Last updated on Tuesday, July 15, 2003

and that is the scary part.” Regardless, he wants to stay here. “I have lived one-third of my life here and I’m part of this society. If I go back, I will be a stranger there. What am I going to do over there? My life is here now.”

Johanna Habib, an attorney at the Center, orchestrates the clinics where pro bono attorneys and law students give consultations to people, who are often too poor to be able to afford an attorney. “This year itself we have had more than 300 Arabs come in with questions and in need of help,” she said. “We try and find attorneys who will take their cases for free or at a discounted rate, write letters to their appointed judge asking for more time, represent clients who are most likely to be deported.”

Rachiq Yassine, better known as Snow, may be on the verge deportation, too. He came from Morocco to the States on a six-month tourist visa in July 2000 that he overstayed. Snow worked 12-hour shifts, seven days a week, for $300 at a grocery store in Brooklyn so he could send money home to his parents and brother. “Finally my dad [who also over stayed his visa and is an illegal immigrant now] told me that I needed a solution and that I couldn’t live like a slave,” says Snow. In January 2001, he moved to Cincinnati, Ohio to work in a restaurant. “It was a good job, I was working 10-hour shifts, six days a week; it was more like the American life.” On his day off he did odd jobs at an Italian woman’s house to earn extra money.

Eventually things turned sour between Snow and his employer and he returned to New York in July 2001, even though he would be jobless and homeless. Snow sought refuge in a mosque in Astoria. “There were so many people in that mosque,” he says. “Everyone had problems; the women would be crying; the men knew no English; inside I didn’t feel human.”

But it was in that mosque that Snow met his wife, Ghizlane. He felt sorry for her family and took them around to help them find an apartment. Ghilzlane’s father was scared that she would forget her religion and her values and wanted to marry her off rather than risk letting her loose, and Snow pitched for the position. The entire family moved to Cincinnati again, but Snow returned within a few weeks, four days after the 9/11 attacks.

Snow worked around-the-clock at a grocery store to save enough for an apartment so that he and Ghizlane could marry. The couple finally tied the knot on February 6, 2003 and moved into an apartment in Brooklyn across the hallway from Ghizlane’s parents and brother. Ghizlane, 17, is in the process of getting a GED at a school on 34th Street. Snow currently spends his days selling newspapers from 6-10 a.m. at Battery Park and then rushes to a Wall Street sandwich and smoothie shop where he works till 9 PM.

Even though Snow and Benbader are illegal immigrants, their having to undergo special registration is being seen as ethnic profiling. “I wonder why Germany, Spain, France and England are not included in this list especially as most of the terrorists involved in the September 11 attacks had support from these countries,” says Stanley Cohen, a civil rights attorney. “This is ethnic profiling and is just racist and xenophobic. Especially if you notice that they have chosen those countries that statistically are mostly Muslim.”

The government however has denied this. “These countries were selected on the basis of the fact that they promote state sponsored terrorism,” Jorge Martinez, spokesman Department of Justice says. “Registration is based solely on nationality and citizenship, not ethnicity or religion,” he says.

Snow is not a terrorist, nor he skulking around up to no good. “I just want to stay here for five-six years, make enough money and then go back home to start my own business,” Snow says. But he and Ghizlane are trying to deal with their worst nightmare—the deportation proceedings that were started when he went to register at the INS. “At times I say that let’s forget about the papers; she will soon become an American citizen and then she can fix my situation,” he says.

The Center is currently besieged with stories similar to that of Snow and Benbader, some better and some worse. But this is not the only work that they do. The Center, which was established in 1993 and started work the following year, also offers child welfare programs, parenting classes, classes on how to deal with domestic violence, English as Second Language and cultural orientation for new immigrants, counseling for adolescents especially on how to deal with the backlash since 9/11, as well as tutoring and mentoring for students.

Some of the clients who come for guidance on special registration speak only Arabic or Farsi and need a translator in order to communicate with the attorneys, many of whom, including Habib, don’t speak those languages. But other employees at the Center can be depended upon to help out with translations.

“Most of these men,” Habib says, “have no economic opportunity in their home countries, their children are often starving as they live from paycheck to paycheck and they just need a chance to give their families a better a life.”

“I wish that I can live here,” says Snow. “I got an American dream, but they are trying to burn it. It’s hard. I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”