US Citizenship: Becoming discriminatory? Ex-Celeb deported: terrorist link?

[AKA2D '91]

when it comes to allowing foreigners into this country?

With the investigation of the attacks in DC and NY, it has been reported that those so and so's came over and withing months entered 2 different flight schools and learned in "our own backyard" how to TRY to destroy us.

Now, I bet if some of us who were born and raised in this country SINCE the beginning would have applied to the same schools, would we have gotten in on the FIRST try? Would we have received our pilot's license?

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is, should the US implement/enforce stricter policies for those foreigners "seeking" an education, etc? Should we set some sort of stipulations on these individuals? Should they have to go through a series of background checks? Should we NOT allow some of these people in our country? Should we curtail the number of VISAs approved? How is it that we do not want a group of people like the Haitians or those from Africa like Rwanda (sp?), but other groups are welcomed here? Heck, for some of US, we are not as welcomed here, as foreigners. YET SOME of those welcomed, have been plotting and ready to blow us OFF the earth, on our OWN soil.

What are your thoughts?

[AKAtude]

**I read on a message board set up by one of the local networks that this particular person will only trust people with black and white skin for now on.**

With that being said, I think a lot of Americans are probably going to be suspicious of foreigners, particularly with that ethnicity. I find it strange that these men could go to these flight schools and just provide thousands of dollars in cash, and it didn't raise an eyebrow. Even banks report you to federal authorities when you make a deposit of more than $5,000 or $10,000!

[AKA2D '91]

Originally posted by AKAtude
[B. I find it strange that these men could go to these flight schools and just provide thousands of dollars in cash, and it didn't raise an eyebrow. [/B]

Then, they had all of that money and NO job!
Now you know if it would have been a brotha, they'd have the cops on his tail in milli-seconds!

[MavenofDrec]

A resounding yes!

This country should be a whole lot more discriminatory, if that is possible. Of course, as black Americans, we have a whole different perspective on the present day discrimination practices of the US stemming from slavery, to Jim Crow, to well--to today.
However, we have fought to show our love of country throughout history with our innumerable contributions to this country--

--Fast forward
Our country has become so unhomogenized that it may be impossible to reverse. US policy on Immigration must be scrutinized. What is the real thrust behind the blood letting of our borders? Is it cheap labor? Is it to retain world dominance through "brain drain" of the countries that the expatriots represent? As educated people, I urge everyone to examine these issues on several dimensions. There is always a story behind the story. My mind is racing a thousand miles a minute, I cannot even begin to fathom the complexities of the politics involved in this whole situation.

I have a very different outlook on life and death after September 11, 2001. There is not much difference anymore.

[tickledpink]

Most definately. And not to say that we should be discriminatory, but we should be more aware as citizens of this country. I too question quite a few things that happened prior to these attacks (such as the pilot's licences and the entire aspects of the flight training) and why they went seemingly unnoticed. I do understand that there are many facets of this (concerning surveillance) that for national security purposes probably have not and will never be released. But given the information that we currently have ~ it's still unsettling.

I remember once, about 11 years ago, I was seeing my friend off as she went back to NY after a visit. They would not let me past the initial checkpoint because I kept setting off the metal detectors. I didn't have anything unusual, but it upsets me that I'm a citizen, who loves this country & values life, yet I couldn't get past. They could never figure out what set off the detectors (who knows ~ one of my girlfriends says her bobby-pinned up dos sets them off ) How did these people get past with box cutters?

In a slight deviation from the original subject, I hope airport regulations are more controlled. I went overseas 12 years ago and we couldn't bring back a candy bar (no perishables). They were certainly not very tolerant. I doubt seriously if they would have let me get on the plane with any type of sharp object that could be used as a weapon.

Now, I bet if some of us who were born and raised in this country SINCE the beginning would have applied to the same schools, would we have gotten in on the FIRST try? Would we have received our pilot's license? ...

How is it that we do not want a group of people like the Haitians or those from Africa like Rwanda (sp?), but other groups are welcomed here? Heck, for some of US, we are not as welcomed here, as foreigners. YET SOME of those welcomed, have been plotting and ready to blow us OFF the earth, on our OWN soil.

