It began with works of Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson,
declaring Americans to be (only) of European descent and claiming scientific
evidence of black inferiority.
Contradictions:
"A democratic society should recognize that every individual is
unique, different form every other. Regardless of likenesses or differences,
every man and woman is equal to every other in the rights to "life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness." More than two centuries
have passed since Thomas Jefferson wrote these words, but having them
on paper does not mean that they are guaranteed. They have been contested
and continue to challenge the courts and society to offer new interpretations
that can expand or contract rights regardless of race, religion, or
social background
Unfortunately, the land of opportunity, prosperity, and freedoms spelled
out in the Constitution was not fully understood in colonial America
or is it fully understood today. If every human being was born with
fundamental rights that no government can legally alter or take away,
then every human being is entitled by law to have his or her rights
respected and protected. How is it that women were denied the privilege
of voting? How is it that the courts and the government treated immigrants
and other minority groups differently? Could it be that early Americans
were blind to contradictions of that which many fought or died for during
the American Revolution? Why did many Americans openly reject the principles
of the United States government when non-whites were involved? The contradictions
were left unsolved for decades and "liberty for all" was limited
by skin color or race.
The Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, does not include the
word race or woman. But it was well understood and practiced that there
was a "race exception" to the Constitution, and it endured
in more or less severe form for nearly two hundred years after the Constitution
was ratified. There was little shelter for Indians, immigrants, slaves,
and women offered in the framework of our country. Racism is an integral
part of American culture. Even so, not all Americans were tolerant of
racism. During the American Revolution, some colonists spoke out against
slavery. Up until 1860, many abolitionists, (Frederick Douglas, William
Lloyd Garrison and John Brown) continued to ring the Bell for liberty
for all." .
(Ida Hickerson, http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1994/4/94.04.03.x.html)
It continued through legislative
acts, decisions, and popular works upholding slavery and second-class
African-American citizenship.
An example:
"In 1857, the Dred Scott
Case was decided by the United Stated Supreme Court. This ruling declared
a federal law that prohibited slavery in American territories outside
the South to be unconstitutional. This act of the government reaffirmed
the "race exception" and explicitly added racism to our Constitution.
If the Supreme Court was right, then the Constitution prohibited by
Congress from abolishing slavery where it existed and where it did not
exist. The opinion written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney was racist.
Taney wrote "Blacks are subordinate and inferior beings, who had
been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not,
yet remained subject to their authority." His opinion included
not only slaves, but all Blacks throughout the United States. According
to Taney, the Constitution permanently excluded Blacks from national
citizenship and established them legally as less than fully human, as
"subordinate and inferior beings". According to chief Taney,
"Blacks had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."
If that is what the Constitution meant to the supreme court, then there
is a form of "tyranny" against certain groups within American
Society. "
Slavery was a defect of
America that has never been completely corrected. Even with the additions
of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, and the Fourteenth Amendment in
1868, liberty and equality for many Blacks especially those from the
Southern states (about 90% in those days), did not ring true. Almost
immediately, white control was restored through law as designed to deny
the fundamental rights to Black citizens. These laws were called "Black
Codes".
White supremacy again ruled.
Blacks were not allowed to testify in court unless it was a case involving
another Black. Certain jobs were not available to Blacks. In order to
start a business, a special license was needed and was often denied
to Blacks. This made it necessary for many Blacks to work in jobs with
conditions similar to slavery. In some places, it was illegal to be
unemployed. No work meant arrest and jail.
Some "Black Codes"
denied Blacks the right to meet peacefully, live in certain areas, serve
on juries, hold public office or vote. Harsh penalties for blacks were
imposed, but whites were not likewise punished. (Death for raping a
white woman, whipping and public pillory for violations of any of the
codes).
Again, Congress stepped
in to eliminate these injustices. In 1866, the first Civil Rights Act
was passed that gave all Blacks citizenship; guaranteed equal legal
rights to all citizens; made it illegal for states to pass laws treating
people differently because of race or former slave status; and gave
Federal officials the power to enforce the act. At first, the act was
vetoed by President Andrew Johnson but Congress canceled his veto and
it became law. In order to protect the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the
Federal legislatures quickly added theFourteenth Amendment. The Fifteenth
Amendment added in 1870, reaffirmed the right to vote to all citizens
regardless of race or former employment status.
In the mid 1870’s, violence against Blacks was widespread. Many
were beaten at voting places, and elected officials were terrorized
and or murdered. Those who were in Congress and favored equality for
all citizens began to change their proactive attitude towards racial
justice. Their control of Congress ended with the deal made by Republicans
with the Democrats to remove all Federal troops from the South in exchange
for the votes needed in the House of Representatives to elect Hays as
President. Blacks were left to the mercy of Southern political powers
to grant liberties of citizenship until 1957.
Not only did Congress turn
its back on support of racial equality, so did the Supreme Court. In
a 1876 ruling from an appeal case of three convicted murderers, the
Supreme Court reversed its interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The states had authority to grant or deny the right to assemble. Thus
the blacks that were killed did not suffer abridgment of their First
Amendment right. In choosing to interpret the Fourteenth Amendment in
that way, the court white-supremacists in denying blacks equal rights.
This pushed blacks deeper into economic dependence which also made it
difficult for them to defend their political and legal rights. Emancipation
did not greatly alter the economic or political condition of the blacks.
Paired with the disfranchisement
of the black voter was the institution of racial segregation. Not that
this was new, for it existed in the ante-bellum North and to a lesser
extent in southern cities before the Civil War. Even in Reconstruction,
civil-rights legislation and laws providing for integrated education
often went unenforced. Legalization of segregation came in a series
of state laws and judicial decision in the 1880’s and 1890’s
that eroded the legal protection afforded Blacks by Reconstruction legislation.
In 1896, the Supreme Court declared that railroad segregation did not
violate the equal protection of the laws, so long as facilitates for
Blacks were "separate but equal." This was followed by many
southern laws (Jim Crow laws) legalizing racial separation in all kinds
of public and private institutions and facilities. Jim Crow, which had
before been confined to southern cities, now became the norm of race
relations throughout the South. Simultaneously, the United States was
utilizing racist arguments to justify its conquest of the Philippines.
Hence, it was very unlikely that northerners would object to the new
laws. The period 1890-1910 witnessed not only segregation and discrimination,
but the rise of lynching and failure of publicly-supported Black education
in the South.
(Ida Hickerson, "Mosaic America: Patterns of Racism, "http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1994/4/94.04.03.x.html)
It includes
discrimination against Irish and other white ethnics
Example
–The Know Nothings
The Order of United Americans
would have a tremendous effect on the Know Nothing movement. The OUA
began as a nativist fraternity in New York City in December, 1844
with thirteen original members. Their "code of principles"
had a clear objective, " . . . to release our country from the
thralldom of foreign domination."(p.105, Bennett)
Catholicism and the Pope
were included in this group that the OUA feared were trying to dominate
American society. The OUA was very popular in the United States. In
four years, twenty-one chapters had been established in the state of
New York. Within a decade of its existence the nativist fraternity could
boast that it had chapters in sixteen states and a total membership
of at least fifty thousand.(p.106, Bennett) Even though the OAU published
its meeting times and membership list in the local papers, it was a
secret society whose procedures and rituals were kept private. The OAU
believed the Protestant church and its Anglo-Saxon followers were the
‘true’ Americans. The OAU would eventually become involved
in politics. First, in support of its members who had political ambitions.
Later, the political activism of the OAU would be fostered by the fact
that many conservative Whigs joined during its existence.
