A Safe Haven Turns Hostile

February was an unusual month at Vive La Casa shelter in Buffalo, NY, and not only because its aid workers helped process three times the normal number of applications for people from the U.S. seeking asylum in Canada. It was unusual because of the applicants' composition: Of the 952 people who came to ask the non-profit for help with their paperwork and a place to stay while it was being processed, some 550 were Pakistani, about 50 were Egyptian, and the rest were a mosaic of Indonesians, Bangladeshis, Colombians and others -- all trying to leave the United States to seek safe haven in Canada.

A similar scenario unfolded at border crossings into Ontario in January, when 871 people sought Canadian asylum, double November's figure. The New York Times reported that half of them were Pakistani.

Prompting them was a Feb. 19 INS special registration deadline for nationals of seven countries: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Jordan and Kuwait. Under the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) program, men over the age of 16 from 25 countries -- all of them Muslim except for North Korea -- must report to immigration officials to show their papers and be fingerprinted, photographed and interviewed. Not all men have to register; those with green cards or pending asylum applications are exempt. But those who show up with expired tourist, work or student visas are detained or told to appear in immigration court, where a judge decides whether to begin deportation proceedings. Those who don't show up, if caught later, face arrest and possible deportation.

The Pakistanis and others crowding the border in January and February weren't taking any chances of being shipped back home on chartered flights, as so many others have been. They wanted to be someplace safe, and they had determined that place was not the U.S. Since NSEERS went into effect, 3,000 Pakistanis have fled to Canada and 1,100 have been deported. According to the Karachi-based magazine The Herald, 50,000 will return voluntarily to Pakistan before it's all over.

For now, though, most of those who fled to the border are still stuck there, waiting the four to six weeks it now takes to get an appointment with a Canadian immigration official. Before the mass exodus swamped Canadian immigration offices, the waiting period was a week.

Fundamental Image Problems

The NSEERS program is not helping the United States' image in Pakistan, a country where fundamentalists made startling gains in the last election and where thrives a deep suspicion of American intentions. "The street is very radical in Pakistan," says Faiz Rehman, president and founder of the National Council for Pakistani Americans. "The popular view is Americans are out to get all the Muslims."

Pakistani newspapers follow INS developments closely. But one could not ask for a more effective marketing tool than the structure by which American money -- and American news -- get disseminated throughout Pakistan. As explained by Asad Hayauddin, spokesman for the Pakistani embassy in Washington, many Pakistanis in America are supporting six or seven family members back home.

"So the impact is multiplied," Hayauddin says. "It's not one guy going back, it's many people being affected. Domestically, this does not play well. This is going to affect the hearts and minds campaign."

Pakistan's domestic mood is already restive. President Pervez Musharraf's policy reversal following 9/11, in which he withdrew support from the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and allied himself with the U.S., angered religious conservatives, as has the presence of American special forces hunting for Taliban and al-Qaeda members. Pakistan's cooperation in that effort has helped net 450 suspects to date.