Hundreds of Pakistanis are fleeing to Canada to avoid the new INS registration requirements in the U.S.

Rather than wait for the inevitable, many Pakistanis have chosen to run, often with families in tow. They hope to obtain asylum in Canada.

New York City has a vast Pakistani community, and everyone knows the route north.... Each night, Pakistanis board the midnight Greyhound bus at Manhattan's Port Authority and six hours later they arrive at a deserted strip mall on the western edge of Plattsburgh, N.Y. Taxi drivers charge $50 for the ride up through frozen northern farmlands to the border turnaround. They walk the final 300 yards through the snow to the Canadian immigration center.

...without visas in these nervous times since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, deportation is almost a certainty. Hundreds of registrants have been arrested since the program began on Dec. 16. The detentions have sparked protests and demonstrations and this week the INS extended deadlines, but also added five nations to the registration program.

The Director of the Canadian Immigrations center says his staff runs criminal background checks on all of the Pakistanis, and very few of them flunk.

If applicants pass that hurdle, they can continue on to Montreal or Toronto and begin a year-long series of asylum hearings. Canada grants asylum to 54 percent of the applicants. Those who are rejected are returned to the United States and turned over to the American border station.

The stories are sad, because of the uncertainty facing these refugees.

Everyone here is "without status," meaning that they overstayed American visas, or lost papers or have applications pending. The complications are endless and exhausting. They only know they don't want go back to Pakistan, because it's poor and dangerous, and because their lives would be without prospects.

Their families are like seeds tossed to the wind. Brothers work the oil fields of Saudi Arabia, sisters as domestics in Manila or Kuwait. In their telling, the United States was a golden place. Malik, 28, who has a good command of English, landed at JFK airport eight years ago. He traveled to Manhattan on his second day and fell in love. Within a month, he had an apartment in Brooklyn, near Kings Highway. He was a limousine dispatcher, he belonged to a gym, and he says he paid taxes for the past seven years....

The application process stretches late into the afternoon. Bags are searched and they are asked many questions. They are stateless and expect no less. By mid-afternoon, Malik from Brooklyn allows himself an optimistic accounting. He has no criminal record, he was a good Pakistani and a good New Yorker. He will be a good Canadian.

The INS foreigner registration progam is as harsh as any we can recall. Surely there must be a better way.

This in from Dale Gieringer of California's NORML (available on DrugSense):

The text of the newly proposed "Crack House Statute" amendment is now available on Thomas. It appears as Section 5131 of S. 22, the "Justice Enhancement and Domestic Security Act" of 2003, a comprehensive bill covering a potpourri of other law enforcement measures ranging from telemarketing fraud and gun control to anti-terrorism and victim restitution.

he bill is the same as last year's anti-RAVE act S. 2622, without the extensive findings denouncing raves. Its basic effect is to extend current federal law against owning or maintaining drug-involved premises to include renting, leasing and using.

At present, Section 416 of the Controlled Substances Act, 21 USC 856 a(1) makes it a federal crime to " knowingly open or maintain any place for the purpose of manufacturing, distributing, or using any controlled substance." (This is one of the statutes under which Ed Rosenthal has been charged).

The amendment would expand this to "open, LEASE, RENT, USE, or maintain any place, WHETHER PERMANENTLY OR TEMPORARILY"

Note that the owner/leaser must KNOWINGLY have the PURPOSE of using the premises for a controlled substance offense. Thus the act of leasing premises for rave parties where drugs happen to be used would arguably not be a crime. However, maintaining premises for medical cannabis clubs would be illegal (as under current law in the case of property owners).

The proposed amendment also provides for a new civil penalty of $250,000 for maintaining drug-involved premises; however, this doesn't add a lot to the present criminal penalties of a $500,000 fine and 20 years in prison.

Absent last year's inflammatory language against raves, the bill appears to be a less than radical, though still objectionable, extension of current law."

Nathan Newman calls for respectful treatment of Democratic presidential nomination contender Al Sharpton. He raises some good points and we're considering them. The jury's still out though, as we are troubled by his anti-semitic comments over the years.

