The difference between foreign policy and U.S. law has been on full display for about 4,000 immigrants trapped in limbo by an American government that can’t agree with itself.

 

For those who fought against Saddam Hussein while he ruled Iraq, or Fidel Castro’s Communist regime in Cuba, the expectation was that the United States would welcome these individuals with the chance of starting new lives, and that included gaining American citizenship. But that hasn’t turned out to be true.

 

For members of Iraqi National Congress, which, with the support of the U.S. government, sought Hussein’s overthrow, citizenship has been denied by the Department of Homeland Security because federal immigration law considers these people supporters of terrorism.

 

The problem is rooted in the wording of the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, which defines a terrorist group as one that engages in violent activity against a government…even if that government is one the United States opposes. This is the definition applied by the Immigration and Nationality Act.

 

“The law is being applied as a blunt instrument to label people terrorists who didn’t engage in any terrorist activity and who were actually victims,” Anwen Hughes, senior counsel for Human Rights First, told The New York Times. “The information about their pasts is information they volunteered, and in some cases, it is the information upon which the U.S. granted them refugee protection initially.”

 

Francisco Saborit, who wound up in a Cuban prison for protesting Castro’s government by breaking a sugar cane cutting machine, has waited more than five years to receive his green card. He will continue to wait, because the U.S. government considers his political activity “subversive,” making him ineligible for permanent residency.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Friends of U.S., Terrorists in Eyes of Law (by Dan Frosch, New York Times)