America After 9/11: Freedom Perceived or Freedom Lost?

Testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Immigration, Border Security, and Citizenship.

"Mr. Chairman and other distinguished members of the committee. My name is Muzaffar Chishti. I am a lawyer and I direct the Migration Policy Institute’s office at New York University’s School of Law. I applaud you for holding these hearings to address the serious implications of our government’s policies since September 11, and thank you for inviting me to testify. 

The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) is an independent, non-partisan think-tank dedicated to the study of the movement of people world-wide. The institute provides analysis grounded in research and practical experience, develops policy proposals, and offers evaluation of immigration and refugee policies and programs at the local, national, and international levels. It aims to meet the rising demand for pragmatic responses to the challenges and opportunities that large scale migration, whether voluntary or forced, presents to communities and institutions in an increasingly integrated world. 

In our commitment to generating informed and thought provoking proposals that support sound immigration policy, MPI recently concluded its report, America’s Challenge: Domestic Security, Civil Liberties and National Unity after September 11. I coauthored the report along with Doris Meissner, the former INS Commissioner and now a Senior Fellow at MPI, and Demetrios Papademetriou, Jay Peterzell, Michael Wishnie, and Stephen Yale-Loehr. 

MPI’s report is a comprehensive look at our immigration policies after September 11. It critically examines major anti-terrorism initiatives from the perspectives of national security, civil liberties, and social unity. It is based on the views of senior intelligence and law enforcement officials, results of numerous interviews with Arab and Muslim community leaders, and more than 400 profiles of post-September 11 individual detainees. 

The report advances an alternative framework of immigration policy and enforcement that is more likely to achieve security, civil rights, national unity goals than a number of current policies. A distinguished group of experts—ranging from former senior law enforcement, intelligence, and foreign policy officials to leaders of immigrant and civil rights community – served as our advisory panel. This testimony is based on our report.[...]"