In 1850 in New York City
a new nativist fraternity would emerge that would attract many members
of the OAU. This group was founded by Charles B. Allen. The name of
this organization was the Order of the Star Spangled Banner. In order
to join the OSSB the man had to be twenty-one, a Protestant, a believer
in God, and willing to obey without question the dictates of the order.(
p.111, Bennett) Like the OAU, the OSSB feared and hated Catholics and
immigrants who were not Anglo-Saxon. The OSSB also was secretive in
nature. OSSB members were instructed to reply to any one inquiring about
their organization that they ‘know nothing’. Horace Greely
would label them the ‘Know Nothings’ in the New York Tribune
in November , 1853. The widespread use of this nickname according to
Bennett marked the transition of this organization from fraternity to
party.
Example Two --The KKK
Charles C. Alexander, author of Ku Klux Klan in the Southwest, states
that there were three different Klan movements. One first appeared during
the Reconstruction period. It was secretive, political, and violent
in nature. Its main purpose was to nullify the effects of the Radical
Republicans. The second Klan movement was known as the Invisible Empire,
Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. It was ultra patriotic and nativistic in
its outlook. The third Klan movement was composed of a multitude of
anti-Black societies from about 1945-to the present. Because of their
racial stance they are commonly associated with the Klan.
RESULT : White-identification
(Anglo-Saxon) is safest: "The Jazz Singer" : "Rogin further
demonstrates how African-American contributions to music and entertainment,
adapted without proper attribution, served a similar purpose. The new
immigrants, eager for inclusion in their adopted land, were taught to
adopt American racist values as a badge of inclusion. These lessons
could be obvious, as in "Birth of a Nation" or more subtle
as in "The Jazz Singer." As Rogin puts it: "Just as Birth
offers a regeneration through violence, so the grinning, Jazz Singer,
minstrelsy mask kills blacks with kindness." (7 – from What
am I Equal to?" By Alan K. Frishman, http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1994/4/94.04.02)
It includes discrimination against Asians, for example...
- restrictions on Chinese
immigration (1882 Chinese-Exclusion Act);
- ammendment of anti-miscegenation
act to include Asians;
- internment of Japanese
Americans during W.W.II
Sources:
1) Chronology of Asian American
History http://web.mit.edu/21h.153j/www/chrono.html
2) Pioneer Asian Indian Immigration to the Pacific Coast
http://www.lib.ucdavis.edu/punjab/chrono.html
It continues in recent articles on race and intelligence
that renew themes of antebellum scientific racism.
For example:
The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life
(by Richard J. Herrnstein, Charles Murray (Contributor, 1994)
Synopsis (http://www.ftrbooks.net/psych/genetics/bell_curve.htm)
In a book that is certain to ignite an explosive controversy, Herrnstein
and Murray dare to reveal their belief that it is intelligence levels,
not environmental circumstances, poverty, or lack of education that
are at the root of many of our social problems.
Book Reviews: (http://www.scientificexploration.org/jse/bookreviews/11-2/bellcurve.html
)
"I belong to what must be the least exclusive club in the country:
People who have written critical reviews of The Bell Curve: Intelligence
and Class Structure in American Life by Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein.
I counted 20 in The Bell Curve Wars, and 40 in Measured Lies. The number
in The Bell Curve Debate is hard to calculate because, as in many numericaquantities,
it all depends on the definition. As best as I can figure, there are
46 named authors, eight anonymous authors – newspaper and magazine
editorial writers -- and ten named writers who defend The Bell Curve,
plus 17 who wrote on the subject before the book was written. Indeed,
the last-mentioned category goes back to an 1865 publication of Galton
-- the founder and creator of the name "eugenics" -- and includes
as well several 1922 articles of Walter Lippmann on the nurture side
of the debate. Clearly, not much is all that new under the sun.
Nevertheless, every dawn
is unique, so to speak, and Murray and Herrnstein somehow captured the
Zeitgeist of our time without really anything fresh to say on the subject.
Or, so claim the many critics who point out that the arguments put forward
are rehashes of plausibly quaint racialist ideas such as craniometry
and I.Q. equals destiny which have long since been discredited. While
craniometry is unlikely to make a comeback, I.Q.'s congruence with destiny
fits neatly into the current hereditarian calculus of explaining the
American universe in which some are affluent and many more are not.
