The Greening of Asian Pacific America (Feature) First and Only APA Congresswoman Dies (in National News) APAs Struggle To Fit Into the Landscape of Progressive Politics (in Bay Area News) Fashion and Compassion (in Business) The Ultimate Sports Fan (in Sports) Out of Hiding (in A&E) Emil Amok: Un-American Airports (in Opinion)

Un-American Airports

AsianWeek readers will recall my international incident in 2001. In my haste, I had forgotten all about a little pocketknife in my bag as I went through a security check at Hong Kong’s big convention center.

I was there to cover two major speeches by Chinese leader Jiang Zemin and former President Bill Clinton.

But inadvertently, my knife became the story.

As I walked up to the metal detector, I realized I had my trusty Sears special and courteously showed it to the guard. It was a key chain — complete with a laser light.

Of course, you’d have thought I was about to bring down the semi-free world of China by the amount of commotion it caused. I was detained for an hour and then released. But not before I was dubbed “Knife Journalist” by the Hong Kong tabloid press.

I now look back nostalgically at the whole affair as one of the final moments of innocent world insecurity.

Nowadays nothing is innocent.

If I were to re-live my Hong Kong experience today, is there any doubt things would be far less civil? Handcuffs, leg-irons, perhaps a yoke, would be in order. I was in China, remember?

And here at home? I dread to think. Last weekend a guy in Atlantic City, N.J., was arrested and held on $100,000 bail after federal screeners found some unusual things in his backpack: a pair of scissors embedded in a bar of soap, and two box-cutters in a lotion bottle.

There’s no mercy in these guilty-until-proven-innocent times.

Expect a lot more of these stories in the coming weeks as the airports become federalized and those “wimpy” immigrant screeners get replaced by a new type of profile — mostly white, ex-jock law enforcement guys who appear to be on steroids.

In other words, big bulky, don’t-mess-with-me types. The kind of fellas who probably will have a hard time distinguishing your walkman from a detonating device, and no doubt dutifully be forced to run their fingers through your underwear in the name of national security.

I guess I’ll check in my bag next time.

As the feds take over, count on the G-Men to make a public relations splash. After all, they need to make the government’s case that there was good reason these guys replaced those aging, seemingly ineffectual, mostly accented Filipino immigrants.

Checking a bag on a conveyor belt and looking at a computer screen has become a law enforcement PRIORITY!

And darn it, anybody who dares to put SCISSORS in a bar of soap (whoever heard of that?) will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. At the very least, for STYLE VIOLATIONS!

Just like that poor guy in Atlantic City who probably thought he had come up with a Heloise-like way to carry scissors in a backpack safely.

“We’re proud of the fact our screeners caught it,” said Robert Johnson, a spokesman for the brand new Transportation Security Administration (TSA).

You bet they are. Because the more success stories they can trumpet, the less sympathy you — the discerning fair-minded public — will have for people like 67-year-old Marina Neri.

Don’t cry for Marina. She had been a screener but left her job earlier this year after a dispute with management. Cry for her family. Her entire Filipino American clan seems to have relied heavily on screening to put rice on the table. Her husband Honore Neri is still working as a screener. And so are her three brothers Jesus, Manuel and Cesar.

All are set to lose their jobs by the weekend as the feds take over the Oakland airport.

“We are not able to continue our careers as security professionals,” Neri said woefully, though speaking with pride about the lowly position. “We are not citizens. They say citizens are supposed to be better.”

And that is the big question.

Will citizens be better? Or is the TSA’s whole attitude discriminatory?

They say the screeners will be able to reapply for their jobs. But it’s not like they will get priority. And those who are not citizens will have to go through the whole citizenship process first. And that long wait is longer than any line at the airport.

If that’s not enough, there’s a bit of age discrimination here since the new jobs seem to be going to mostly young, white males.

You bet they’re thinking about this at the TSA, an acronym that could very well stand for “Tough S--t, Assh--e,” considering how willing the agency is to make any accommodations for the displaced screeners.

Tsk, tsk.

But using a bit of snide political acumen, usually reserved for the most cynical among corporate H.R. execs, the TSA has actually hired some young Filipinos. Take that, all you race-baiting, politically correct, lovers of aging airport screener out there!

At San Jose’s Mineta Airport, the TSA showcased one Eddie Gasmin, a buffed young Filipino American guy to the media. Why did he become a screener? This is Gasmin verbatim: “I wanted to do a better impact than what I did — on what happened Sept.11. I just want to do to help the community and everybody that’s traveling — to make safer in the air.”

Okay, so there’s no essay requirement to rifle through people’s underwear and shaving kits. Maybe the kid’s good at video games.

Is national security enough to justify all this upheaval? Of course not. But why stop at screeners? There are jet engine mechanics for the airlines who are not citizens, and workers with greater access to aircraft. Are they next?

Certainly, the feds are establishing a bad precedent here in a move that’s a new twist on “last hired, first fired.”

©his tune goes like this: Fire the immigrants just because they are. Make citizenship a new requirement for their job. Increase the pay for mostly white replacements.

Doesn’t sound very American to me.

Reach Emil Guillermo at emil@amok.com.