Thread: Some Iranian visa holders sent home

http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/ho ... 233891.php

Friday, August 4, 2006
Some Iranian visa holders sent home
They were stopped at U.S. airports while traveling to a reunion of Tehran University grads and professors in Santa Clara and told their visas had been revoked.
By DENA BUNIS and VIK JOLLY
The Orange County Register
WASHINGTON – Some Iranian citizens traveling to Santa Clara this weekend for a reunion of graduates and professors from a Tehran university have been stopped at U.S. airports and told the visas they were carrying had been revoked.

The State Department on Thursday refused to say why some Iranians coming to the conference with visas approved by U.S. consulates abroad are being denied entry, detained overnight and then sent back to Iran. Event organizers said they know of 20 who have so far been turned away. More than 100 additional Iranian nationals are due at the weekend event.

"We knew that it was going to be difficult to get U.S. visas for the Iranians," said Fredun Hojabri of San Diego, founder of the Sharif University of Technology Association, a worldwide group of former students and professors associated with the 40-year-old school. But Hojabri said over the course of four months he had helped about 150 prospective participants at this weekend's combination reunion and conference work through the process to get visas.

Among those whose visas were revoked was Ali Edrissi, a doctoral student at Sharif University. Bahman Pouranpir, Edrissi's uncle and an industrial engineer from Irvine, waited for about six hours at Los Angeles International Airport on Tuesday for Edrissi and his bride, Sara Nadimi.

"We were so panicked and so shocked, I didn't know what to do," said Pouranpir. Edrissi was put on a flight back home on Wednesday.

"I think before that USA was a very law-abiding country and they gave rights to someone," Edrissi said in a telephone interview from his home in Tehran on Thursday night. "After, I never go to USA anymore. I will never. They give me 1 million dollars, I will not go to USA because that was a bad experience."

Edrissi said after immigration officials pulled him and his wife aside, they said he would be going to a detention facility and his wife to a hotel. Some of those stopped at LAX were sent to a detention center in Santa Ana.

But after Edrissi pleaded with a supervisor – who he said was kind – the couple were allowed to sleep on chairs in a room at the airport Tuesday night.

Both he and his wife wept, he said.

"I don't expect this to happen," Edrissi added. "If the visa was given then they shouldn't take it back."

The Santa Clara reunion was characterized by those attending as a run-of-the-mill gathering of old classmates and colleagues.

Most of the Iranians who wanted to come here were given visas while some were denied, Hojabri said. But beginning early this week, he began to get messages from participants that they, and in some cases their families, were being sent back to Iran.

An unknown number were stopped at LAX. Hojabri said he also believes some were blocked from entering in Chicago and Toronto.

"We're not political," said Hojabri, who has lived in the United States since 1981 and is a former UC San Diego professor. "We are an association mostly to help each other scientifically and professionally."

Word of the visa revocations began spreading Thursday in the Iranian-American community. A notice of it was posted on iranian.com and mentioned on an Iranian radio station.

The group's Web site shows that about 600 people have registered for the conference, many from the United States, including 20 from Orange County.

The association holds such a meeting every two years. Federal officials refused Thursday to discuss the specifics of this case. Hojabri said early this week he sent an e-mail to U.S. consular officials in Dubai – where many of the visas to the Iranian nationals were granted – asking what was wrong. "They haven't responded," he said.

Iran is one of five countries listed as states that sponsor terrorism and as such, visa applications from there are scrutinized more closely than from other countries. The U.S. does not have an embassy or consulate there, which is why the Iranians seeking to come here had to get their visas from Dubai and other consulates.

It is not unheard of for a visa to be approved and then revoked, even after the foreign visitor has already arrived in the United States. But officials would not say why people coming to this conference were denied entry.

"In my experience this only happens in narrow situations in which some additional information is made available that allows for a revocation," said Irvine immigration lawyer Angelo Paparelli. "I have never seen it happen in the context of a gathering of this size where it does not appear that the information applies to a particular individual but applying to everyone who wants to come to the gathering."

Hojabri surmised that the recent events in the Middle East coupled with the Iranian nuclear development issue may have led to this week's actions. Again, State Department officials would not respond to such speculation. Hojabri did say that some Iranian citizens have been allowed in.

"Our main point is how can you give them visas after all the security checks were done and then revoke them without giving them advance notice, let them travel all the way to the United States with family, and then not let them in?"

There are two ways someone with a visa could be denied entry to the United States – the State Department can rescind a visa or the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection can decide at a port of entry that someone presenting the visa should not be admitted.

"I don't have any information that DHS (the Department of Homeland Security) has revoked the visas," said DHS spokesman Jarrod Agen, who referred calls to the State Department, which refused comment.

The law

A provision of U.S. law covers the issuance of visas to the U.S. from the five countries the State Department has designated as state sponsors of terrorism: Iran, Sudan, North Korea, Syria and Cuba. Here's what it says in Section 306 of the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Act of 2002

"No non-immigrant visa … shall be issued to any alien from a country that is a state sponsor of international terrorism unless the Secretary of State determines, in consultation with the Attorney General and other U.S. agencies, that such alien does not pose a threat to the safety and security of the United States."

