The Art of Losing Friends And Making Enemies
News item in the Times of India, 5th March 2003, Bombay edition. Original title: "Indo-Canadian Deported From US In Surname Row"
WASHINGTON: A Press Trust of India (PTI) news report.
In yet another incident of racial-profiling targeted against Asians, an Indian Canadian was treated roughly at Chicago's O'Hare airport and forced to fly to India after the cancellation of her passport by US immigration authorities.
Trivandrum-born Indo-Canadian Berna Cruz was stopped by American immigration officers whose suspicions were aroused because her last name was not "Singh" but Cruz.
All the protests of Ms. Cruz that there were "non-Singhs" of Indian origin and that there are Christians like her who have Portuguese names were of no avail.
"I was trying to explain to them, but they did not want to listen to anything, they did not want to see anything," Ms. Cruz was reported as saying by the Canadian daily Toronto Star.
Ms. Cruz said one officer asked her why her surname was not "Singh" and commented that it was clever of her to use a Spanish name.
Ms. Cruz said she felt harassed because of the colour of her skin. She said that the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) officers humiliated her and did not allow her to contact Canadian authorities.
Co-Chairman of the India Caucus, Joseph Crowley (Dem.) has forcibly drawn the attention of fellow members of the caucus, Republican and Democratic, and Tom Ridge, Secretary for Homeland Security, to this "outrage."
Mr. Crowley has invited other memers of the Congress to co-sign the letter to Mr. Ridge.
In his letter to Ridge, Mr. Crowley said INS officers at O'Hare airport accused her, a Canadian national, of entering the US using a fake Canadian passport.
"We understand the need for heightened security," says Mr. Crowley, "but the type of behaviour displayed by the officers at O'Hare is simply unacceptable."
Prax Maskaren