Homeland Security's Crackdown On Foreign Writers

HOMELAND SECURITY’S CRACKDOWN ON FOREIGN WRITERS

Dan Kaufman, a technology columnist for the John Fairfax Group newspaper chain in Australia, arrived at Los Angeles International Airport a few weeks ago on his way to cover a software convention in Denver. The next thing he knew…well, here’s how he starts the story in an Aug. 20 Sydney Morning Herald article:

“I went to America with dreams of margarita bars, thick Denver steaks, and Mexican food…Instead, I was fingerprinted, handcuffed, and thrown into a detention cell among Guatemalan refugees.” Kaufman was held for more than 11 hours before being put on a plane headed back to Australia.

…alert U.S. agents at LAX protected our borders by handcuffing, detaining, and deporting six French reporters and camera operators who arrived to cover a video-game trade show.

Kaufman was just the most recent foreign journalist to run afoul of a Department of Homeland Security crackdown that combines an ill-conceived visa policy for journalists with obtuse bureaucratic enforcement. In May alone, alert U.S. agents at LAX protected our borders by handcuffing, detaining, and deporting six French reporters and camera operators who arrived to cover a video-game trade show. “These journalists were treated like criminals,” Robert Menard, the head of Reporters Without Borders, complained to our ambassador in Paris.

Seizing and deporting journalists who arrive without the proper papers is the sort of thing the world usually associates with totalitarian nations such as Cuba. Why is this suddenly happening in the United States?

“It’s really an historical accident,” says Maria Trombly, a technology writer who heads an effort by the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) to unsnarl this visa problem. Under the Visa Waiver Program, visitors from 27 friendly countries can enter the U.S. for business or pleasure without a visa if they intend to stay for less than 90 days. When the program was created, however, working journalists were specifically excluded. The thinking seems to have been that because foreign journalists have an easy time getting long-term work visas, requiring a short-stay visa would not be a big deal. And for years, it wasn’t: Customs officials routinely waved in visiting reporters, and few foreign journalists were even aware they were supposed to obtain something called an I-Visa, which costs $100 and requires proof of an assignment. Then post-9/11 changes put the new Homeland Security Department in charge of the borders.

Keeping foreign journalists out of the United States does nothing to enhance our border security—but does much to blacken our image as an open society. Worse, forcing foreigners to jump through hoops to report on the U.S. only encourages other nations to make conditions more difficult for American journalists abroad.

The Visa Waiver Program must be renewed annually, so this “historical accident” can be easily corrected. Congress returned to work last week with a crowded agenda, but it can surely make some time to repair America’s image abroad by simply adding journalists to the many professionals who do not need a visa for short stays.

“Journalists, Keep Out,” (Editorial) Editor & Publisher, Sept. 8, 2003.