The INS’ National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) Special Registration program directly affects thousands of international students nationwide, including myself, a British Pakistani. If I go under 13 units, even if I have been advised by the University to do so, or change my major without promptly informing the ‘SISS’ (Services for International Students and Scholars), I have been told that I WILL be asked to leave the country. Indeed, this has been the case in the state of Colorado for several students. Both the NSEERS and SEVIS programs were formulated belatedly in the wake of the 911 attacks on New York and Washington DC.

I remember what I felt on 911 vividly: first of all the shared sorrow of my fellow human beings, in particular, my floormate who had lost her cousin. It was an emotive day when people’s gazes were held low and the professors ended lectures early as the feeling of the day choked them up. There were wet eyes and many faces full of sympathy for those who were crying.

The second strong feeling of the day was one of fear. Who had done this? Was it the Palestinians? Was it Middle Easterners? Was it people who called themselves Muslims? I was fearful of the ramifications for immigrants, Middle Eastern and Muslim minorities, such as myself, who would suffer in the ensuing public fear and government policy. I received a multitude of phone calls and emails from friends and family in England and in the Bay Area advising me to keep my head low, stay away from public places and to avoid any Muslim associations. The former to avoid being the target of physical violence and the latter to avoid being monitored by the FBI, especially since I was already a target, being a British Pakistani international student.

I didn’t quite stick to the advice of my family: I gave a speech to 3000 Cal students on the night of 911, appealing to them to remain a strongly accepting, integrated and tolerant community through this adversity.

It probably wasn’t my candid appeal that did the trick, but my fellow students and the general atmosphere in Berkeley, with the exception of two racist remarks made to me in association with the Taliban or terrorism, quickly returned to normal Berkeley levels of tolerance and acceptance. However, the government, did not remain so welcoming to international students like myself. I heard and read more and more about what was monitored: student organizations, our university email and it was even rumored that some students were spies. The Patriot Act soon allowed the legal detentions of immigrants without posted bail and without issued warrants. The government had passed a bill that allowed and instigated the formation of an agency which could legally track anyone’s internet history. I enjoyed life as a student in Berkeley, but I did not enjoy an entitlement to basic civil liberties and privacy. I felt like a monitored guest.

Reinforcing this was the recent INS Special Registration program. The calling in of male immigrants over the age of 16 without green cards, asylum, refugee or diplomacy status but with ‘nationality’ (a deliberately ambiguous term with no legal definition) from 26 predominantly Muslim nations (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Eritrea, Lebanon, Morocco, North Korea, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan and Kuwait) to register gave solid groundings to my suspicions: I WAS a target for monitoring. Since I had been sending the occasional political email and since I had been reading the Guardian.co.uk (a respected mainstream UK newspaper that dares posit important critical questions of the US government), I already felt very insecure.

But when one third of Iranian registries were being detained in LA, I was broken down into all but a basket of nerves. After reading an interview on the treatment of the detainees, the program literally consumed my thinking every minute of the day. I would wake up in the middle of the night in cold sweats as I feared that I may become one of the men shipped from San Francisco to San Jose to Arizona, to Colorado, to LA, to San Diego, given only 3 hours of sleep on cold concrete floors, using tissue paper for warmth, racially abused, malnourished, accompanied by an overflowing cell toilet, and deprived of the right to shower, and the right to know how long I would be detained for.

The final measure that drove me to the path I would take: news of the Student Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) program, which demanded the University hand the FBI all the student’s addresses, email addresses, emergency contacts, grades and financial assistance information, within the implementation deadline of January 31st 2003. Not only is the FBI able to closely monitor international students, but the INS is able to and IS detaining and deporting students for going under units (even when advised to by their university, as in Colorado) or for changing their major and colleges without informing their university’s International Student Services. Resigned to the fact that I WAS a target for monitoring, I took heed of Tahar Djoaout, the Algerian poet:

“If you speak, you die
If you stay silent, you die
So speak and die.”

I had had enough of being induced into submission by my fear of what might happen, or what was likely happening. I took to educating my fellow students of the human and civil rights violations, both for the sake of being offended at such occurrences and as a self-defense mechanism, should I be detained in a similar fashion. My activism included giving interviews, writing a couple of articles and hosting a rally (with the endorsement of 29 professional and campus groups) of speakers to talk out on the issue.

Fortunately for me, my first registration was uneventful. It took out a day of school and I had to wait at the office for 5 hours, but those were two of my major complaints. The furor the Iranian community raised, with the subsequent protests and independent monitoring done outside INS offices pressured INS officers from gratuitously detaining registries. A Pakistani diplomat visiting the San Francisco INS office told me that he was their for my support and to make sure that the officers ‘behaved themselves’. The scariest moment was when the INS officer explained that if I failed to return to the office within a year, they WOULD come for me. I asked the officer to clarify what she meant by ‘coming for me’, and she replied that it would not be a letter requesting that I return to the office.

People are becoming aware of the ineffectiveness of the registration program, people are becoming aware of the human and civil rights that are being violated as a result of the program and people do recognize the racist nature of the program. The pressure of lobby groups is being felt by the government, as the Senate debates whether to cut funding for the unpopular and ineffective program. My concern is whether I am going to have trouble with the INS once people’s interests in the program die down.

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