Filipino’s Case Challenges Visa Rule

The State Department has denied a travel visa to a former Philippine Communist leader living in exile in the Netherlands, prompting a possible conflict over whether the action violates a congressional mandate to halt exclusions based on a person’s political beliefs.

Jose Maria (Joma) Sison, who more than 20 years ago founded the Maoist-oriented Communist Party of the Philippines and its military arm, the New People’s Army, sought the visa to appear in Honolulu federal court early next year. He is among numerous plaintiffs suing the late Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos for human rights abuses in a case set for trial before U.S. District Judge Manuel L. Real in February. Sison also had asked permission to visit his ailing 89-year-old mother in Los Angeles.

His visa was rejected by U.S. consular officials in the Netherlands on grounds that he was affiliated with a terrorist organization. Sison has appealed that ruling to the secretary of state.

A State Department spokesman would not comment on the visa case but said consular officers have the authority to deny a visa to “any alien who has ever engaged in, or if there is any reason to believe will engage in, terrorist activities.”

American Civil Liberties Union attorneys representing Sison and his family deny that the Filipino exile is a terrorist. In Los Angeles, ACLU attorney Paul Hoffman called that claim “ridiculous.”

Last year, Congress passed legislation intended to sharply reduce visa denials based on an applicant’s ideology. It left in place, however, restrictions on those affiliated with terrorist groups. The ACLU contends that the Sison denial is an abuse of that terrorist exclusion.

“The law was intended to keep out the bomb throwers, not those who are politically active in groups that the State Department thinks are terrorists,” said Kate Martin, an ACLU attorney in Washington. “That makes this case an important and dangerous precedent.”

Congressional concern that ideological undesirables might be excluded by an overly broad interpretation of the terrorist clause prompted new rules that took effect last month requiring the secretary of state to justify in a report to Congress any visa denials using the clause.