Unfortunately, for too long America has had this stereotypical image of who the "bad guy" is. Remember Susan Smith (I know Southerners remember her), who drowned her children? The image that she described of their "abductor" was a complete stereotype, however, many were quick to believe her. I remember getting into an argument with my manager because of her passion to find this "horrible person", while I insisted that the description looked like a stereotype.

This should be a wake up call about making assumptions, but I fear it will only add anyone of Middle Eastern descent to the list.

[Poplife]

First off, please remember that the Pentagon is not in Washington, DC. It's in Virginia. Not that important, but ya know...gotta keep the facts straight.

Anyways, I really think we need to crack down on the amount of people that we allow in the United States. We have yet to close the flood gates and you can see what is happening. Our country should not be harbor criminals or terrorists of any kind!! We need some sort of screening process. My cousin is becoming a Swiss Citizen and it's taking her about year. She has all sorts of things she must complete before they allow her to live there for a long time.

AKATUDE: About the Arabs paying $5,000 in cash. In Northern VA and parts of DC there are very large groups of very wealthy Arabs living there. I remember when I was working in a jewelry store and one of my customers was a daughter of a sheik! A damn sheik! And she didn't have a job. In a powerful Arab family a woman's duty is to marry someone important. That's all. The men just play around too. Look at Princess Di's boyfriend Dodi. He had never had a job in his life.

I will never forget the day when 1 Arab man and about 10 ladies came in and collectively spent $45,000 in one day. When my manager asked them what the occasion was, one of the men replied that this was the female half of his daughter's wedding party. The were in American for one month to SHOP for the WEDDING. They then requested for the merchandise to be sent to the Ritz Carlton via insured mail where they occupied the entire top floor. Do ya'll know how much it costs to rent all of the penthouses at the RITZ?!?! And for a month?!

The amount of money that some of these people have is amazing. There are a lot of Arabs in Detroit too, so I guess the people at the Michigan flight school thought that they were one of those rich Arabs I just told you about. I know when an Arab women spent $8,000 without blinking I didn't really think about it. I was used to it.

[sunnydays96]

I think the US is already discriminatory when it comes to letting non-citizens enter this country. It's a matter of whom they are discriminating against the most. Now if one tries to come over here and they are perceived as say a poor farmer, yes they will spend some time in customs being interrogated and searched. However if you come looking like the CEO of some company to do business in the US, they are in and out with no problems. There were reports that a few of these men had stolen id from American business men. This could be the reason why they were let in without any hassle or hesitation.


In my opinion, we should be non-discriminatory and scrutinize everyone across the board- citizen or non-citizen. I think it would be unfair to say that because one is a foreigner that they should have stricter guidelines. Because as we have seen with Timothy McVeigh, a citizen can be just as dangerous as a non-citizen.

[dirtymike1906]

Without question.

A government commission headed by Gary Hart reported this morning that 1.3 million cross our borders every day. With numbers so large, there's no way we could be informed of their backgrounds and intentions. Segments of our society seem convinced that every Middle-eastern or Asian visitor is some Harvard honor student or fleeing opression for democratic freedom, and obviously, it just ain't so. And now, even some who appear noble still have terrorist ties.

Additionally, we need to increase intelligence and tighten certain freedoms. Aviation has been a longstanding joke--one we've chosen to ignore for quite some time. Remember the rag-tag, overworked and underpaid bunch manning airport metal detectors prior to last Tuesday--did they actually make YOU feel secure? And look at all the other lapses: Knives going undetected (A good friend of mine has been carrying his pocket knife onto planes for years); numerous incidents involving irate passengers invading plane cockpits; curbside service; unchecked bags littering airport terminals; a plane crashing on the White House lawn...

We've been caught with our pants down around our ankles. And hold your breath, cause it ain't over just yet.

[MaMaBuddha]

without a doubt in my mind....yes we need to look and carefully evaluate and do an extensive background check on who we let into this country. one of the so called terrorist lived right in my hometown of Daytyona Beach, Florida. he even went to a neighboring school called emory riddle aerononical university which has a large middle eastern population that attend school there. some of my frends might have even socialize with him.

this whole thing is scary and sends out mixed feelings. i currently live in new york city and there is a big population of middle easterns that work such jobs as new paper stands, bodegas and cab drivers. one bodega owner closed his store down because of pictures he had up of relatives back in his homeland that showed them posing with machine guns. even the children were holding machine guns and smiling. several people saw this and began to lash out because they were scared.

i do not condone any violence towards these groups after all they are here for a better opportunity, but i admit this makes you weary of people around you.

