[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Pakistani Tiger: *
Oops, my apology. I mis-typed it. I meant H/H-1B Visa.
[/QUOTE]
So you have graduated and are on a work visa now? Did you have to get it from Pakistan or from the US? And did you get the booklet after registration or not? Degas got it.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Spock: *
So you have graduated and are on a work visa now? Did you have to get it from Pakistan or from the US? And did you get the booklet after registration or not? Degas got it.
[/QUOTE]
Brother Spock,
I got done with my two year college degree here in the US. I've been living here in the US since Fall of 1997. Last year, I been to Pakistan. It's a temporary work visa brother. I still need to get done with Four Year college degree.
Yes, I got the booklet.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Pakistani Tiger: *
Brother Spock,
I got done with my two year college degree here in the US. I've been living here in the US since Fall of 1997. Last year, I been to Pakistan. It's a temporary work visa brother. I still need to get done with Four Year college degree.
Yes, I got the booklet.
[/QUOTE]
Well Goodluck, I wonder why I didnt get the booklet, I have no idea what I have to do now... Maybe they didnt give it to me as I was an F-1 student, they might only give it to H-1 people. I wonder where I can check this from.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Spock: *
Well Goodluck, I wonder why I didnt get the booklet, I have no idea what I have to do now... Maybe they didnt give it to me as I was an F-1 student, they might only give it to H-1 people. I wonder where I can check this from.
[/QUOTE]
Brother Spock,
Why don't you go back to the INS office and ask about the booklet?
Mushahid Hussain pointed out Illegal Mexicans.
New US Immigration Policy Angers Some Pakistanis
Under a new U.S. anti-terrorism policy, citizens of Pakistan residing in the United States are among the foreign nationals who have until February 21 to report for fingerprinting and registration. The program affects men over the age of 16 who come from countries that Washington believes are sponsors of terrorism or in which terrorists have sought refuge.
The new U.S. policy affects immigrants from the designated countries, who entered the United States as students, as tourists or on business before October 1, 2002.
An estimated 100,000 such Pakistanis are said to be living in the United States, many of them overstaying their original visas and some entering on fake passports.
The new registration process has them seriously concerned about not just being deported but facing stiffer penalties.
At the airport here in Islamabad, most of the passengers arriving on a routine flight from New York these days are those who think they could be affected by the new U.S. registration requirements.
58-year-old Mohammad Kaleem has just come back and he says there is uncertainty among the Pakistanis, who are leaving the United States out of fear they will be detained and punished.
“After 21st of February, what will happen God knows, what are you going to do, we can’t say anything,” he said. **“Jackson Heights, no Pakistani, Queens, no Pakistani, finished, Brookline, no Pakistani, finished. These are the main three states [areas] of the United States where mostly Pakistani people live.” **
Some of the recent returnees say they were able to stay in the United States for a number of years without any documents, but decided to flee only when the new law came into force.
Pakistanis living legally in the United States also criticize the new rules as aimed at Muslims only. Mohammad Qasim, a 25-year-old computer engineer, holds a valid work visa. He says there is a large number of immigrants from all over the world whose status is not clear. He says the new rules should also be applied to them.
“I should be obviously [angry], because my people are being treated separately,” he said. **“I don’t like this. The law should be same for everybody not for Pakistanis and Muslims.” **
Jameela Qureshi, a U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent, is not happy about the way U.S. officials treated her and other Pakistanis at the airport.
“It’s ridiculous. They are taking off our shoes and our coats, our head scarf, it is ridiculous,”:mad3: she said.
The new U.S. regulations are being widely criticized in Pakistan. Most people here argue the treatment is unfair given Pakistan’s status as a key member of the anti-terrorism coalition. Namika Bhatti is a resident of Islamabad and a law student.
“The Americans have totally forgotten the fact that Pakistan has provided all the possible support to America when they needed it,” she commented. **“We should not trust America anymore. :nono1: Because they are now going to deport Pakistanis, a large number of Pakistanis working in the United States.” **
But some Pakistanis, like resident Hasnain Raza, **blame hard-line religious groups ** :mad: for tough immigration rules faced by Pakistanis in the United States.
“They give false statements and baseless statements that soon America will be destroyed, Americans, where ever they are seen, they shall be killed. Due to these things, our Pakistanis are facing many problems throughout the world,” 
he said.
Pakistan’s foreign minister, Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri, is visiting the United States to discuss the new immigration rules with senior officials. In an interview with VOA, Mr. Kasuri says such laws will put unnecessary pressure on the new government in terms of Pakistan’s cooperation in the anti-terrorism efforts.
