By: Bob Herbert
Los Angeles: The two boys were exhausted, hungry and frightened when they stepped off the plane in Los Angeles in July 1990.
Ferooz Omaid was 17 and his brother, Shikeb, was 15. They spoke little English and had no papers. Within minutes of their arrival at Los Angeles International Airport they were in the hands of immigration authorities.
The boys said they wanted asylum.
Ferooz and Shikeb were from Afghanistan; their father had been a government employee who repeatedly expressed his opposition to Communism and the Soviet invasion. One day some men came to the house and took him away. He was imprisoned and, after some months, executed.
Less than a year later the boys* mother, while food shopping at a bazaar outside of Kabul, was killed in a bombing raid.
Ferooz, staunchly anti-Communist and nearly unhinged by the death of his parents, was taken out of school by the Government and forced into the military, where he was harassed and beaten.
A grandfather felt that something had to be done. While Ferooz was on a weekend pass, he and his brother were spirited into Pakistan, Where arrangements eventually were made to place the Mona flight to the U.S.
The boys had an aunt in New Jersey Immigration officials in Los Angeles contacted her and she called the International Rescue Committee, an agency that assists refugees. “The boys were underweight and undernourished —they looked like they had just come out of a concentration camp,” said Estelle Strizhak, an immigration specialist with the committee.
‘She went to work processing their application for asylum. In other words, she began formatting two new editions of the American Dream.
The boys came east to stay with their aunt. Ms. Strizhak recalled, “The: first thing they discovered were cheap sunglasses in Woolworth’s. They were wearing Uses sunglasses as we went around from office to office—they looked like my bodyguards, * at the time, “Terminator 2” was a big hit at the movies. “Naturally they like action movies.” said Ms. Strizhak. “One of the questions | was asked was, ‘what does hasta la vista, baby, mean?’ I explained to them what it meant, but I told them, ‘When we’re going to immigration, don’t say hasta la vista, baby, to anybody, O.K.2”
She added, “They’re really very lovely boys.” Ferooz and Shikeb were granted asylum in Newark in July 1991 The horror of Afghanistan is behind them. But under legislation that is gaining Momentum in Congress, their story could have ended differently.
In March, Senator Alan K. Simpson, a Republican from Wyoming, introduced a bill designed to thwart “frivolous” political asylum claims. Senator Simpson’s bill is riding the ant immigration wave that has been rolling across the U.S, since the World Trade Center
Bombing in February. When his bill was introduced, Senator Simpson said, “In recent weeks the nation has seen a rash of violence that has reportedly involved aliens who entered the country under false pretenses.”
The Senator’s remedy is 10 give agents from the Immigration and Naturalization Service the authority to “immediately exclude any alien” who comes to the U.S. with no documents or with fraudulent documents, “unless a ‘credible Claim’ for refugee status is made.”
A 1.N, S. agent at the point of entry (usually an airport) would determine on the spot which claims. Are credible.
This is bad legislation that is benefiting from the genuine fear of terrorist bombing attacks. Terrorists will not be thwarted by Senator Simpson’s “summary exclusion” bill — they will scoff at it. But lots of people with genuine claims to asylum will be turned away if the hill becomes law. The Omaid brothers were given documents compiled in Pakistan that allowed them to board a plane to the U.S., but they were told to flush the documents down the toilet during the flight, which they did. Presumably the documents were phony. But an extensive investigation has shown that the boys” story was true. A spokeswoman for Senator Simpson was asked what an immigration agent would be expected to do if individuals arrived in the U.S. with no documents and their story did not seem credible.
She didn’t hesitate. “Put them right back on the plane, immediately, and send them back,” she said. (Courtesy: New York Times)
Article extracted from this publication >> July 16, 1993