[Steeltrap]

Careful evaluation of people's backgrounds is a must, but I don't know how it can actually be done.

I am from San Diego, and three of these terrorists lived here at one time. Although San Diego has close to 2 million people, the idea that terrorists were among us causes me to shudder.

But this situation is conflicting to me because I deeply resent people lashing out at Americans of Middle Eastern descent. I was in high school when the Khomeini situation broke out and remember that Iranians (who aren't Arabs) and Arabic students were hassled.

One of my paper's contributors is Palestinian and runs an Arab-American business magazine. He's been threatened and he wrote a story about it for us.

Also, we have a family friend of Lebanese origin who has two small children. Nothing's happened to him yet, but he's told his in-laws that he's worried.

[Reds6]

Discrimination is Discrimnation. I have friends that we couldn't find and up until Sunday night I thought they were dead. So I have been greatly affected by this. But it saddens me to hear of young Muslim and Arab children afraid to go outside and go to school. We all scream about racial profiling when it comes to us, but condone it on others. Lets not forget the struggles that our people went through not to long ago. There was a time that if a black man looked at a white woman to long, this would cause and up roar and many black did not feel safe to come out of their homes and were threatned. When Timothy McVeigh killed hundreds of people including children in Oklahoma, whites didn't fear their lives, white children didn't feel unsafe. People weren't saying we need to profile whites in America.
Now do I think we need to be more aware as Americans yes. We need to tighten up our security in this country. I live 5 minutes from Andrews Air Force base, where the President always lands and I was very afraid to be that close on Tuesday and still a little nervous. Do I think immigration laws should be tighter yes. Keep in mind the vast majority of the people involved in this act were in this country illegally. Do I think we need to bomb the heck out of Afghanistan(SP) and whoever is responsible hell yes!

[AlphaChiGirl]

Originally posted by AKA2D '91


Then, they had all of that money and NO job!
Now you know if it would have been a brotha, they'd have the cops on his tail in milli-seconds!

That is so true...I know that many of my friends/acquaintances from the mideast are well-meaned, many are funded from home for anything they want, and no one really raises an eyebrow. But let it be a Black (or even Latino) person--there's no way (no matter how pleasant he is) that he would have been able to live unemployed, in a 2K/month apartment without people investigating him!

Just shows how distrustful we often are to our own.

I urge everyone to channel their anger, hurt, and fear into positivity...it's the only other thing we can do.

[1906]

Originally posted by Reds6
Discrimination is Discrimnation. I have friends that we couldn't find and up until Sunday night I thought they were dead. So I have been greatly affected by this. But it saddens me to hear of young Muslim and Arab children afraid to go outside and go to school. We all scream about racial profiling when it comes to us, but condone it on others. Lets not forget the struggles that our people went through not to long ago. There was a time that if a black man looked at a white woman to long, this would cause and up roar and many black did not feel safe to come out of their homes and were threatned. When Timothy McVeigh killed hundreds of people including children in Oklahoma, whites didn't fear their lives, white children didn't feel unsafe. People weren't saying we need to profile whites in America.
Now do I think we need to be more aware as Americans yes. We need to tighten up our security in this country. I live 5 minutes from Andrews Air Force base, where the President always lands and I was very afraid to be that close on Tuesday and still a little nervous. Do I think immigration laws should be tighter yes. Keep in mind the vast majority of the people involved in this act were in this country illegally. Do I think we need to bomb the heck out of Afghanistan(SP) and whoever is responsible hell yes!

I couldn't agree more with this post. I was beginning to think that everyone on this message board were raging xenophobes.

Someone mentioned that it seems like even the noble ones have ties to terrorist. Well, let's be honest there are a lot of blacks who have ties to criminals. Whether that person is a friend or a relative or a friend of a friend and so on and so and. All that to say don't be quick to judge someone because of what the media says is tie to a terrorist. You aren't evil just because your acquaintance from high school was arrested.

