controls.
But is it too much to ask for some consistency and logic, or for someone to articulate a coherent policy that doesn’t remind us of internment camps?
Why not put Spain and Germany on the list because of the Al Qaeda operatives in those countries?
Why not all of Indonesia, which has the world’s largest population of Muslims?
Is it religion, geography or trade status that gets you on the list, or is someone in the White House throwing darts at a map?
And can we really trust Canada?
*
Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at [email protected].
--------------------------------------------
Don't recall Turkey being put on that list.
If a white christian nation categorizes other christians, of which you are a member, as white, and then group you with muslims after declaring a war on islamo-muslim fascists, then how white are you?
How many Armenians are in the U.S.? In the world? Talk about a white minority.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjVZaZ4o6_4
UC Students including Armenians, seek universities' proper identification of their ethnicity. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la...,1054147.story
Students push UC to expand terms of ethnic identification
Email Picture
Stefano Paltera, For The Times
Nicole Salame says she does not agree with the UC policy that Arabs are considered white. “It did not make sense to me,” said Salame, who ended up checking “Other” on her application to the university.
Middle Easterners want alternatives to 'white' and 'other.'
By Raja Abdulrahim
March 31, 2009
Nicole Salame, 19, was filling out an application to UCLA last year when she got to the question about race and ethnicity. She thought a mistake had been made.
"I read it five times and was like, where is Middle Eastern?" the freshman recently recalled. "Is it on the other page, did it get cut off? I thought they forgot."
UC San Diego admissions gaffe dashes students' hopes -- again
Her Lebanese-born mother told her Arabs are considered white, but Salame didn't believe her. Her high school counselor told her the same thing.
"It did not make sense to me, it's so far-fetched," said Salame, who ended up checking "Other."
For years the federal government has classified Arab Americans and Middle Easterners as white. But confusion and disagreement have led some students to check "Asian" or "African," depending on what part of the Middle East they came from. Some, like Salame, simply marked "Other."
Now several UCLA student groups -- including Arabs, Iranians, Afghanis and Armenians -- have launched a campaign to add a Middle Eastern category, with various subgroups, to the University of California admissions application. They hope to emulate the Asian Pacific Coalition's "Count Me In" campaign, which a few years ago successfully lobbied for the inclusion of 23 ethnic categories on the UC application, including Hmong, Pakistani, Native Hawaiian and Samoan.
The UCLA students said having their own ethnic designation goes beyond self-identity and has real implications for the larger Arab and Middle Eastern communities.
The "white" label can hurt them with universities and companies that use the information to promote diversity, they say, and can result in the gathering of little or no statistical data on important issues, such as health trends in the community. Voter-approved Proposition 209 bars California's public colleges from considering race in admissions.
The Arab American Institute estimates that including Middle Easterners in the white category on the census has led to a population undercount of more than a million, said Helen Samhan, who works at the institute. There are more than 3 million Arabs in the United States, the institute says.
There is no count of Middle Easterners at UCLA. Student groups estimate that there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Persians and Arabs among the more than 40,000 students on campus.
"It's not just about wanting a category on a form," said Sarah Gualtieri, a USC professor of American studies and ethnicity. "I think you see particularly among a younger population a desire to really claim . . . both sides of the hyphen of Arab and American."
Gualtieri is the author of a forthcoming book, "Between Arab and White: Race and Ethnicity in the Early Syrian American Diaspora," that explores how Syrian immigrants, who were considered Asian, waged a legal battle in the early 1900s to be classified as white and thus eligible for citizenship. At the time some were barred by the courts under the Asian Exclusion Act.
That classification was cemented in the late 1970s when the Office of Management and Budget, a federal agency, listed all Middle Easterners as white.
But in the last few decades there has been a push to establish a separate category as the general population has grown more diverse and because of the possible benefits it could bring.
"Back then, to get rights you needed to be white," said Yasi Chehroudi, president of the Iranian Student Group, which is helping spearhead the University of California campaign. "Now it helps to be yourself."
UC officials are aware of the UCLA students' campaign and are exploring the possibility of changing the ethnic categories on the university's application form, said Nina Robinson, director of policy for the Department of Student Affairs. A decision could come in the next six months.
But any change in ethnicity categories could affect data trends, Robinson said. For example, if those who in the past would have checked white were to start checking another category, it would appear as a sudden drop in white applicants.
"It's reasonable that Middle Eastern people don't like to be lumped in with white, so I think there's a lot of sympathy for the issue," Robinson said. "But there are also a lot of issues" to consider.
In a 1997 report on the census, the Office of Management and Budget pointed out that while Arab Americans suffer from stereotyping, they tend to be more educated and affluent than the average American. The report questioned whether they should be placed in a minority category, which could increase their chances for benefits aimed at the socially and economically disadvantaged. Some in the Middle Eastern community agree.
But UCLA junior Shawn Gabrill said he has more in common with other children of immigrants than with those whose parents were born in this country.
"I feel like when I put down 'white' on an application, they assume my parents finished high school, went to college and that English was my first language," the 20-year-old English major said. "And none of these things describe me."
Gabrill, the son of Jordanian and Egyptian parents, said he had difficulties with the college application but, because he was seen as white, he wasn't identified as someone who needed extra help from high school counselors.
"So it's kind of like we're in between. We're not white, but we're not as disadvantaged as the other groups so we don't get any of that aid," he said. "So we're kind of invisible in that way."
[email protected]
Leave a comment: