Of course! Even if you're a heart-throbber, a show-stopper, a lady-killer, still if your last name is Khan, sorry wrong number. Detention and grilling awaits your arrival at airports in America.
The 'Gestapo' brigade hired to scrutinise all the brown sahibs stepping foot on their soil are armed with lists of names like Khan, Hassan, Ali, Mohammad, Hussain etc, etc. These names send red flags raging. Step aside, please, orders an unsmiling immigration officer sitting at the window before a computer. He looks at your passport, reads the name, looks up at your face and without another word tells you to go inside the corridor, turn left and wait for secondary questioning.
Picture this Bollywood superstar Shahrukh Khan flies in from Mumbai and lands at Newark airport in New Jersey.
He expects red carpet treatment in America. Arriving on a special invitation to lead the Indian Independence Day celebrations in Chicago, the Indian actor is ready to board the flight for Chicago once immigration is cleared. Thoroughly pampered and mollycoddled by the Air India cabin staff, including the captain flying him, the air-stewardess and the passengers all consider him God's gift on earth.
Khan is used to such crazy adulation wherever he goes in India and abroad. But America is a world unto its own. It's a strange animal. While it gives an Oscar to a Bollywood inspired movie called Slumdog Millionaire, the minimum-wage-earners getting paid $8 an hour at Newark airport are not expected to know Bollywood's greatest. To them, all Khans must be hauled into the backroom for “secondary questioning” the term euphemistically used by the US immigration.
With his sexy looks and boyish swagger the last thing on Shahrukh's mind is to find himself in a roomful of nervous-looking fellow passengers with Muslim names. He's horrified! He's mad! Imagine the great Khan sharing a bench with ordinary fellas whose only sin is to be Muslims and to be between 20 to 50 years age group. Wait, there's more drama... the law-enforcing agents take him aside and begin to 'frisk' him — the act of searching someone for concealed weapons or illegal drugs.
Maybe the jetlagged, unshaven, tousled-haired, droopy-eyed actor is suspected by the eagle-eyed officers to be on dope. Shahrukh's cell phone has been taken from him. When his name is announced, he goes before a dour-looking officer. Believe it or not, but Shahrukh Khan is grilled for full two hours until help is on its way. He's allowed to make one phone call. He dials the Indian consulate-general in New York. The guy on the other line jumps into action and places a phone call to the American ambassador in New Delhi.
Even more bizarre is Timothy J. Roemer, the US ambassador in New Delhi's statement. We're trying to ascertain the facts of the case... to understand what took place, he says, Shahrukh Khan, the actor and global icon is a very welcome guest in the United States. Many Americans love his films. Oh yeah?
To be fair to the US immigrations, after 9/11, it has stepped up its scrutiny of Muslim males coming into the US and is doing the right thing screening out would-be terrorists. The officers interrogating the men are polite and very businesslike. They are professionals merely doing their duty. Every law abiding American citizen — white, black or brown; Muslim, Christian, Hindu or Jew, has a duty to keep America safe and cooperate with the law enforcement officials as much as he/she can.
Ven Konuru is an Indian American who is an IT specialist living in New Jersey. While it must have hurt Shahrukh Khan's ego to be detained, frisked and grilled for two hours, I will not condemn the immigration officers for this act. They were merely doing their duty as expected of them by us. Let's flip the argument had 9/11 happened in India or Pakistan and the 19 hijackers were white Americans, what do you expect the reception Americans entering our shores would receive? Would the Pakistani or Indian immigration authorities behave the same way the immigration officers did at Newark airport with Shahrukh Khan?
I have no answer. Ven is probably right. While he thinks nobody is above the law (Shahrukh Khan included), but if he was in the running for a job with another white guy, the white guy would get it all things being equal, the white guy would probably be hired. While he's loath to say anything negative about his adopted country, Ven does reluctantly venture out America is at the beginning of a sunset. It has an aging population with shrinking numbers. The people eventually driving it will be Indians, Pakistanis (if allowed that is) and Chinese immigrants. They will be young and not shy from taking risks. The baby-boomers (aging Americans) are on the wane. Still I think America is the greatest country in the world.”
Soon it's time to say goodbye to Ven. As I come out of the hotel where we have had dinner, two 'baby-boomers' waddle out of another room where they have spent the last few hours dancing with singles. Why don't you get married, I ask, instead of hanging around singles bars? Are you kidding? they shoot back at me. We don't want kids!
Ven's prophesy may well come true the end of the white empire. Here's free immigration advice for Pakistanis want to migrate to the US? Okay, but get ready to be grilled at the airport!
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