Most critics of The Bell Curve fasten on its assertions about race and
the I.Q. inferiority of African Americans. In actuality, most of the
book is about class structure, a subject often avoided in the U.S. because
we are in theory a mobile, classless society. Murray and Herrnstein
claim that we have lost the mobility of bygone days because the low-I.Q.
people keep begetting low-I.Q. children who will form an increasing
threat to the peaceful existence of the "cognitive elite,"
the high-I.Q. people. The obvious threat comes in the shape of crime;
the not-so-obvious threat is affirmative action and other social programs
which will put inappropriate persons into positions that should be reserved
for the properly qualified who, it just so happens, usually are white
and male. "Recent laws that contribute to racism and nativism
It continues in recent legistations: Homeland Security
Act/U.S. Patriot Act – allows for the detention of Americans
without due process (no lawyer, no limit on detention) if they are suspected
of potential terrorism. Currently Middle Eastern immigrants are required
to register with the INS and some are being detained without due process
although they are in-the-process of obtaining a green card.
(Excerpt from "Guarding the Gates," by Aristide R. Zolberg,
New School University, http://www.newschool.edu/icmec/guardingthegates.html)
"Launched even as the imperatives of globalization, which are at
the center of America’s external economic policies, prompted the
United States to facilitate the entry of foreign nationals, the attack
provoked an abrupt reversal, manifested in immediate calls for draconian
measures to police the country’s territorial borders in response
to the imperatives of national security. These contradictory stances
arise from the peculiar structure of the contemporary world system,
characterized by steadily more important transnational economic and
cultural processes, but a still largely "Westphalian" political
framework, founded on mutually exclusive, territorially-based, sovereign
states, with a putative monopoly on the use of organized violence. Whereas
globalization, as well as commitment to civil liberties, fosters an
expansion of the international movement of persons, extending across
all social strata and poor as well as affluent countries, national security
calls for the imposition of restrictive controls that impede movement.
Further complicated by the
proliferation of non-state actors with a significance capacity for violence,
this configuration places the United States before a dilemma. As one
experienced analyst has commented, "Building a Fortress America
will not work. It will be incredibly expensive, disrupt commerce, and
infringe civil liberties." However, as the spokesman for an anti-immigrant
organization pointed out early on, "it seems clear that the 19
terrorists of September 11 were all foreign citizens and entered the
United States legally, as tourists, business travelers, or students.
This was also true of the perpetrators of previous terrorist acts .
. . While it is absolutely essential that we not scapegoat immigrants,
especially Muslim immigrants, we also must not overlook the most obvious
fact: the current terrorist threat to the United States comes almost
exclusively from individuals who arrive from abroad."
On the eve of the events,
immigration issues had largely receded from the political arena, as
the settlement elaborated from the mid-1980s onward appeared quite stable.
Overall, immigration is largely driven by persistent economic necessity
in Third World countries that are linked to the United States by way
of family networks, with Mexico and the Philippines as the leading sources.
Following the exhaustion of the refugee flow from Southeast Asia and
the resolution of political crises in Central America, the United States
reduced its annual quota of refugees admitted for resettlement, while
concurrently deterring asylum-seekers by toughening conditions. In the
face of charges that ongoing policy fostered heavy welfare costs, admission
requirements were raised in 1996 and legal immigrants denied federal
transfer payments –a policy that shifted the burden to states and
localities, and was subsequently softened at their behest. Concurrently,
in the face of growing labor demand in the boom years, particularly
from politically weighty sectors such as the information industry, additional
admissions were provided for more skilled immigrants, as well as temporary
worker programs. Overall, following three extraordinarily high years,
attributable to the legalization program of 1986, admissions in the
1990s stabilized to an average of about 825,000 a year. However, the
immigration system also includes a substantial illegal but in effect
tolerated segment, made up of illegal border-crossers and overstayers.
