Development & Aid, Education, Headlines, North America

POLITICS-US: Fortress Mentality Undermines Security, Experts Say

Katrin Dauenhauer

WASHINGTON, Jul 15 2003 (IPS) - Post-Sep. 11 immigration rules that make it harder for young foreigners to study in the United States are doing more harm to national security than good, a panel of experts said Monday, because they have only deepened the divide between Western culture and the Muslim and Arab communities.

"Foreign students enrich our schools and campuses with diversity," said Lee H. Hamilton, director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. "With the implementation of its restrictive rules, the U.S. is paying the price."

Doris Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) and a former Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) commissioner, argued that with its tougher immigration measures, "the government has fundamentally failed to do anything significant that makes us safer from terrorism."

Both Meissner and Hamilton spoke at a panel discussion titled "In America’s Interest: Welcoming International Students", sponsored by NAFSA, the Association of International Educators.

Educational exchange programmes are of critical importance to U.S. foreign policy objectives because they enhance mutual understanding and facilitate reconciliation and dialogue, the panel said.

Openness to foreign students "is as much of a necessity for our safety as is greater scrutiny to identify those few who harbor harmful intentions. Such openness has long been a bulwark of U.S. foreign policy and is a proven means to fight against the uninformed stereotypes, fear, and ignorance that are at the heart of the crisis we face today", said a statement by William J. Perry, a former U.S. defence secretary and honorary chair of the NAFSA Strategic Task Force on International Student Access.

After the Sep. 11 terrorist attacks, the United States responded by rounding up and arresting thousands of "terrorist suspects" – in a significant number of cases violating due process and other civil rights granted by the U..S. Constitution, activists say.

New rules were introduced that had the inadvertent effect of making it more difficult or even impossible for foreigners to study in the United States. For example, visa applications by Arab and Muslim men, and anyone whose purpose in visiting this country relates to science, must now be reviewed in Washington. Applicants can experience delays that stretch into months – a major obstacle for students whose classes start on a set date.

In addition, students frequently must get new visas to re-enter the country if they leave temporarily – for example, to go home during school breaks or to attend international conferences.

Not surprisingly, as a result of those tightened regulations, the United States has experienced a sharp drop-off of male Muslim students, NAFSA said on Monday, although the exact number is unclear.

Meissner noted that there has not been a single terrorism-related arrest under the new visa measures, which she said have only eroded civil liberties and a sense of national unity.

"In the name of buttressing national security, these regulations are refueling the voices of terrorism," she said.

Responding to the problem of terrorism by trying to turn the United States into a "Fortress America" also misunderstands the nature of globalisation, said Judith Kipper, a senior fellow at the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

In a world that is increasingly interdependent, it is extremely important to understand other cultures, she said. Exchange students offer U.S. citizens a unique possibility to have this experience.

Foreign students also make significant economic contributions. Last year, foreign students and their dependents spent 12 billion dollars in the U.S. economy.

"We Americans are not afraid because we are threatened, but because we do not understand, we are ignorant, we do not live in the world," Kipper said. "We have to understand that other cultures are not better or worse but simply different."

Earlier this year, NAFSA released a report calling on the government to maintain its international student exchange programmes and affirm that openness to international students serves long-standing U.S. foreign policy, educational, and economic interests..

Since Sep. 11, national security has been the U.S. government’s top priority, but too often security measures are being implemented at the expense of civil liberties, critics say.

In addition to NAFSA’s report, investigations by the Justice Department and the Migration Policy Institute on the post-9/11 roundups of foreigners found serious shortcomings in the way foreigners and U.S. Muslims have been treated.

MPI’s report found that the government’s actions have frightened and alienated the Arab and Muslim communities in the United States, undermining counter-terrorism goals. Special registration programs became a tool to sweep up even those with minor immigration violations. The effect has been to decrease compliance by raising fears that participation and cooperation could result in deportation.

Similiarly, a report by the Justice Department’s Inspector General criticised the treatment of the mostly Muslim, South Asian or Arab-looking immigrants who were detained in the wake of Sep. 11.

"Our civil liberties are eroded," said Kipper. "This is not a soft issue" û a reference to the Harvard University scholar Joseph Nye’s use of the term "soft power" to characterise the benefits of student exchange programmes, for example.

"The new visa requirements along with new immigration measures taken by the U.S. government will have a substantial ‘echo’ effect, as they convey a message of hypocrisy," said Meissner. "This adds to resentment of the United States and contributes to hostility."

A phenomenal decline in how the rest of the world sees the United States has already been documented by several surveys. One of the latest, conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project in early June, found "soaring anti-Americanism" in the Muslim world.

In light of this, NAFSA’s recommendations seem to be of critical importance: "We must continue to nurture our greatest foreign policy asset: the friendship of those who know our country because we have welcomed them as students."