Condoleeza Rice's welcome statement on affirmative action and the President's Amicus Brief:

"When the President decided to submit an amicus brief, he asked for my view on how diversity can be best achieved on university campuses. I offered my view, drawing on my experience in academia and as provost of a major university. I agree with the President's position, which emphasizes the need for diversity and recognizes the continued legacy of racial prejudice, and the need to fight it. The President challenged universities to develop ways to diversify their populations fully. I believe that while race neutral means are preferable, it is appropriate to use race as one factor among others in achieving a diverse student body." (Emphasis supplied by us)

The complete text of Ms. Rice's statement is available here.

In response to Rice's comments, People For the American Way Foundation President Ralph G. Neas released the following statement:

"It is very good news that Condoleezza Rice agrees with Colin Powell's longstanding belief that it is appropriate to use race as one factor among others in achieving a diverse student body. It also reflects precisely both what the law of the land has been for a quarter of a century and what a bipartisan majority of the American support."

University of Illinois Law Professor Francis A. Boyle, who nominated former Illinois Governor George Ryan for a Nobel Peace Prize, has drafted a resolution to be introduced in the House of Representatives to impeach President Bush for high crimes and misdemeanors.

(Thanks to reader Paul for the link).

Update: Lisa English of Ruminate This has more on impeachment...

Received today from the National Coalition for Disability Rights:

A coalition of more than 400 national, state, and local disability organizations is opposing Jeffrey Sutton, President Bush’s controversial pick to fill a lifetime seat on the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. As the Senate Majority leadership today announced Sutton’s hearing date of January 29th, opposition events in Washington and around the nation were also being scheduled.

Advocates will leave Sutton’s home state of Ohio on January 29th and join disability rights supporters from around the nation in Washington on January 30th . The event at the U.S. Capitol is being coordinated by the National Coalition for Disability Rights as part of the organization’s ADA Watch program.  Sutton is being opposed by hundreds of disability organizations because of a history of activism to roll back disability rights laws including the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), as well as federal protections regarding Age Discrimination, Violence Against Women, and the rights of Medicaid recipients.  (See ADA Watchfor a list of organizations and more info.) 

Jim Ward, NCDR’s president stated today: “As the nation celebrates the life and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., whose words and actions have been a model for the disability rights movement, it is deeply troubling that the U.S. Senate will be considering a nominee – an attorney who has spent most of his career rolling back disability and civil rights protections – for a lifetime seat on the Federal Court.” Ward continued, “With strong ties to the Federalist Society and its extreme State’s Rights agenda, Sutton actively fought to weaken the rights of state employees to seek redress for discrimination under the ADA.  He fought to strip Medicaid beneficiaries of their legal rights to sue for services. He even fought on the wrong side of the historic Olmstead decision, arguing that unnecessarily keeping people with disabilities in institutions was not a form of discrimination.  The Senate must reject this activist nominee and the President should pick nominees whose records indicate a willingness to uphold Congress’ authority to invoke the ADA – the national mandate for the elimination of discrimination against people with disabilities.”

 

Jay Caruso over at The Daily Rant explains how to post URL's in the comments. It's important, because as Jay says, when you just type the url, it messes up the column spacing of our blogs and we have to go in and rebuild all the entries not just the one you commented on. TalkLeft has 1900 + entries and it takes a while to rebuild them all, and time is a precious commodity around here. (We had to do this last night so we're very sensitive to it).

Jay lays out the instructions very nicely.

The Horse takes on Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post for his "smarmy column" on John Kerry (link Via Hamster)

All of MWO is great today--they hit everything from Affirmative Action to Korea to whether ABC censured booing of "Poppy Bush" when he delivered a taped message at the American Music Awards ceremony Monday night.

We are off to Court for the afternoon, we hope you will check in here anyway and also visit the sites on the right. And today is Slacker Friday over at Altercation, always a must-read for us.

"President Bush will nominate the government's chief criminal prosecutor, Michael Chertoff, to a federal appeals court that handles cases for New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania and the Virgin Islands, a lawmaker says."

"Chertoff was the U.S. attorney for New Jersey and an attorney in private practice before Bush brought him to Washington as head of the Justice
Department's criminal division. The White House notified Sen. Jon Corzine, D-N.J., on Wednesday that Bush would nominate Chertoff to the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. "

South Knox Bubba is good today on Bush's proposals for admissions at Michigan:

"Isn't it funny how Bush interprets the 14th Amendment one way to get himself "elected" and another way to fight affirmative action? The 14th Amendment sure seems to be a versatile tool."