CONTACT US: 202-628-6381 or dbunis@ocregister.com

"I think before that USA was a very law-abiding country and they gave rights to someone," Edrissi said in a telephone interview from his home in Tehran on Thursday night. "After, I never go to USA anymore. I will never. They give me 1 million dollars, I will not go to USA because that was a bad experience."

Oh boo hoo!

http://www.mercurynews.com

Posted on Fri, Aug. 04, 2006

Iranian professionals detained at S.F. airport, face deportation

By Jessie Mangaliman and Katherine Corcoran
Mercury News

As many as a dozen prominent Iranian professionals, arriving with valid U.S. visas in the Bay Area to attend an international gathering this weekend, are being detained at the San Francisco International Airport, refused entry by immigration officials and facing deportation.

A husband and wife from Tehran were deported from San Francisco airport Thursday, the latest to be turned away from U.S. ports in recent days. Between 40 and 50 Iranians were deported this week from Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, organizers of the gathering said, in a case that some are condemning as a political response to recent tensions between the United States and Iran.

Laura Tischler, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Consular Affairs declined to comment on the case of detained and deported Iranians, citing confidentiality.

Visas, she said, ``can be revoked at anytime, when there are indications of possibility of ineligibility for admission'' into the United States.

This afternoon, organizers of the gathering of Sharif University of Technology Association, alumni of a prominent university in Tehran, called a news conference to protest the detentions and deportations. Many of them were former exiles from Iran and are now American citizens living in the Bay Area.

``It's a mystery to us,'' said Fredun Hojabri, a retired University of California-San Diego professor and founding president of the association, a California-based non-profit, alumni organization.

Fredun said he doesn't understand why the government would revoke at the last minute a visa its own agency issued.

``It's a political decision not to allow them here,'' he said.

Max Panahandeh, principal at Berkeley Applied Science and Engineering, said he spent three frustrating hours at San Francisoc airport Thursday afternoon, waiting for his friend, Majid Kobravi, an electrical engineer from Tehran. Kobravi was scheduled to arrive with half dozen others who were attending the reunion.

Panahandeh's friend reached an immigration official who allowed someone from Majid's group to speak with them briefly. Then he delivered the news: their visas had been revoked and they were detained in ``jail-like conditions.''

All those detained or deported are citizens of Iran -- engineers, chemists, physicists and scientists, university professors and business owners -- who received visas months ago from U.S. consulates in Tehran and Dubai. They were to attend a gathering of graduates of Sharif University of Technology, a well-known science and engineering institution founded 40 years ago in Tehran.

The reunion, scheduled in international destinations every two years, opened today at the Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara. About 600 people from across the United States and Canada, Europe and Asia are expected to attend.

After a rigorous security clearance, 120 Iranians were issued visas to attend the conference. Hojabri wrote the invitation letters that the alumni submitted to the consulates in Tehran and Dubai.

About 20 applicants did not receive visas because they required additional security clearances, he said.

Everything seemed in order for attendees arriving from Tehran until Monday, when Hojabri heard reports of someone being detained overnight and then deported from the Los Angeles International Airport. After that, similar reports began coming in from Chicago, then New York.

On Thursday night, after learning that as many as a dozen more were being detained at San Franisco airport, officials of the organization responded. They tried to see the detainees but we refused, said Nancy Hormachea, a Bay Area immigration attorney who represents the alumni association.

``These are intellectuals, prominent people from Iran who have a positive impression of the United States,'' Hormachea said. ``They've never ever been so humiliated and insulted.''

Elahe Enssani, a civil engineering professor at San Francisco State University and a graduate of Sharif University, expressed frustration.

``It's fine if you don't issue visas,'' she said. ``But why would you issue a visa and then at the airport say it's revoked?''

``I'm obviously very disappointed at what my government is doing,'' she said. ``It's sad.''


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Contact Jessie Mangaliman at jmangaliman@mercurynews.com or (40 920-5794.

If the visa were revoked upon their arrival here in the US there was a good reason. Possibly the checks that were done wherever they obtained the visas were not sufficient or the same checks that are done here. These people may have been on lists that the government has that are not available in their countries. Also the law does state not to issue visas to anyone coming from a country known to have terrorists if we cannot prove they are not a threat to our national security.

"No non-immigrant visa … shall be issued to any alien from a country that is a state sponsor of international terrorism unless the Secretary of State determines, in consultation with the Attorney General and other U.S. agencies, that such alien does not pose a threat to the safety and security of the United States."


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"We were so panicked and so shocked, I didn't know what to do," said Pouranpir. Edrissi was put on a flight back home on Wednesday.

"I think before that USA was a very law-abiding country and they gave rights to someone," Edrissi said in a telephone interview from his home in Tehran on Thursday night. "After, I never go to USA anymore. I will never. They give me 1 million dollars, I will not go to USA because that was a bad experience."

Good...stay the hell out! You make it sounds as if you were doing us a favor by being here.