Supplying low-skilled, inexpensive labor to a variety of sectors from
agriculture to retail, this pool doubled in size in the 1990s to reach
8.7 million in 2000 --amounted to about 2.5 percent of the total U.S.
population-- suggesting an addition of about 430,000 a year, increasingly
more male and Mexican. Together, legal and illegal immigration made
for an average intake of 1.3 million a year in the 1990s, an historical
record with regard to both numbers and diversity. As a result, the United
States is once again a "nation of immigrants," with an estimated
31.1 million foreign residents as of March 2000, constituting about
11 percent of the population –an approximate doubling since 1960,
when the proportion reached its lowest level since Tocqueville visited
a country he characterized as "Anglo-American" ....
The first legislative measure explicitly designed to offset the vulnerability
exposed by the attack was the "Uniting and Strengthening America
by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism
Act of 2001," an unwieldy title elaborated to produce the bombastic
acronym, USA PATRIOT Act. Signed by President Bush on October 26, it
was initiated by Attorney General John Ashcroft one week after the attack
in the form of a "Mobilization Against Terrorism Act" (MATA),
which allowed for the deportation without a hearing or presentation
of evidence, of any alien whom the attorney general had "reason
to believe" would "commit, further, or facilitate" acts
of terrorism. While the proposal was being circulated, on September
17 Ashcroft published, without Congressional consultation or approval,
an interim regulation that extended from 24 to 48 hours the amount of
time for charging an alien in custody with an immigration violation,
and deciding whether or not to release the person in question. Two days
later, he circulated a revised version of his proposal, which went further
by mandating detention for any alien certified as a terrorist, even
if the indidividual was granted relief from deportation. The Lawyers’
Committee for Human Rights warned that this would constitute a major
change in immigration law. Although both Democratic and Republican congressional
leaders generally supported the proposals and indicated their eagerness
to quickly enact adequate legislation, Senator Kennedy expressed concern
about the limits placed on judicial review of detention and deportation,
as well as about the loose standard for detention. Some Republicans
also voiced unease over the act’s impact on civil liberties. Democratic
Senator Patrick Leahy then introduced an alternative legislative package
which did not include indefinite detention, to which he objected on
the ground that it evoked the treatment accorded Japanese-Americans
during World War II.
Indefinite detention subsequently
emerged as the central issue in both houses. On October 3, the House
Judiciary Committee unanimously approved (36-0) a compromise "PATRIOT"
bill, which restricted indefinite detention and provided compensation
for victims of 9/11 and their families. The full House vote was scheduled
for October 12. In the intervening period, the Senate passed its own
compromise by a vote of 91-1, without formal consideration by any committee;
the lone dissenter was Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wis.). Known as the
"United and Strengthening America (USA) Act of 2001," the
Senate bill did not impose restrictions on indefinite detention and
provided for more limited judicial review than the House’s. In
addition, it proposed to increase patrolling of the U.S.-Canada border.
The administration immediately began lobbying on behalf of the Senate
version and persuaded Congress to negotiate a compromise between the
two bills before the House vote, so as to avoid a possibly contentious
conference session later on. In the course of informal discussions,
the House version was largely modified to conform with the Senate’s,
except for retaining a six-month review of the detention of certified
terrorists as well as the relief clause. This was approved on October
12 by a vote of 337-39. Speaking on behalf of a broad coalition of humanitarian,
religious, human rights and civil liberties organizations, the American
Civil Liberties Union urged Congress to reject the measure altogether,
charging that it was "based upon a false dichotomy: that safety
must come at the expense of civil liberties." Nevertheless, the
two versions were quickly reconciled and overwhemingly approved, by
357-66 in the House and 98-1 in the Senate.
