A Brutal Exodus
February 28, 2003
It is incredible how much immigration patterns and laws affect who we are as a community. From welcomed laborers to excluded laborers, separated families to professional flooding — Asian Pacific Americans are full of stories about how their family arrived here and survived here. Think of what it was like to arrive in the early 20th century and be quarantined on Angel Island, where APAs etched their stories on the stone walls, or what it was like to arrive in the mid-1970s, into a country turned upside down by the Vietnam War, or how it was to arrive just five years ago along with thousands of other IT workers on temporary visas, into a country so rich your company had $500 chairs.
Now, with segments of our community under siege from the INS, it seems that new, brutal histories are being created on a daily basis. Pakistani immigrants are rushing the Canadian border en masse, from young men to extended families. Stories filter into the AsianWeek office on a daily basis: the family stuck in one of the coldest winters this country has seen, waiting to post bail for their brothers and father; a student exiled to Montreal leaving his entire life behind; a father who must leave the bedside of his sick son for fear of detainment.
Last week, at a rally in front of the INS offices in San Francisco, a handful of Chinese American seniors stood with duct tape pressed over their mouths and signs that berated the INS for the racial profiling of the Special Registration drive. Meanwhile, across the street an older, white man with glasses and a portable microphone system tried to drown out the positive energy by reminding everyone that the people detained had violated the law.
Is this fragmenting of our community what we deserve? And what is our city government doing about the South Asian and Middle Eastern men who are being targeted? Right now, Congressional representatives are gearing up to try and put a stop to Special Registration, but they will face major opposition from John Ashcroft. Years from now, will our community have lost an entire population?
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