January 17, 2003	Friday	Ziqa'ad 13, 1423

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WASHINGTON, Jan 16: The United States government has decided to give a second chance to thousands of immigrants from 18 mainly Muslim countries to register with the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Most of them belong to two groups of countries whose nationals were required to register earlier but had missed the deadline.

Officials at the Department of Justice told Dawn on Thursday that those who failed to register within the given period “can now register between Jan 27 to Feb 7”.

“We do not want to punish those who were not informed on time or failed to register for genuine reasons,” said Mark Corallo, a spokesman for the Justice Department.

Various human rights and Muslim advocacy groups had earlier urged the US government to extend the deadline. They said the government had not adequately publicized the registration programme and that is why thousands of people failed to register.

The grace period would apply to long-term male visitors from five countries — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria — who missed the Dec 16 deadline, according to an INS notice published on Thursday in the Federal Register.

The extra time would also apply to those from Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Eritrea, Lebanon, Morocco, North Korea, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen, who missed a Jan 10 deadline.

INS officials believe fear of arrest or deportation, lack of knowledge about the programme and large crowds at local offices might have prevented many of the affected people from registering earlier.

Under a programme enacted by Congress in response to the Sept 11 terrorist attacks on the US, males 16 years and above from 25 countries are required to visit local INS offices to be photographed and fingerprinted and show certain documents. Some countries included are considered potential havens for terrorists.

Different deadlines have been imposed for different countries. The biggest group to this point is the 14,000 men and boys from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan who must register by Feb 21.

Hundreds of people, mainly Iranians, were detained in Southern California last month when the registration deadline arrived for the first group of visa holders.

That prompted angry demonstrations and a lawsuit against the federal government.

The decision to provide a grace period, from Jan 27 to Feb 7, comes as the INS expanded the registration programme to add men and boys from Indonesia, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and Bangladesh.