After 9/11: Processed by the INS

I spent 17 years in America, exciting, frustrating years. The intensity of the intellectual life of the northeast of the country suited me. The energy and creativity of my multicultural, multilingual colleagues and students buoyed all of us who took the role of Higher Education in social change seriously. My Australian accent was always good for a laugh but did not hamper our robust discussions about U.S. democracy, human rights and media. I travelled in and out of the U.S. on my Green Card and was never tempted to take out U.S. citizenship. I was an Australian who was living and working in America.

On September 11, 2001, everything changed. I was in Washington DC when the twin towers came down. We all know that image. Less iconic is the shattered slab where American Airlines 77 smashed into the Pentagon. My office at George Washington University was six blocks from the White House. I reasoned the closer we were to that building, the safer we were. It might be a target but it would be protected. So together with my students, faculty, staff and maintenance workers, we gathered in the basement of a 19^th century row house and watched a flickering television as the story unfolded. We did not emerge till dusk but that is another story.

Today, my story is about the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service now part of the Department of Homeland Security), an agency which, in the period immediately following 9/11, routinely terrorised non-citizens as a belligerent nationalism flourished. It was like a switch had been thrown. Open minds closed: suspicion of others, a license to hate wrapped in yellow ribbons of peace, a hot line to inform on unusual behaviors, flags draped over bridges, repressive legislation. It was no longer OK to be openly critical of U.S. foreign policy. Absolutes reigned: the axis of evil tipped us non-citizens into an undifferentiated block to be feared, corralled and processed.

2002: I landed in San Francisco after a long international flight. I handed up my Green Card and waited for the questions that usually followed, but this day the immigration official was not looking at me. He was flipping through my passport, looking at where I’d been, taking his time, and looking at his computer screen.

How long have you been away?

Three weeks. 

How long have you lived in this country?

Fourteen years.

And you’re not a citizen?

No, but I am very pleased to be home.

I learned to say this. Each trip I took after 9/11 entailed some edgy-to-hostile questions by U.S. immigration officers, an under-current. This immigration officer cared little about how happy I was to be back home, which I truly was. He stamped my passport and told me to fill in an I-90.

Just go to the INS website and download it.

Why?

I was shocked and dismayed. I’d seen the reports of the INS detainees in Los Angeles.

You have to renew the Green Card.

But why? It’s not out of date. It has no expiry date.

They all have to be renewed after ten years.

But that only applies to those issued after 1993. Mine pre-dates that.

Well that has changed.

When? Was this a change in law? I didn’t see it.

A couple of months ago. It was advertised.

He wrote in my passport that I needed the 1-90 and signaled to the next person to approach. I said my thanks. He had let me into the country. I was learning compliance.

Finding the form was not difficult. The INS website is easy to navigate but I could find no change in law, policy, or a recent case that might indicate why I needed to renew my card. The 1-90 form required a photograph (color, three-quarter profile with right ear exposed), a cheque, copy of my card and ID. What I couldn’t figure out was why I was filling it out. My choices included ‘expiring or expired card’, ‘lost card’, ‘mutilated card’, ‘old edition of card’, ‘name change’. None applied. I called Customer Service.

This is Pat. How may I help you?”

I’m not sure what to tick as my reason for filling in this 1-90. My card has not expired.

Put n/a.

The reason I am filling in this form is ‘non-applicable’?

Have I been helpful?

Yes Pat, you have, but can you tell me when the law changed?

A year or so ago.

But I have been in and out of America a number of times in the last year and no one has ever challenged me. Did I hit the only vigilant immigration officer this time?

I can’t say. Have I answered your questions?

One more. Do I take this to the local Application Support Center?

No. Because this is a renewal you’ll have to go to the local office for your state. Have I answered your questions?

Thank you Pat. You’ve been most helpful.

