Article on Azfar's visa situation

The Stillwater, Oklahoma newspaper published an article about Azfar's visa issues on the front page of the Sunday edition today! Here is the link: http://www.stillwater-newspress.com/homepage/local_story_243233441.html

And if the link doesn't work, here is the story:

Stuck in red tape

• Former Fulbright Scholar not alllowed to return to U.S.

Jacob Longan - NewsPress

Oklahoma State University’s English department thought it had made a hire that would have a tremendous benefit for students.

Then bureaucracy got in the way.

Dr. Azfar Hussain was hired to fill a one-year vacancy in the department. As a Fulbright Scholar, he was required to teach two years in his native Bangladesh after earning his doctorate and master’s degree from Washington State University.

Hussain married an American citizen, California native Melissa Tennyson, in May 2002, and applied for a U.S. visa while he was still here in 2005.

This summer, he was led to believe the visa would be approved before he needed to be in Stillwater in mid-August. After repeated inquiries, word finally came that it was conditionally approved but “waiting on further processing.”

“They didn’t tell us if that meant two days, two weeks, two years, two decades,” said Melissa. “We really had no, no, no idea what that meant.”

Azfar was supposed to teach classes beginning earlier this month but it is unclear when he will be able to return to America, where he lived from 1995 to 2006. The government told the family Azfar is going through a standard waiting period of three to six months that applies to all male immigrants from Bangladesh. Calls to different governmental offices, including congressmen, and an immigration lawyer have not ended his exile. Neither has a letter from OSU to the U.S. Embassy in Bangladesh.

A call to the Homeland Security Department seeking comment was referred to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Sharon Rummery, a spokesperson for USCIS, said she could not comment on specific cases and “it would be pointless for me to speculate” why Azfar’s visa has been held up.

“On a spousal petition we are going to adjudicate and make sure it’s a valid relationship,” Rummery said. “Then before the person enters the U.S., the State Department will interview them.”

The Hussains say they have had their interview with the State Department but their understanding is the holdup is because of Homeland Security’s investigation into Hussain.

Steve Royster, a spokesman for the Consular Affairs Bureau of the State Department, also said he could not comment on specific cases but the department tries to issue visas “as expeditiously as possible.”

“In the vast majority of cases, 97 percent of people approved get their visas in a matter of days,” Royster added. “In cases with further review, we do this as quickly as possible.”

Azfar’s fall semester classes have been canceled and it is not known if he will be here in time to teach in the spring.

“It’s a great loss for the program and students at OSU as well as the faculty,” said Dr. Meghan Sutherland, assistant professor and member of the committee that recommended Azfar. “In the global age it’s more important than ever for us to be building conversations with scholars from other parts of the world with different views and resources and having a genuine engagement. That was an exciting opportunity.”

She added, “He is a very well-known scholar over there who was willing to come here and talk with American students. Because he was trained here he uses tools that make sense to them. He brings concepts that are often difficult for students to master immediately. He makes them familiar through popular culture and that sort of thing without reducing the idea.”

Dr. Carol Moder is the English department head who said she had never seen anything like this before.

“This is a person who is a Fulbright scholar,” Moder said. “For the most part, they are the best and brightest individuals from their home countries. The whole point of the program is to establish good relations between the U.S. and foreign countries. It’s unfortunate that an individual like this is getting caught in this post-9/11 security screening. It’s unfortunate for the students at OSU that they are being deprived of a prominent and interesting faculty member who could really contribute to their program.”

It’s unfortunate for the Hussains as well.

Melissa and their daughter Salma, 3, haven’t seen Azfar since they left Bangladesh to be with Melissa’s ill father in February.

“I am haunted by the specters of U.S. immigration visa bureaucracy,” Azfar said during a telephone interview Friday. “Anything that disrupts a loving, happy family is inhuman.”

Melissa planned to teach one class at OSU and finish the dissertation for her Ph.D. while Azfar’s work paid the bills.

Fortunately for her, the university has provided what help it could.

“The English department has been wonderful,” she said. “It was literally within half an hour that we found out he couldn’t come that they handed me a full-time job.”

She is a lecturer with the department and Azfar is still teaching in the English department at North South University in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Melissa said she believes Azfar is being held up for three reasons — because he is from Bangladesh, because his last name is Hussain and because he has “leftist politics.”

Azfar admits to being an activist, not a terrorist.

“Me, a terrorist?” he asked. “If I’m a terrorist, every peace-loving citizen of the U.S., one who loves democratic values, is also a terrorist. But surely that’s not the case.”

In fact, he said he feels terrorized by the immigration bureaucracy.

Added Melissa, “He has never written anything promoting any kind of violence or hurting anyone. He has been very critical of the U.S. government, but so are plenty of people in this country. He’s a peaceful guy.”

Sutherland said the experience has been eye-opening for her.

“The kind of imprecision of all of this and the lack of clarity is hurting our universities on a broad scale,” she said. “This was a wakeup call that we need to be more proactive and demand some clarity here about these processes so it doesn’t all evolve into a secretive, racial-profiling case that is hiding behind sprawling bureaucracy.”

Dr. Victor Villanueva was Azfar’s Ph.D. adviser at Washington State University in Pullman.

He replied to an e-mail seeking comment.

“Just this week I saw a movie (I don’t remember which one, though it was from Pakistan, I think) in which one of the characters complains about the brain drain, the ways the best and brightest are leaving that country for better lives in West,” Villanueva wrote. “Bangladesh can take pride in realizing that one of their truly brightest — and I have mentored many, many graduate students; and he is by far the brightest and best and most-read I’ve ever known — will not get drained away, at least not yet. For Oklahoma State, though, for all those students wanting to engage in conversations about land and labor and society, there is a loss.”
Published: August 30, 2008