Regarding the Sunday column, “Profiling: a rational tool to fight terror”:
Between 1942 and 1945, Japanese citizens and their American descendants were interred in relocation camps. The reason? Japanese Americans were disloyal, a hidden “fifth-column,” what we refer to today as “sleeper cells.” Internment didn’t happen overnight; it was a process of paranoia and discrimination that exploded into hysteria after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Prior to Pearl Harbor, anti-immigration laws were created that targeted Japanese and other Asians. The FBI created the “Custodial Detention Index” to track “enemy aliens,” and later the Alien Registration Act, which required fingerprinting and current addresses for “aliens” over 14. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, over 2,000 Japanese men were secretly detained by the government.
Controversial parallels between Japanese internment and modern treatment of Middle Easterners arise each time the subject of airport profiling is reintroduced.
Prior to 9/11, Middle Easterners were stereotyped as evil or stupid and that stereotype played out in discriminatory practices; it has only gotten worse. Since 9/11, immigration efforts and laws have been applied unevenly toward Middle Easterners. The Department of Homeland Security has created a “special registration” for immigrants from certain Middle Eastern countries, applicable primarily to males over 19. A reinterpretation of The Material Witness Law is being used to detain Middle Eastern men without due process or probable cause; it is impossible to know how many are detained because of secrecy in the name of national security.
Is profiling is a rational tool to fight terror? This is the same America that found “military necessity” in the internment of native born and immigrant Japanese Americans. Advocates of profiling argue that Japanese internment is history. Yet in 1942, people thought internment would keep them safe from domestic attack, that it was necessary to keep America safe. Have we learned nothing? We are on a slippery slope.
Lisa T. Osborne
Everett
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