I arrived early at the INS because knew I needed to be there way before the 7.30am opening time to be assured of being processed. Already in line were a number of anxious men who were required to register. Some had lawyers. Some had their families. A freezing wind whipped up the snow. There was no shelter. Through the steamed up windows, we saw agency workers sipping coffee. Although the doors opened on time, many of us did not get into the building for another hour. Inside space was rationed: outside we were herded on the exposed pavement.

I stood in line and waited to be allocated a number. Another hours passed. The man ahead of me was distressed: a big, strapping, capable-looking guy but he was choking on his tears.

I don’t have the receipt.

Well where is the form.

You lost it.

Not me. You’ll have to come back with the receipt or the form.

Then it was my turn and I handed up my Green Card.

You don’t have to renew this. It hasn’t expired.

Yes, I know that, but look at what is written in my passport.

Hum, that is a problem.

A supervisor was summonsed, read my documentation and then swiftly snapped off the edge of my precious Green Card and, on the form I had signed under penalty of perjury, scratched out my ‘n/a’ and put a tick beside ‘mutilated card’.

Take a number and wait over there.

A multilingual video about the friendly Customer Service phone line and how it could save us all a trip to this office played continuously. Another two hours.

My turn?

You’ve come to the wrong office.

No, I called your Customer Service line, the one on the video I’ve been watching and Pat said bring it here.

The agent picked up his corrector fluid and whited out the newly penned tick beside ‘mutilated’ and ticked ‘old edition’. I was not asked to initial any of these changes. He did not respond to my questions about when the law had changed. I handed over my photos, cheque, passport, Green Card, was finger printed and signed within the given space.

Do you have any identification?

I wanted to shout, ‘You have it all’, but I offered my driver’s license. He stamped my passport, wrote around the stamp, and gave me a small yellow receipt (the sort one gets in the dry cleaners).

OK, you’re good for a year?

What do you mean, a year? I came in with a Green Card with no expiry date.

You can work for a year.

And then?

You should receive your new card in the mail.

And if it doesn’t arrive?

Come back and we’ll do this again. We’re a bit backed up.

I did have to repeat the ritual. It took a full 14 months to get back ‘into status’ with my Green Card. In the interim, I was ‘interrogated’ at the border.

Why are you ‘out of status’?

Did you forge this yellow receipt?

I spent many hours in ‘Secondary Passport Control’, an intimidating space of bright lights, armed guards, banks of computers and no right to a phone call.

One capricious INS agent had set in motion a chain of events that no one was prepared to interrogate. In those post 9/11 times, many citizens were prepared to forego some liberties for security, to remain ignorant of what was being done in their name. Others were silenced by the virulence of the attacks on those who would not comply. I was not silent. I spoke out against the Patriot Act[1], the lack of judicial oversight of border decisions, and the abuse of civil liberties in a country that celebrates its Bill of Rights.President George Bush signed the Patriot Act into lawon 26 October 2001. PATRIOT is a 10-letter acronym for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism; arguments for its repeal have gained momentum. It took time for the stories to be told, for the demonisation of ‘other’ to be challenged openly in public discourse.

I returned to Australia to live when George Bush was re-elected President in 2004. Another four years driven by Cold War politics and personnel was not where I wanted to be. I thought Australia offered a steadier hand on the tiller of state. Maybe? In my dealings with the INS I had enjoyed the privilege of education, English as my first language, familiarity with bureaucracies and I had a respected position at a fine university. I was not deported. Others were. In Australia images of desperate refugees drowning off Christmas Island as an unseaworthy vessel breaks up vie for our attention with strident calls to ‘smash’ the people-smugglers’. I see parallels with the post 9/11 USA as our media moves to the right and the hateful rhetoric of ‘shock jocks’ pervades the airwaves. I see the possibility of measured informed public debate derailed by well-resourced lobby groups. We grow increasingly anxious about the ‘germs’ that may linger on our kitchen benches and fail to engage with the decision-making processes that will shape our society for generations to come.

And that is also a story for another day.