I thought I should use my space on this blog to call attention to a chilling article that anyone who cares about personal freedom and the arts (or just personal freedom) should read. A week ago, the NY Times reported the story of a teacher at Mills College who was denied re-entry into the U.S.:
Nalini Ghuman, an up-and-coming musicologist and expert on the British composer Edward Elgar, was stopped at the San Francisco airport in August last year and, without explanation, told that she was no longer allowed to enter the United States.
Her treatment can only be described as something out of Kafka:
Ms. Ghuman’s descent into the bureaucratic netherworld began on Aug. 8, 2006, when she and Mr. Flight [her fiancee] returned to San Francisco from a research trip to Britain. Armed immigration officers met them at the airplane door and escorted Ms. Ghuman away.
In a written account of the next eight hours that she prepared for her lawyer, Ms. Ghuman said that officers tore up her H-1B visa, which was valid through May 2008, defaced her British passport, and seemed suspicious of everything from her music cassettes to the fact that she had listed Welsh as a language she speaks. A redacted government report about the episode obtained by her lawyer under the Freedom of Information Act erroneously described her as “Hispanic.”
Held incommunicado in a room in the airport, she was groped during a body search, she said, and was warned that if she moved, she would be considered to be attacking her armed female searcher. After questioning her for hours, the officers told her that she had been ruled inadmissible, she said, and threatened to transfer her to a detention center in Santa Clara, Calif., unless she left on a flight to London that night.
Outside, Mr. Flight made frantic calls for help. He said the British Consulate tried to get through to the immigration officials in charge, to no avail. And Ms. Ghuman said her demands to speak to the British consul were rebuffed.
Despite numerous appeals on her behalf, over 13 months later, nothing has changed for Ms. Ghuman. For all the gory details please read the whole article.
Posted in
Guest (not verified) | Thu, 09/27/2007 - 10:35am
Jim,
Having read your alarming post, what bothers me most is how unsurprised I am by this. Our government has gotten consistently more restrictive as our citizens sit in front of their televisions or computers obsessing about Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. It's amazing to watch our personal freedoms dissappear one by one with so little outcry. Your thoughtful post shows that these frightening policies have a chilling effect on us in the arts, as well. Articles like this should be a call to action. What should we, as a field, do to ensure that the fear tactics of our government don't remove the artists and thinkers from our midst?
A. Gonzalez
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