After 9/11: Processed by the INS

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.