Having been born in Iraq, Ibrahim moved to the US after the first US-Iraqi conflict. She inherently began to form some sort of duality which i imagine most immigrants develop. While she loved her new home in America, she also had strong ties to her homeland in Iraq. While this is a completely normal attachment, because her homeland was Iraq, her continued love and support was seen as a threat by many Americans. While this has happened to many immigrants over the course of our history (think Irish-Americans, Japanese-Americans, etc.), it seems like the discrimination of Iraqi-Americans (more generally speaking: Muslim-Americans) is stronger than any in recent memory.
It seems we are forcing our immigrants to totally abandon their ties to their country of origin. This seems like an impossible and unfair task, but yet, for some reason, we seem unable to grasp the idea that someone can love Iraq, and have family in Iraq, but NOT be connected to any kind of terrorist organization or threat.
When Ibrahim was describing her detainment at the airport, i thought back to my experiences in airports. My family and I are avid travelers and I take it for granted that i can wear whatever clothes i want or walk with my family or speak in my native tongue. If i were from Iraq and wore traditional garb, or was in a mass of other Iraqis (i.e. my family), or was speaking Arabic or Kurdish, i could easily be subject to forced interrogations and detainments all in the name of "National Security."
Ibrahim stated that no matter how many legal documents she had proving her American citizenship, she will never been truly accepted by the rest of America as a citizen. This was a frightening thing to consider. It is also upsetting because it has happened to so many different immigrants throughout our history. I want to think that as time progressed our nation became a much different, more open, society, but clearly, as Ibrahim's story indicates, America is still firmly rooted in its history of clumping every member of an ethnicity together and treating them like terrorists and threats to the country.
That's one of the things that stuck in my mind even after reading it a couple of days ago. It just defeats the point of the government blowing it's own horn and saying that it's going to initiate a campaign to "save" the Iraq women oppressed by their men, their religion, their state and yet, this is how we treat our Iraqi women back at home. It makes me wonder what other motives the government has for saying what they said about Iraqi women. I'm sure there are a lot more motives than what we are led to believe.
ReplyDeleteWith the new pat-down procedures and all the other tedious checkpoint procedures we have to go through, I already hate the airport. I'm Asian-American and I always, always get "randomly" chosen to have my palms scraped, to go through the new x-ray machine, to get patted down. Since I live in California, I fly back and forth from NY very often and as "random" as the airport makes it sound, I don't think it's just a coincidence that I've been subjected to one of the checkpoint tests every single time I go through security. So I can't even begin to understand what Ibrahim went through. It's not random. It's discriminatory and it's puts people like Ibrahim in a position where they are scrutinized and attacked by their own people, just because they don't have the same clothes, the same hair, the same eyes. We should really stop looking at our differences and ask ourselves what you asked us - who is an American? Or rather, who deserves to be treated like an American?
I agree with Sammatha's statement about racial profiling. They aren't that random. I am now imaging a how a Muslim must fee flying back and forth and how they must be racially profiled. They must be fustrated by always being pulled aside because people think that all Muslims belong to a terrorist group. This is not true and people should be able to recognize this after 10 years.
ReplyDeleteIbrahim's story is very upsetting to read. I can't imagine what is feels like to not belong in your own country. It shouldn't be a big deal to have family in Iraq. Now that recently Osden bin Laden has been killed, maybe people will start recognizing the difference. Obama even said in his speech that just because someone is Muslim, doesn't mean that they are a terrorist. We should be coming together as a country not separating ourselves.