Girl, interrupted
Here’s yet another story of an abritrary U.S. visa denial and deportation. Nalini Ghuman, a Mills College music professor who studied at Berkeley and Oxford, has a Sikh Indian father and a white British mother. She was detained at SFO and turned back to London last year on grounds which her British MP can only speculate is a case of mistaken identity. Tucked into the NYT article is this tidbit:
… 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.” [Link]
Because how could anyone under the nimbus of a watch list possibly speak Welsh, or have brown skin and be anything other than Latina.
Ghuman’s case draws attention because of the upper-crusty nature of her work. Unlike M.I.A., she’s working on a book about Indian influence in British classical music. But State has been stonewalling even members of Congress:
Inquiries by Ms. Ghuman’s representative in Parliament and several members of Congress, including Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, have been to no avail… [Link]
In a tearful telephone interview from her parents’ home in western Wales, Ms. Ghuman… said she felt like a character in Kafka. “I don’t know why it’s happened, what I’m accused of… There’s no opportunity to defend myself. One is just completely powerless…” [Link]
When even the Senate majority whip can’t get answers, imagine what average Jasminders are going through. Separately, the ACLU filed suit over the exclusion of foreign academics who don’t pass the Dubya administration’s political purity test:
In recent months, the government has excluded numerous writers, scholars and activists for reasons that appear to be ideological… “By banning foreign scholars, the government is sending the message that America is afraid of critical thought…” [Link]
One of the high-profile bans includes an Iraqi academic who contributed to the Lancet study estimating massive loss of civilian life during the Iraq war.
Meanwhile, Ghuman’s back with the parents sans apartment, job or fiancé. Among the most poignant reminders of the visa division’s incompetence is her faculty page at Mills:
You have to imagine that academic positions in musicology aren’t the easiest jobs to land. She’s trying to teach via video link, but how long before the college’s patience runs out?
on Monday, September 17th, 2007, 12:01 pm in Issues, Law, Music, Politics › 
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This is a nightmare. A classical music scholar, in her mid thirties, female, and she gets chewed up like this? What’s going on?
Absolutely bizarre.
Exactly right.
I suspect that she shares a last name with somebody (probably muslim) who’s on some watch-list somewhere and the geniuses at immigration can’t tell one from the other. They probably think that a musicology professorship is the perfect cover for an AQ operative.
On another note, her book “India in the English Musical Imagination, 1890-1940†looks interesting.
… 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.â€Â
This is the weird part. When things are nice, its all rosy. But once something goes wrong there’s no limit to how horrible it can get. You hear so many immigration related horror stories all the time. Granted - terrorism and all that, but still !
As pathetic as this case is, I am not surprised. My husband is a brown (guju shah) active duty USAF officer who travels a lot domestically for work. He has found himself held back because he’s on the ‘watch list’. Go figure..
Also, Nalini’s passport is the property of the UK. I hope that the officers at the immigration desk get into trouble for defacing it.
This not only hits home because I am so outraged at her treatment but I attended Mills College. This professor is anyone but a terrorist. This goes way beyond protection from “terrorism”! Isn’t there anything that can be done for her?
This feeling of utter helplessness is shared by all of us on non immigration visas. It will just take them to tear up our visa papres and thats it. I wish there was an agency or a forum where we could atleast get some answers before such extereme steps are taken. Its always the sincere hardworking people who suffer.
but how long before the college’s patience runs out?
Sigh. I’m sure they’re standing by their faculty longer than any normal place of employment would, but it means they—a nonprofit—are going to be paying the price for the state department’s incompetence. Less money for research and scholarships.