When I served as Director of Communications at the OCA National Office, one of the most important projects with which I was involved was the annual series of Hate Crime Workshops around the country, funded by Allstate Insurance Companies. I traveled to several cities nationwide and cooperated with local and state law enforcement, as well as federal law enforcement serving the local area, to educate the community about hate crimes and hate crimes laws. While turnout at these events ranged from as low as 20 to over 120, they were always a success in my mind because of the invaluable information participants received. Members of the audience learned the definition of a hate crime, but more importantly, they learned about the process of reporting and combating hate crimes in their neighborhoods.

The reasons that Asian Pacific Americans (APA) tend to report hate crimes at a lower rate than others are numerous. Language and cultural barriers. Distrust of authorities. Lack of the proper information to even pursue the issue in the first place. For all of these obstacles, there was always a reason to work hard to overcome each one.

Immigration status is a primary factor in the non-reporting of hate crimes and other crimes among immigrant communities. It has been standard practice in most parts of the country, however, to ignore illegal immigration when searching for information on more serious crimes like homicide and assault. When facilitating workshops, I would always stress the fact that local law enforcement agencies did not have to authority or resources to pursue immigration law violations when investigating another crime. Pursuing and punishing illegal immigrants is the duty of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).

Just months ago, however, I was proven wrong. Two undocumented immigrant workers in a white truck stopped to use a payphone in the Washington, DC area. Heightened police surveillance in place to catch the perpetrator of the sniper attacks led to the detention and eventual deportation of these men. They were just two of the thousands of innocent immigrants who have been caught in the dragnet of national security.

Attorney General John Ashcroft and the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) have encouraged local and state law enforcement authorities to assist in the “War on Terrorism” by targeting illegal immigrants. This logic is ineffective and narrow-minded, not to mention unconstitutional. It operates on the assumption that all terrorists aiming to do harm to the United States must be from other countries, and have entered this country illegally at that. It also vilifies the overwhelming majority of immigrants, whether legal or undocumented, as enemies of the rest of the population. The United States Constitution is supposed to protect all people in this country, not only those born here.

Many argue that illegal immigrants are in violation of federal law and deportation is the just consequence. This argument is unfair and places unwarranted value on naturalization, and ignores the fact that many legal immigrants have been deported and there are thousands more in the INS pipeline. Legal immigrants who have been convicted of crimes even as minor as check fraud or shoplifting are deportable under the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. Many of these deportees have already completed their court-ordered sentence. A substantial percentage of the Cambodian American population in Lowell is in danger of being deported at literally any moment. (See page XX for more information.)

There are currently hundreds of Pakistani and Filipino immigrants in detention. Most of them have no idea why they are being held, nor do they have any contact with their families. While these circumstances would surely be considered unconstitutional for other federal prisoners, these men – most of whom are Muslim – have seen their constitutional rights annulled. This is a clear case of racial and religious profiling on the part of the federal government. With many Asian countries serving as home to large Muslim populations – including Malaysia, China, Indonesia, and others – and North Korea having been named a member of the so-called “Axis of Evil,” it is not hard to imagine the extent to which racial and religious profiling could severely damage APA communities nationwide.

A knee-jerk reaction to these violations of civil rights is that we are fighting the “War on Terrorism” and we have to give up some of our rights in order to live in a safe society. This was not, however, presented as an option to the thousands of detainees and deportees; it was not, in fact, presented as an option to the voting public. It has only been mentioned as an excuse for the anti-immigrant agenda that has been pushed by many legislators for years, but lacked support until misdirected rage after September 11 pushed it through Congress. Americans have been sold on “national security,” but the persecution of immigrants has nothing to do with security. Some people, however, are too quick to draw comparisons between immigrants in general and the comparatively small number of people who wish to do America harm. Lowell Mayor Rita Mercier was quoted in the Boston Globe calling Cambodian American alleged gangmembers “urban terrorists.”

The anti-immigrant hysteria pertinent in American society today is reminiscent of the Know Nothing Party, which swept all statewide elections in 1854, as well as the entire state senate and all but four seats in the state house; Know Nothings also won important elections in many other states. The Know Nothing Party was nothing more than a political party based on the abhorrence of Irish immigrants. This hatred was rooted in stereotypes and ignorance, similar to the way many modern-day politicians have viewed immigrants. Shortly after September 11, Rep. James Cooksey (D-LA) advocated the use of racial profiling, while referring to turbans as “diapers.”

It is imperative that we do not accept the mistreatment of immigrants as a natural consequence of increased national security. America is a nation of immigrants; it was built by the very people it now wants to reject. OCA-New England stands firmly behind all immigrants who have been made victims of the United States government’s racial profiling and anti-immigrant policies.