Albeit beginning with an
"expression of the sense of Congress" condemning discrimination
against Arab and Muslim Americans, the new act expands the definition
of terrorism, which was already a ground for denying admission and for
deportation, to include use of any "weapon or dangerous device"
with the intent to endanger persons or cause damage to property. It
gives law-enforcement agencies broader powers to pursue terrorists through
search warrants and eavesdropping and provides for the possibility of
holding aliens without charges for up to six months, with the possibility
of renewal, subject to a review that put the burden of proof on the
government to demonstrate that the alien’s release will threaten
national security, or the safety of the community, or any person. Judicial
review is limited to habeas corpus review. With regard to border control,
"USA Patriot" authorizes a tripling of the number of Border
Patrol personnel, customs personnel, and immigration inspectors along
the northern border, as well as improvement in monitoring technology.
It also grants INS and State Department personnel access to FBI files
for the purpose of checking the criminal history of visa applicants.
Most important, it sets a two-year deadline for full implementation
of the "Integrated Entry and Exit Data System" called for
in 1996.
While the process of elaborating
new instruments of control got under way, immediate efforts to achieve
greater security focused more narrowly on nationals of Arab and Muslim
countries. On November 9, the State Department announced it would subject
male visa applicants aged 16 to 45 from 26 nations in the Middle East,
South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Africa, to special scrutiny. Reflecting
the administration’s determination to avoid closing the door more
generally, this decision was criticized by advocates of tighter immigration
on the holier-than-thou grounds that "There should be a consensus
in the United States that we don’t want an ethnic- or religious-based
immigration system." Concurrently, the State Department accelerated
its pending review of six of the 29 countries whose citizens are exempt
from visas, notably Argentina, Belgium, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia, and
Uruguay, on the grounds that these countries reportedly have problems
ranging from economic crises to passport fraud and theft…..
Beyond this, the events also triggered a spate of proposals to make
the United States more secure against the enemy within by subjecting
foreign residents to systematic verification. This entails no mean undertaking,
given a target population that amounts to 11 percent of the total, not
including millions of temporary visitors. Given the apparent source
of the aggression, for many Americans, the distinction that matters
most is between putatively safe immigrants and dangerous ones, identified
as "Arabs" or "Muslims," or "Middle Easterns"
more diffusely –including South Asians. The size of these groups
has itself become an object of controversy. It should be noted at the
outset that "Arabs" and "Muslims" overlap only in
part: until recently, the U.S. population of Arab origin was overwhelmingly
Christian, as illustrated by former White House Chief of Staff John
Sununu and current Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, as well as the
scholar and public intellectual Edward Said. In keeping with the common
practice of inflating numbers for purposes of ethnic representation,
the Arab-American Institute claims that persons of Arabic ancestry total
over three million; but ancestry responses on a recent census survey
indicate just over one million, of whom the largest groups are Lebanese,
Egyptian, and Syrian, most of whom live in the Detroit, New York, and
Los Angeles metropolitan areas. Since Islam is a religion and not a
nationality or an ethnicity, "Muslim" does not figure among
the origin categories recorded by the census, any more than does "Jew."
An April 2001 report issued by the Council on American-Islamic Relations
in Washington, D.C., states that 2 million are associated with a mosque,
and estimates on that basis a total Muslim population of 6-7 million,
of whom 33 percent are South Asian, 30 percent African-American, and
25 percent Arab. However, the American Jewish Committee expressed concern
that this would mean Muslims outnumber Jews, and that "it would
buttress calls for a redefinition of America’s heritage as ‘Judeo-Christian-Muslim,
a stated goal of some Muslim leaders." It then commissioned a report
of its own, which criticized the Mosque Report for unsound methodology
and concluded that there are at most 2.8 million Muslims in the United
States.
