Displaced Immigrant Students Fearful to Seek Support
India-West, News Feature, Viji Sundaram, India-West Staff Reporter, Posted: Sep 22, 2005
"We're homeless. We cannot work off campus. We are in a bad situation. Everyone is trying to survive. We are moving from place to place."
Tulane University student Azad, who wouldn't give his last name lest "I get into trouble," was not just mouthing off. He meant every word of what he said, and what he said was an echo of what a number of other immigrant students from the Indian sub-continent were saying in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
The hurricane that hit the Gulf Coast earlier this month turned Azad's life upside down, along with everyone else's. Only, in the case of immigrant students like Azad, especially those from predominantly Muslim countries like his, many are wondering whether to seek help from federal agencies, or just lie low and continue banking on the uncertain help of friends and acquaintances.
"The fear they are experiencing is understandable," Artesia, Calif.,-based South Asian Network's executive director Hamid Khan told India-West. "It's because of how South Asians, and particularly how Muslim students have been demonized" in the wake of 9/11. "Students with Muslim names face a higher degree of scrutiny. That's why even in times of need they are afraid to reach out so that they don't show up on the radar screen."
Since 9/11, the Bush administration, in the name of homeland security, has passed a slew of laws targeting immigrants, particularly those from Islamic countries. Using those laws, federal and state officials have swooped down on immigrants, especially those with Muslim-sounding names, deporting a number of them under one pretext or another.
Immigrant students' fears could have been reinforced recently after the Department of Homeland Security announced that immigrants have no immunity from deportation when providing information required to receive federal aid.
Suhaila, a doctoral student at Tulane University, who last week was accepted at Columbia University to complete her program in public health, said she didn't want her last name to be used in this story because she wanted to be cautious "because you never know."
She has been staying with friends in New York after she fled New Orleans in her car with nothing more than her laptop computer, a couple of sets of clothes, one bedsheet, one towel, some photos, her passport and her F I-20 form that identifies her as a foreign student.
"I've lost most everything, books, clothes and what not," the Bangladeshi student told India-West in a telephone interview. "I wish I had brought more with me."
She said she chose Columbia because her friends in New York offered to share their home with her for free.
Tulane had a large number of students from Bangladesh, as well as from India and Pakistan. India-West could not contact anyone in the school to find out how many registered students at the school were from the Indian sub-continent.
Bangladesh born Prof. Khashruruzzaman Choudhury, who teaches economics and finance at Southern University in Baton Rouge, said that the "informal tie-up" Dacca Medical College has with Tulane University makes it relatively easy for graduating medical students from Dacca to get student visas to pursue post-graduate studies in public health at Tulane, which has one of the best public health programs in the U.S.
"Because it's difficult to get into residency, these doctors come here on student visas and enroll in the master's program in public health and then sit for their boards," Choudhury told India-West.
Even though the student visa is tied to the particular school a student has been accepted in, the U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement office last week announced that it was temporarily lifting this requirement to students who were enrolled in schools in the Katrina impacted areas. In other words, students could transfer out to other schools without jeopardizing their legal status.
Despite that reassurance, some students say they want to play it safe.
Shamea Waheed, who had practiced as a physician in Bangladesh for six years before coming to the U.S. in 2001 to do her master's program in public health, is one of them.
"Immigration people say a lot of things, but we can't believe them," Waheed said. "Students are worried about losing their status if they don't stay enrolled in Tulane."
South Asian student enrollment at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge has shot up in the last few days. At least 40 Indian students from the University of New Orleans and Tulane have transferred to LSU, said Prof. Krishna Agnihotri, a teacher at Southern University College of Business and a founding member of the Hindu American Community Katrina Relief Organization. The group last week donated microwaves, blenders, mattresses, sleeping bags, pillows and bedsheets to the newly enrolled Indian American students, Agnihotri said.
South Asian Network's Khan said that students facing problems pertaining to their legal status could contact his group at 562-403-0488.
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