I hope this piece will explain why I asked you for caution

I hope you will not be offended  so we may all learn to avoid what
happened to the Japanese during the WW2  here in the USA not to long
ago. Part off the reason of that article is to justify this bill
Read on and Thanks for listening

Habib Diab Ghanim

MEMORANDUM

TO: Interested Persons
FROM: Gregory T. Nojeim, Legislative Counsel, American Civil Liberties
Union
RE: Terrorism Bill, H.R. 2184, Scheduled for Subcommittee Mark-up in the

Week of June 21, 1999
DATE:   June 16, 1999

BACKGROUND
The House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims
is
scheduled to mark up during the week of June 21 an anti-terrorism bill,
H.R.
2184, introduced to Rep. Robert Andrews (D-N.J.) on June 14. The ACLU
urges
members of the Subcommittee to oppose the bill because it would result
in
deportation of aliens based merely on their speech or their associations

with others, including aliens who have not and would not engage in
violent
terrorist activity. In so doing, the bill would resurrect the "guilt by
association" principles of the McCarran-Walter Act, even though
McCarran-
Walter was ridiculed as unfair and was repealed by Congress in 1990
after a
federal district court declared it unconstitutional. The bill ignores
one of
the most fundamental aspects of constitutional law in this area: people
should be deported based on their violent activities, not based on
constitutionally-protected activity, such as membership in a group and
mere
speech.

Rejecting these most fundamental principles, the Andrews bill would:

* allow for deportation of aliens based merely on their membership in a
"terrorist" organization, regardless of whether the organization is
formally
designated a terrorist organization, and no matter how innocent an
individual's membership;

* render the process in current law for designating organizations
"foreign
terrorist organizations" a virtual nullity for immigration purposes
because
it would allow for the deportation of members of organizations that are
not
designated as "foreign terrorist organizations;"

* effectively place in the hands of the Immigration and Naturalization
Service the power to decide which domestic organizations are "terrorist
organizations" the non-citizen members of which can be deported, because
the
bill fails to define "terrorist organization," or even limit "terrorist
organizations" to foreign organizations;

* make protected political speech that merely "encourages" another
individual or a terrorist organization to engage in terrorist activity
conduct for which a person may be deported or denied admission, even if
the
speech is uttered in circumstances that do not indicate the intention or

ability to cause harm;

* render inadmissible every alien who knows that another person
conducted an
act of terrorist activity if the alien fails to report the act to law
enforcement authorities, and even if the alien had nothing to do with
the
act. Read literally, it renders inadmissible virtually every alien
around
the world because they failed to report to law enforcement agencies that

Timothy McVeigh bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City, and would
render
inadmissible every alien who watches the news and thereby learns of the
next
act of terrorism, but fails to report it to the police.

H.R. 2184 is the third in a series of bills Rep. Andrews has introduced
that
would unconstitutionally infringe on the rights of non-citizens to
associate
with others. The first of these bills, H.R. 334, simply states that
aliens
who associate with "terrorists" are deportable. The second bill, H.R.
1745,
says the same thing, but attempts to equate association with a person
with
aiding and abetting terrorist activity. At May 18, 1999 hearings on H.R.

1745, this created concern both from the Clinton Administration and from

members of the Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims that the bill
could be
interpreted as requiring deportation based on mere association. H.R.
2184 is
consistent with its predecessors in that it unconstitutionally punishes
association in the form of membership in a group, instead of violent or
illegal conduct.

-----

Action requested by the ACLU:

The bill is tentatively scheduled to be marked up at the House
immigration
Subcommittee on Tues. June 22 or Thursday, June 24.

Please contact key members of the House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee
on
Immigration and urge them to oppose this legislation.

Jackson-Lee (D-TX); Staff = Leon Buck; phone 225-2329; fax 225-1845
Berman (D-CA); Staff = Aarti Kohli; phone 225-4695; fax 225-3196
Frank (D-MA); Staff = Ron Randhava; phone 225-5931; fax 225-0182
Lofgren (D-CA); Staff = Sue Ramanathan; phone 225-3072; fax 225-3336
Meehan (D-MA); Staff = Jeff Miller; phone 225-3411; fax 226-0771
Cannon (R-UT); Staff = Todd Thorpe; phone 225-7751; fax 225-5629
Goodlatte (R-VA); Staff = Shelley Hanger; phone 225-5431; fax 225-9681
Pease (R-IN); Staff = Joy Trimmer phone 225-5805; fax 225-5794

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