Interpretations of the current
conflict as a confrontation between a purified Islam and a decadent
Judeo-Christianity that corrupts Muslims creates an uncomfortable dilemma
for some American Muslims, as the special relationship between the United
States and Israel has long done for most Arab-Americans. In the present
climate, opinions that deviate from the accepted range might be construed
as tacit or even active support for terrorist undertakings, as indicated
by news that Sheik Muhammad Gemeaha, imam of the Islamic Cultural Center
of New York’s main mosque, who left for his Egyptian home two weeks
after the attack, reportedly because his family was threatened, characterized
the attacks as a Zionist plot. In the event, despite repeated injunctions
by President Bush and other elected officials to avoid blaming groups
wholesale, security measures taken by U.S. agents self-evidently entailed
ethnic profiling. Under pressure from the press and civil liberties
groups, Justice Department officials revealed in early November that
they had detained 1,147 people in connection with the attacks, of whom
over half had been released by the beginning of November; some were
identified on the basis of circumstantial links with the attack, but
many "were picked up based on tips or were people of MiddleEastern
or South Asian descent who had been stopped for traffic violations of
for acting suspiciously". The total included 235 people detained
for immigration violations, mostly Arab or Muslim men, of whom 185 were
still in custody. One tragic case involved a 55-year old Pakistani overstayer,
dismissed by the FBI as of no interest, who died of coronary disease
while in jail awaiting deportation.
On November 13, the Justice
Department announced it would further pick up and question some 5,000
Middle Eastern men 18 to 33 who entered the country legally on
student, visitor, or business visas since January 1, 2000. Although
officials said the interviews were intended to be voluntary and the
people sought are not considered suspects, the move was sharply criticized
by civil liberties organizations as a "dragnet approach that is
likely to magnify concerns of racial and ethnic profiling." In
the face of mixed reactions by local police forces and halting implementation,
the December 4 deadline was extended until the 10th; but subsequent
reports indicated further lagging. Although throughout the proceedings,
the Justice Department resisted providing public information on its
actions and their results, there were some indications that established
procedural guarantees began to enter into play. For example, on December
19, a Philadelphia federal appeals court ruled that the government’s
mandatory detention policy was unconstitutional and that each detainee
was entitled to an individualized bond hearing, and civil rights organizations
increasingly entered into the fray as well. Although the round-up resulted
in the incarceration of many Middle Easterners for violations of immigration
regulations, mostly by way of overstaying, which was likely to lead
to their deportation, there were no indications that it produced any
suspects related to the 9/11 events. In January, the Justice Department
announced a new effort to find and deport people who have ignored deportation
orders, to begin with the tracking down of several thousand men from
Muslim and Middle Eastern countries.
Last but not least, the attacks have also triggered a spate of proposals
to subject foreigners to some sort of mandatory identity documentation.
Somewhat paradoxically, in the American situation, the absence of such
documents for the general population, which is repeatedly hailed as
an indication of the regime’s superiority over many of its European
counterparts in the sphere of individual liberty, renders the imposition
of such a requirement on aliens especially indvidious. Moreover, how
is an agent setting out to verify identity and status to know whether
the person in question is a U.S. citizen or a foreign national? Since
"aliens" as a whole are not phenotypically distinct from "Americans,"
we can anticipate the grossest sort of ethnic profiling, which would
inevitably lead to numerous "mistakes," provoking outraged
reactions on the part of citizens, and hence negative political feedback.
The alternative would be to institute a universal state-issued identity
document requirement. While this is accepted as routine in a number
of European democracies, and even viewed as a positive good from a civil
liberties perspective because it provides some degree of protection
against arbitrary police behavior, within the American context it would
be perceived as profoundly altering the established balance between
freedom and control. Issuance of such a document by the federal government
would be absolutely unacceptable to conservatives, and viewed with considerable
suspicion by the mainstream. In practice, the nearest thing to such
a document is the state-issued driver’s licence, which might be
expanded to non-drivers; however, this is based on proof of legal residence,
often loosely established, rather than on citizenship, and would require
the establishment of country-wide uniform standards. Yet despite the
normative and political difficulties involved, it is likely that some
form of reliable biometrically-based identification will emerge in practice,
probably on a voluntary basis, to speed up processing through the country’s
proliferating public and private security checkpoints.