[ZChi4Life]

I agree w/ others who stated that the US should be more aware of who they let into the country. I feel like we are the only ones who will let in whoever, no matter what their situation is. I have heard from friends of mine who have been to other countries and they tell me how strict the policies/rules, etc are to get in. I feel like we don't do anything! I live in Detroit, not far from the Canadian border at all. Whenever I've gone over there, it always takes much longer to get into Canada than it does to get back into the US.
So I don't think it's wrong at all for us to make our policies, etc about getting into this country tighter. I mean, yes we should be proud and greatful that this country is so open, but I think at the same time, it's sorta bad b/c it leaves us open for things like this.
Just as other said, these men came into OUR country and used OUR education against US! What the? I mean, I was stunned to learn they were here learning how to fly planes and then used our planes to try and destroy us! That makes me SO mad and it sickens my stomach. However, as mad as I am, I do not want us to go to war. I received an email from a friend of mine from an friend of hers that is Afghani. I'll post it. It's really interesting.

[ZChi4Life]

Please read this email I received.....quite interesting
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I've been hearing a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age." Ron Owens, on KGO Talk Radio today, allowed that this would mean killing innocent people, people who had nothing to do with this atrocity, but "we're at war, we have to accept collateral damage. What else can we do?" Minutes later I heard some TV pundit discussing whether we "have the belly to do what must be done." And I thought about the issues being raised especially hard because I am from Afghanistan, and even though I've lived here for 35 years I've never lost track of what's going on there. So I want to tell anyone who will listen how it all looks from where I'm standing.

I speak as one who deeply hates the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. My hatred comes from first hand experience. There is no doubt in my mind that these people were responsible for the atrocity in New York. I agree that something must be done about those monsters.

But the Taliban and Ben Laden are not Afghanistan. They're not even the government of Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of ignorant psychotics who took over Afghanistan in 1997. Bin Laden is a political criminal with a plan. When you think Taliban, think Nazis. When you think Bin Laden,think Hitler. And when you think "the people of Afghanistan" think "the Jews in the concentration camps."

It's not only that the Afghan people had nothing to do with this
atrocity. They were the first victims of the perpetrators. They would exult if someone would come in there, take out the Taliban and clear out the rats nest of international thugs holed up in their country.

Some say, why don't the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban? The answer is, they're starved, exhausted, hurt, incapacitated, suffering. A few years ago, the United Nations estimated that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in Afghanistan--a country with no economy, no food.
There are millions of widows. And the Talibanhas been burying these widows alive in mass graves. The soil is littered with land mines, the farms were all destroyed by the Soviets. These are a few of the reasons why the Afghan people have not overthrown the Taliban.
We come now to the question of "bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age". Trouble is, that's been done. The Soviets took care of it already. Make the Afghans suffer? They're already suffering. Level their houses? Done. Turn their schools into piles of rubble? Done. Eradicate their hospitals? Done. Destroy their infrastructure? Cut them off from medicine and health care? Too late. Someone already did all that.
New bombs would only stir the rubble of earlier bombs. Would they at least get the Taliban? Not likely. In today's Afghanistan, only the Taliban eat, only they have the means to move around. They'd slip away and hide.

Maybe the bombs would get some of those disabled orphans, they don't move too fast, they don't even have wheelchairs. But flying over Kabul and dropping bombs would not really be a strike against the criminals whodid this horrific thing. Actually it would only bemaking common cause with the Taliban--by raping once again the people they've been raping all this time.

So what else is there? What can be done, then? Let me now speak with true fear and trembling. The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there with ground troops. When people speak of "having the belly to do what needs to be done" they're thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as needed. Having the belly to overcome any moral qualms about
killing innocent people. Let's pull our heads out of the sand. What's actually on the table is Americans dying. And not just because some Americans would die fighting their way through Afghanistan to Bin Laden's hideout.

It's much bigger than that folks.

Because to get any troops to Afghanistan, we'd have to go through Pakistan. Would they let us? Not likely. The conquest of Pakistan would have to be first. Will other Muslim nations just stand by? You see where I'm going. We're flirting with a world war between Islam and the West.

And guess what: that's Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants. That's why he did this. Read his speeches and statements. It's all right there. He really believes Islam would beat the west. It might seem ridiculous, but he figures if he can polarize the world into Islam and the West, he's got a billion soldiers. If the west wreaks a holocaust in those lands, that's a billion people with nothing left to lose, that's even better from Bin Laden's point of view. He's probably
wrong, in the end the West would win, whatever that would mean, but
the war would last for years and millions would die, not just theirs but
ours.

Who has thebelly for that?

Unfortunately, Bin Laden does. Anyone else?

In Peace