“It has become a big political issue and the religious parties are trying to put pressure on our government,” the minister said. **“They are saying, on the one hand, you are trying to support the U.S. war on terrorism and, on the other hand, they don’t really care much about Pakistanis. :mad: This is the sort of argument they are advancing, the religious parties, and that is applying pressure on our government.” **
Mushahid Hussain, a leading analyst and political commentator here in Islamabad, agrees the move is damaging to U.S.-Pakistan relations.
“The feeling is that Pakistan despite being a friend and close ally, is being singled out because primarily it is directed against Muslim peoples and Muslim countries,” Mr. Hussain said. **“And already the United States government, under the Bush administration, has granted an amnesty to a lot of Mexican-Americans who were illegal visitors to the U.S. So Pakistanis feel that why can’t that be granted and extended to Pakistanis as well.” **
Mr. Hussain says that religious parties are already angry at Pakistan’s cooperation in the war on terror and the new immigration rules will provide them another opportunity to criticize the government.
“It will certainly embolden them, strengthen them and give them further support from their constituency” he added. “And this time around, since there are a lot of Pakistani families all over Pakistan who have relatives and friends in the United States who might be affected adversely by the latest INS regulations. So I feel that they have a ready-made issue.”
U.S. officials emphasize the registration program is based on national security, not religion or ethnicity. They say the targeted countries are places where al-Qaida or other terrorist groups have links.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Pakistani Tiger: *
Brother Spock,
Why don't you go back to the INS office and ask about the booklet?
[/QUOTE]
The INS office is too far away from my house. Can you tell me if anything in that book is specific for you, I mean is it a printed book that they just hand out to everyone, if so can you brief me a bit?
Brother Spock,
No problem. Enjoy wonders of the Internet. 
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Spock: *
The INS office is too far away from my house. Can you tell me if anything in that book is specific for you, I mean is it a printed book that they just hand out to everyone, if so can you brief me a bit?
[/QUOTE]
They were just pages stapled together.. i didnt even read those.. if u want I can mail u..email me ur address..
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Degas: *
They were just pages stapled together.. i didnt even read those.. if u want I can mail u..email me ur address..
[/QUOTE]
Thank you so much, i really appreciate your help... I will pm you with the details...
http://www.dawn.com/2003/01/18/top3.htm
Registration of all states residents by 2005
By Fakhr Ahmad
LOS ANGELES, Jan 17: The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) will register citizens of all the countries, who came in the country before Sept 30, 2002 , and Pakistan was not an exception, said a senior INS official said.
“It is part of a law that was passed in 1996 and we are now just getting around it,” said Ronald Smith, the INS Los Angeles District Director, in an exclusive telephone interview to Dawn.
I heard indians are added in the list from Jan. 25 or something is this true?
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by teaser: *
I heard indians are added in the list from Jan. 25 or something is this true?
[/QUOTE]
Yes, it is.
Starting from June. India, Bangladesh's nationalist will have to register.
So is that why the indian who worked in my local gas station suddenly disapeared? 
so teaser, it’d seem INS is not implementing the 1996 (wink wink) law in alphabetical order - because both b & I come before p, no? how do they determine the sequenec you think?
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Jagjeevan: *
so teaser, it'd seem INS is not implementing the 1996 (wink wink) law in alphabetical order - because both b & I come before p, no? how do they determine the sequenec you think?
[/QUOTE]
they are determining the sequence from least illegals to most :) they are recruting more and more staff for countries with most illegals and out of status like India..
So, its a NO to Pak’s request, with the usual diplomatic balm around its wounds.
http://www.nation.com.pk/daily/jan-2003/30/MAIN/top6.asp
Powell himself reserved most of his opening remarks to the registration issue and said he had deliberately done so to underpin the fact that US was sensitive to Pakistani concerns.
AFP adds: Powell said that he was aware the registration programme had caused concern among Pakistani Americans — as well as in Pakistan.
But he signalled that despite Kasuri’s outspoken criticisms of the programme throughout his visit, that there would be no opt-out for Pakistan.
‘We will continue to learn from our experience with the programme, and I wanted to linger on this point so that the minister has my full assurance that we will be doing everything to implement this program in a dignified manner.’
Deleted <
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/tombstone.html
Brookings Scholar Is Detained by INS
Registration Rule Snags Pakistani Editor
By George Lardner Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 30, 2003; Page A01
Ejaz Haider is an editor with Pakistan’s most respected English-language newsweekly and a visiting research scholar at the Brookings Institution, one of Washington’s most prominent think tanks.
A good friend of his country’s foreign minister, Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, he attended a conference Monday at Brookings Kasuri held as part of a campaign against relentless enforcement of U.S. immigration rules.
On Tuesday, however, Haider became one of the latest people detained in the government’s registration program for temporary foreign visitors when two armed INS agents accosted him on the street and took him into custody.
“We were stunned. I never thought I’d see this in my own country: people grabbed on the street and taken away,” said Stephen P. Cohen, head of the Brookings South Asia program for which Haider worked. “If he hadn’t come into the building to show the agents some notes, it’s not clear we would have known where he was.”
