Good news for the First Amendment! Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has signed orders earlier this week that effectively end the ideological exclusion of Professors Adam Habib and Tariq Ramadan, two prominent scholars who were denied visas to enter the United States under the Bush administration. In two separate lawsuits, the ACLU represents a handful of American organizations that have invited the scholars to speak to American audiences.
In 2006, before M.I.A. was rocking the Grammys nine months pregnant, the U.S. government actually denied her a visa to enter this country to work on an album. The reason she was kept out? The lyrics to some of her songs were considered sympathetic to the Tamil Tigers and Palestinian Liberation Organization.
By Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 7:51pm
So, Rep. Allen West—Republican from 1955—is apparently trying to single-handedly refight the Cold War. At an event today, somebody asked the Florida lawmaker how many members of Congress are “card-carrying Marxists.” His answer: “[n]o, it’s a good question. I believe there is about 78 to 81 members of the Democratic Party that are members of the Communist Party. . . . It’s called the Congressional Progressive Caucus.”
By Farbod Faraji, National Security Project at 6:09pm
Today the ACLU and PEN American Center asked the State Department to speed the issuance of a visa to Ghassan Zaqtan, a widely-published and internationally respected poet and writer who had intended to begin a two-week book tour for his new collection, Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me, yesterday.
Mr. Zaqtan applied for a visa on March 7, 2012 at the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem and was told at the time that he would receive his visa within two weeks. Four weeks later, Mr. Zaqtan has yet to receive a response. Without a visa, Mr. Zaqtan cannot visit the United States, and the American readers who have invited him to the United States cannot meet with him and hear him speak.
Today, the ACLU sent letters to the Departments of State and Homeland Security asking them to grant a visa to Kerim Yildiz, a British citizen living in London. Yildiz, the executive director of the U.K.-based Kurdish Human Rights Project (KHRP), has apparently been refused a visa to enter the U.S., and we worry that the delay — which has lasted nearly a year — relates to his human rights advocacy on behalf of Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, and elsewhere.
By Carol Rose, Executive Director, ACLU of Massachusetts at 11:00am
Whether you’re a member of the ACLU, the Tea Party, or the Beer Lovers Party, one of the things that distinguishes you from people living in more authoritarian regimes — Iran, China, Libya, to name a few — is your right to form political associations without fear of government reprisal.
Freedom of association is so vital to our democracy that the framers put it in the First Amendment, alongside freedoms of speech, press, religion, and petition. After all, what good is the right to speak, pray, or petition the government if you can’t freely associate with other people who support your cause?
Late last week, the government denied a travel visa to Malalai Joya, an Afghan politician, writer, and human rights activist. Today, the ACLU sent a letter to Secretaries Clinton and Napolitano asking them to reconsider this decision.
This week, as the ACLU welcomes our clients Professors Adam Habib and Tariq Ramadan to the United States — scholars who, until recently, were barred from entering the country because of their criticism of U.S. policy and who will be speaking to audiences in New York today and tomorrow — we also celebrating the news of another almost-excluded scholar being granted permission to enter the country.
The ideological exclusion provision is a law enacted as part of the Patriot Act that allows the U.S. government to deny entry to noncitizens who have "endorsed or espoused terrorism."
Today, The New Yorker's George Packer wrote: "In the struggle for world opinion after September 11th, [ideological exclusion] made America look intolerant and narrow-minded and afraid." The ACLU challenged this law twice on behalf of American organizations that had invited two prominent Muslim scholars, professors Tariq Ramadan and Adam Habib, to speak in the U.S. Our lawsuits assert these groups' First Amendment right to hear constitutionally protected speech is violated by the ideological exclusion provision. Neither Ramadan nor Habib have been found to "endorse or espouse" terrorism.
