Sunrise is a full hour away when Samir Al-Otaibi climbs in the van outside the International Cultural Center at 5:30 a.m. The Mississippi River fog will not lift for another two hours.
“I never get up this early,” Al-Otaibi said.
ICC manager Harald Leder is taking Al-Otaibi to New Orleans to complete his National Security Entry-Exit Registration, created in June 2002 as a way to track nonimmigrants in the United States. Al-Otaibi carries his driver’s license, passport, class schedule and letter from LSU to prove he is a legal resident.
This special registration is different from the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System registration, a database designed to include all nonimmigrants who enter the country, set to begin this fall. The special registration targets nationals of a select group of countries, Leder said.
The registration system will “expand substantially America’s scrutiny” of nonimmigrants from countries “who may pose a national security concern and enter our country,” Attorney General John Ashcroft said in a speech last June.
Although the original plan limited the additional registration to nationals of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria, three more groups of countries were added later, determined by the State Department to present an “elevated national risk.”
Al-Otaibi, an ISDS junior, is from Jordan.
The State Department included Jordan as one of the 20 countries singled out, including Kuwait, Egypt, Lebanon, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, North Korea and Pakistan.
Ashcroft highlighted a three-pronged agenda: fingerprinting and photographing, periodic registration of nonimmigrants who stay longer than 30 days and exit controls to help the Immigration and Naturalization Service expel those who overstay their visas.
The events of Sept. 11 changed the “American definition of national security,” and, as a result, the hijackers “were easily able to avoid contact with immigration authorities,” Ashcroft said.
Leder said the ICC has taken about 20 students for this registration, but many students used their own transportation.
Temple Black, spokesman for the Bureau of Immigration and Custom Enforcement in New Orleans, said the bureau has had no problems from the nonimmigrants who come from countries that cause the government concern.
“The whole point is to protect America,” Black said.
Al-Otaibi said he and other international students worry they will be taken advantage of by a government suspicious of people from Arab countries. There is not much he can do about it, he said.
“A lot of people think it’s a violation of human rights, but a country that’s been hit with a terrorist attack where 2,000 people died can do what it wants,” Al-Otaibi said.
Leder agreed, saying most international students have taken a pragmatic attitude, determined to make the best of it.
“You have to be aware that if you’re an international student, you have no rights whatsoever,” Leder said. “If an immigration officer decides you can’t be here, you have to go back. There’s really nothing you can do about it.”
The special registration has nothing to do with LSU specifically, said Amy Baide, ISO coordinator. ISO primarily keeps students informed and provides transportation through the ICC, Baide said.
“It’s a nonimmigrant responsibility,” she said.
The registration process has potential benefits, Al-Otaibi said.
“It’s good because it screens out the legal from the illegal,” Al-Otaibi said. “Maybe people won’t be suspicious of us anymore if they know we’re legal.”
Al-Otaibi found out when he arrived he was not required to attend the registration. Only nonimmigrants who arrived in the United States after Sept. 30, 2002, are required to file with the bureau. He was fingerprinted anyway and spent 15 minutes doing paperwork before the bureau realized it was not necessary.
Leder said students, especially Muslim and Arab students, are aware the United States is trying to protect itself, and they are aware the Sept. 11 hijackers may have come from their countries.
Using an international perspective, the students are able “to look at things more dispassionately,” Leder said.
Al-Otaibi said most of the people he knows are not complaining about it.
“If I were American, I would want my government to do something to protect me,” he said.