According to the Justice Department, Haider had missed a deadline to check in with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Haider, however, said officials at the State Department and INS had both told him he could ignore the requirement to check back within 40 days of registering upon arrival at Dulles International Airport.
“They probably had been keeping me under surveillance for some time,” Haider said.
“They asked me if my name was Ejaz Haider, I said ‘yes,’ they showed me their IDs, and just asked me why I hadn’t gone in for some interview.”
Kasuri said he brought up the case at a meeting with Attorney General John D. Ashcroft yesterday.
“Everybody was embarrassed,” Kasuri said. “I told him that it is this sort of thing that is going to happen [if enforcement is not more restrained]. If that is the sort of person that can be nabbed, then no one is safe.”
Often derided as the among government’s most dysfunctional agencies, the INS was widely criticized last March when it sent out student visa approvals to two of the dead Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists six months after they had slammed hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center.
Part of the reason for Kasuri’s visit was to voice his government’s alarm over a separate part of the program, which requires male visitors to the United States from 25 nations, most of them predominantly Muslim, to register with the INS.
After meeting with Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and others, Kasuri said yesterday that he felt confident that there would be no mass deportation of Pakistani nationals.
In Haider’s case, the episode may have stemmed from confusion about rules for registering male visitors, said Justice Department spokesman Jorge Martinez. More than 1,200 men have been detained in recent months when they appeared at INS offices.
Some of the guidelines for another part of the registration program, which takes place at U.S. airports, are classified. But Martinez said that Haider would not have been required to register simply because he arrived from Pakistan. Other factors, such as al Qaeda activity in that nation, may have come into play.
He said officials could not simply notify Haider to come in and comply with the deadline, because his willful violation of that rule would have been a criminal violation. Although Haider’s account suggested a nonwillful violation at worst, Martinez said, “we don’t know if everyone is telling the truth.”
He said immigration officials are looking into Haider’s case to determine if disciplinary action is needed.
Haider, news editor of the Friday Times, a weekly in Lahore, said he was told to leave his wallet behind and was taken to the INS detention center in Alexandria.
At the detention center, Haider said he was taken to a room with a few chairs in it and left there. Later he was photographed and fingerprinted twice, in ink and electronically. He said he was told that bond had been set at $5,000 and that “I would have to spend the night in the county jail.”
“Fortunately, we were able to contact people . . . and get him released without bail,” Cohen said. "It was too late to get . . . bail. Apparently, they got a call from headquarters.
“For me,” he added, “the personal irony of all this is that I have four times over the last 25 years made calls to the Pakistani government to release a Pakistani journalist from one of their prisons. I never thought I would be making a plea to our own government to release a Pakistani journalist from one of our jails.”
Haider said he was registered and fingerprinted at Dulles on his arrival Oct. 22 and was told he had to report to an INS office “between the 30th and 40th day of my arrival.” He said it was his understanding that Pakistan had been put on the so-called entry-exit registration list last Oct. 1, but then he heard in mid-November that it had been taken off the list.
He telephoned the INS help line and the State Department, talked to officials at Brookings, and thought no more of it until Tuesday.
When he was released Tuesday night, he said he was told to make his own arrangements to return to Washington, but had left his wallet, as instructed, at Brookings.
Fortunately, he said, he had a Metro Farecard in one of his pockets. The INS agents dropped him off at the King Street Station.
“The [Pakistani] embassy told me I was very lucky,” he said. “They said . . . they had left young men almost in the middle of nowhere.”
Haider, who has visited the United States six times, said he cannot wait to leave and, if such policies continue, will never come back.
“This is not the United States I used to come to,” he said.
Staff writer Pamela Constable contributed to this report.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
^ What was the wallet deal for? Want to replicate his IDs or sommat? Fishy business.
More than 1,200 men have been detained in recent months when they appeared at INS offices.
What I want to know is, what's happening to all these detainees? Are they in jails, and if so, which jails.. special cells? Are they being tortured? Have any been sent back home? What conditions are they in, and who's representing them, if anyone, and when are they going to get out?
How come no reports are coming out on this issue? All I hear is goodie-goodie stories.....
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Naqshbandi: *
Ejaz Haider is an editor with Pakistan's most respected English-language newsweekly
Haider, news editor of the Friday Times, a weekly in Lahore
[/QUOTE]
When they register u at the airport, they clearly tell (they told me, atleast) that I have to re-appear between 30th and 40th day at the local INS office. I don't know why Mr Haider thought he is exempt. But to arrest him from the street is pretty serious stuff. Seems like INS has nothing better to do.
That aside, to call "The Friday Times" the "most respected English-language newsweekly" is stretching it a bit. But thats just a personal opinion.