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U.S. Government Illegally Censoring Speech at Border, Groups Tell Court
NEW YORK - The American Civil Liberties Union today filed a new motion in federal court seeking to strike down a provision of the Patriot Act that allows the United States government to deny entry to foreign scholars because of their political views. The law, known as the “ideological exclusion” provision, violates the right of Americans to hear constitutionally protected speech, charged the ACLU.
Today’s motion comes in a lawsuit filed in January 2006 by the ACLU and the New York Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the American Academy of Religion, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and PEN American Center.
“The Bush administration is using immigration law to stifle speech that is a legitimate and critically necessary part of political and academic debate,” said Jameel Jaffer, Deputy Director of the ACLU’s National Security Program and lead attorney in the case. “It is frankly absurd that foreign scholars are being barred from the country simply because they have criticized U.S. policies in Latin America or the Middle East or taken other political positions that the Bush administration disfavors.”
The groups say that the ideological exclusion provision violates the First Amendment rights of Americans by preventing them from engaging in face-to-face dialogue and debate with foreign scholars whose speech the government disfavors. While the provision is nominally aimed at those who “espouse or endorse terrorist activity,” the provision’s terms are vague, sweeping and manipulable and could readily be used to exclude foreign scholars who study controversial matters such as terrorism and the concept of “jihad” in Islam, according to the ACLU. In fact, the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual interprets the provision to apply to those foreign nationals who have voiced “irresponsible expressions of opinion.”
The groups are asking the court to declare that the provision is unconstitutional, and are also asking the court to end the government’s continued refusal to allow Swiss scholar Tariq Ramadan to return to the United States. The government referenced the provision in 2004 to explain its revocation of a visa that would have permitted Ramadan to take up a tenured teaching post at the University of Notre Dame. When challenged in court, government attorneys failed to produce any evidence showing that Ramadan had endorsed terrorism, and during the course of litigation they abandoned the allegation altogether.
More
http://aclu.org/safefree/general/28667prs20070223.html
“The Bush administration is using immigration law to stifle speech that is a legitimate and critically necessary part of political and academic debate,” said Jameel Jaffer, Deputy Director of the ACLU’s National Security Program and lead attorney in the case. “It is frankly absurd that foreign scholars are being barred from the country simply because they have criticized U.S. policies in Latin America or the Middle East or taken other political positions that the Bush administration disfavors.”
The groups say that the ideological exclusion provision violates the First Amendment rights of Americans by preventing them from engaging in face-to-face dialogue and debate with foreign scholars whose speech the government disfavors. While the provision is nominally aimed at those who “espouse or endorse terrorist activity,” the provision’s terms are vague, sweeping and manipulable and could readily be used to exclude foreign scholars who study controversial matters such as terrorism and the concept of “jihad” in Islam, according to the ACLU. In fact, the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual interprets the provision to apply to those foreign nationals who have voiced “irresponsible expressions of opinion.”
The groups are asking the court to declare that the provision is unconstitutional, and are also asking the court to end the government’s continued refusal to allow Swiss scholar Tariq Ramadan to return to the United States. The government referenced the provision in 2004 to explain its revocation of a visa that would have permitted Ramadan to take up a tenured teaching post at the University of Notre Dame. When challenged in court, government attorneys failed to produce any evidence showing that Ramadan had endorsed terrorism, and during the course of litigation they abandoned the allegation altogether.
More
http://aclu.org/safefree/general/28667prs20070223.html
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