"... For God's sake don't attack Bush's race relations point man, John Ashcroft, on his record or you'll set race relations back another fifty years. Quid pro quo, you know. Besides, everything is fine in his home state, with college admissions of blacks at 6.5% in a state where the black population is 11.2%. And only about 45% of prison inmates are black."

Tapped has a thoughtful, well-reasoned analysis as well:

"But intellectual consistency requires that if you oppose affirmative action for one group (in this case, minorities), then you should also oppose affirmative action for all groups, including de facto affirmative action for rich whites -- aka legacy preferences in college admissions. You simply can't deploy the rhetoric of pure meritocracy -- as conservatives routinely do and as Bush did yesterday -- to rail against affirmative action, and then turn around and say it's OK for colleges to ignore these meritocratic imperatives when it comes to the children of alumni."

Law Professor Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) devotes his new MSNBC blog today to the demise of the Rave arrests in Racine Wisconsin. He includes some very informative links--including our's to the new anti-Rave bill introduced as part of Tom Daschle's Homeland Security Bill, S. 22, in the new Congress. The time to begin opposing this bill to your congresspersons, loudly, is now.

And check out the police chief's comments :

Racine Police Chief Dave Spenner spoke to his officers about the citations being dropped Thursday and released a statement to the public.

"The safety of this community is paramount in the eyes of city of Racine police officers," Spenner said. "I am disappointed we did not have the opportunity to present this case in court in front of Municipal Judge Weber, but will support the decision made by the city attorney.

"This situation does not slow police resolve to keep this community free of illegal drug use, and we will continue to faithfully discharge the responsibilities we have. It is our mission to keep neighborhoods safe and not expose one person to the risks of another's impaired judgment or driving ability."

(from our friend Pete Karas over at Progressive Racine Blog who is running for a seat on the Racine City Council--we hope he makes it)

Well, it seems that despite the new coziness allowed by the Patriot Act and the secret FISA Review Court opinion between the Department of Justice (prosecutors) and the CIA/Pentagon (intelligence and military agents), things are not going too swimmingly in the terror trials. Take the case of James Ujaama-- he's the Denver native who supposedly helped an Al Qaeda honcho set up a website, sold some computers to them and "scouted" for a terror training camp in Bly, Oregon. [full details, here.]

He's been indicted in Seattle on charges including the ubiquitous "supplying material aid to terrorists" charge and is awaiting trial, in jail of course. Now it seems the Pentagon has refused to allow the Department of Justice to call three witnesses in its custody at Ujaama's trial.

As federal prosecutors in Seattle prepare their case against American terrorism suspect James Ujaama, their access to three key witnesses is being denied — by other federal officials.

The Justice Department and the Pentagon are in a tense standoff over the use of so-called "enemy combatants" who are in the custody of the Department of Defense at bases in Cuba, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Prosecutors want to be able to use some detainees as witnesses in terror-related criminal cases filed in U.S. courts — including the cases against Ujaama, the former Seattle man charged with conspiring to support al-Qaida terrorists, and Zacarias Moussaoui, the French citizen suspected as the "20th hijacker" in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the only man charged in the U.S. in connection with that terrorism.

But military officials are refusing to give the federal attorneys access to the detainees....

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Seattle asserts that the impasse is jeopardizing Ujaama's prosecution.

We understood (although we disagreed) when the Pentagon fought to prevent Zacarias Moussaoui from interviewing or calling witnesses in the custody of the military--for example, alleged "enemy combatant" Ramzi Binalshibh (aka bin al Shibh) (former roomate of Mohammed Attah) --but what's going on here that one agency of the Federal Government can't share with another agency?

The Judge has told the prosecutors that the two agencies will have to "figure it out." She is not likely to grant the Government a continuance of Ujaama's June trial date. So what happens then? Without witnesses, the case is dismissed, right? We doubt it, but still, it's an interesting development and one that bears watching.

Thanks to Al-Muhajabah's Islamic Blogs for her track-back ping that led us to the Seattle Times article.

You can find more from us on Moussaoui and Binalshibh, and the Administration's conflicting positions here.

Some of our prior posts on Ujaama, are here, here, and here.