Thousands of Muslims on ‘immigration blacklist’.
By The American Bazaar Staff
WASHINGTON, DC: The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Southern California is suing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on behalf of five Permanent residents of the US, on the grounds that that they are amongst thousands of others in the country whose applications for Green Cards and citizenship is being delayed or denied because of only one factor: they are Muslims.
The grouse of these applicants is primarily against a program known as the Controlled Application Review and Resolution Program (CARRP), which while authorized by the US Congress, in time has become much more harsh and stringent on its policies, and has created an ‘immigration blacklist’.
This blacklist comprises of people who are Muslims, or have had connections with a Muslim majority country, or have traveled there on some work, and when these applicants file for their citizenship, they wait endlessly for years without result because of perceived national security concerns.
According to a Reuters report, the plaintiffs are all immigrants who are either practicing Muslims or are from predominantly Muslim nations.
“Our clients are long-time, law-abiding residents of the United States who, for years, the government has walled off from becoming citizens and lawful residents of this country without legal authority to do so,” said Jennie Pasquarella, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, which filed the suit in federal court in Los Angeles.
“Under this unfair and unconstitutional program, the government has blacklisted their applications without telling them why and barred them from upgrading their immigration status in violation of the immigration laws,” she said in a statement.
The ACLU said the five plaintiffs were among thousands of U.S. residents of Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim or South Asian backgrounds who are similarly being blocked from citizenship, asylum, green cards and visas, without explanation.
CARRP includes anyone named on the U.S. Terrorist Watchlist, as well as others associated with those names, even without reliable information about that person’s activities, the ACLU says.
The lawsuit comes a month after a federal judge ruled that the government’s no-fly list banning people accused of links to terrorism from commercial flights was unconstitutional because it left them no way to contest that decision.
According to RT.com, one of the plaintiffs is an Iranian, Abrahim Mosavi, who has been waiting for his citizenship application to be reviewed for 14 years without success. The process is supposed to take no more than six months.
According to that report, ACLU says the people they help with their lawsuit have been denied their constitutional right to due process. It also said the implementation of CARRP was done with little congressional oversight, no public debate and in contradiction to the Immigration and Nationality Act, which regulates the rules on how a person can gain US citizenship or a green card.
However, this is not the first time that DHS has faced such a lawsuit: in fact, they have lost a similar suit filed by the ACLU a few years ago, and were forced to grant citizenship to most of the plaintiffs that time around.
An interesting account of that was written by an Indian American activist and journalist Sonali Kolhatkar, who described in detail the fear and trauma she went through while waiting for her citizenship to come through, but years went by in vain. That report can be read here: