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CRESSY BEATS ADVERSITY Freshman Emily Cressy has helped Kansas to a 7-3 record. SOCCER |1B
THE STUDENT VOICE SINCE 1904
BANNED BOOKS READ ON CAMPUS KU Libraries employees organize event to bring attention to Banned Books Week. LIBRARIES | 6A
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2008
ELECTION 2008
Alaskan students evaluate Gov. Palin
Palin will face Biden tonight in the only vice-presidential debate
BY JESSE TRIMBLE
jtrimble@kansan.com
Only 11 University of Kansas students hail from Sarah Paliri's home state of Alaska. Palin, running mate to presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain, is governor of the same state basketball player Mario Chalmers is from.
Eric Meyer, Fairbanks, Alaska, senior, said that Palin was a good governor, but she wasn't getting his vote Nov. 4.
Tonight Palin will face off with Sen. Joe Biden, Sen. Barack Obama's running mate, in the vice-presidential debates at Washington University in St. Louis at 8 p.m.
"I was shocked when McCain announced Palin as his running mate," Meyer said. "I just thought to myself, 'Does he know what he's doing?'
Meyer, who registered as an Independent when he was a senior in high school, voted for Sen. John Kerry in 2004. Meyer said that many residents of Fairbanks were registered Republicans, but his parents were also registered as Independents. Meyer said that in some ways Palin gave Alaska a bad name.
Meyer said Palin did have strong points despite some faults, pointing out financial problems that Alaskans have faced.
"When she said she could see Russia from her back door and that polar bears aren't endangered when there's all this evidence out there that they are," Meyer said, "I think that was the worst decision for her."
"But she's not going to change my vote," Meyer said, who will be casting his decision for Obama and Biden by way of an absentee ballot for Alaska.
"Plus most of my friends from back home say that she's hot and she'll represent Alaska well in that sense," Meyer said, laughing. He said that she was gun-toting, anti-abortion, and what his friends called a classy conservative.
Bethany Harris, Fairbanks, Alaska senior, still has to decide who she will be voting for.
While attending high school in Alaska, Harris registered to vote as Republican, but upon moving to Kansas to attend the University in 2002 Harris changed to Democrat. She voted for Kerry in 2004.
"Lawrence is just such a politically charged city," Harris said. "It's just part of it."
When she travels back to Alaska, Harris said she got a lot of grief from her family about her change to Democrat.
Since moving to Lawrence, Harris said she had been drawn to more political issues, especially when McCain announced Palin as his running mate.
"My family loves her," Harris said. "They think she's a young, no-nonsense go-getter and they are pretty convinced she will shake up the White House in Washington."
Harris said when Palin was elected as governor in 2006, her family was estatic. She said they were tired of the way the state had been run by the previous governor, who had bought a private jet with taxpayer money for his personal use.
SEE ALASKA ON PAGE 6A
Visa laws and his refugee status have left one senior without a home country.
BY RYAN MCGEENEY
rmcqeeney@kansan.com
Of all the reasons anyone might choose to attend graduate school, this may be the most dire. It may be the only way to maintain a home in the world.
One University senior is faced with such a choice after he graduates with a bachelor's degree in economics in December. He must leave the United States for the ambiguity of a stateless life in the Middle East or extend his schooling for at least another two years in this country, hoping his situation somehow resolves itself.
The senior, although born and raised in the United Arab Emirates, is considered a Palestinian war refugee and is one of tens of thousands of people around the world caught in a complex web of international immigration laws that occasionally result in a situation called "statelessness."
"It's really frustrating, because I have no home on the map," the senior said. "No country that I call home."
"You don't understand what it's like over there," he said, after learning that a cousin had recently been jailed without charge after discussing politics in a coffee shop in Dubai. "There is no freedom of speech, not really."
The senior said his grandfather, who fled Palestine in 1967, was issued a legal
The senior asked that his name be withheld because he fears repercussions from government agencies against himself or his family, most of which still dwell in the UAE.
document by the Egyptian government known as an Egyptian Document of Travel for Palestinian War Refugees. The document, which serves in lieu of full-fledged citizenship in any given country, was passed down through the senior's father — a KU alumnus who now lives in the UAE — to the senior himself, who used the document to travel to the U.S. for study in 2004.
The senior's father owns a business in the United States and possesses an L-1 visa (a temporary document that allows individuals to enter the United States on business). The senior initially came to the U.S. on a L-2 visa, which is issued to the relatives of L-1 visa holders. After a year, however, the senior applied for an F-1 student visa so he could obtain a social security number and work legally in America. This allowed him to earn money in Lawrence, but it also terminated his L-2 visa.
This led to an additional complication: A student must reapply for an F-1 visa every time he leaves the United States. This is done at the U.S. Embassy in the student's home country. But because of his refugee status, UAE authorities would confiscate the senior's refugee travel document upon his arrival as a kind of collateral against the senior simply disappearing into the population. Officials would not return the document until his departure, so there would be no way to present the document at the U.S. Embassy, and no way to obtain a new F-1 visa. If the senior had full citizenship, none of this would be an issue.
Graphic by Becka Cremer, map courtesy of CIA Factbook
Because of the complications involved, the senior chose not to leave the United States, which led to his current predicament. The UAE required that he return every six months because he lacked full citizenship. When he failed to do this, the UAE terminated whatever citizenship he had.
"I just really didn't think it was that big of a deal at the time," the senior said. "I thought because I was born and raised in that country that I would be an exceptional case. But I was wrong."
Statelessness is often a product of warfare and shifting national boundaries, and occasionally the dissolution of entire countries. It can produce large populations
"We don't have a firm number on it," Erwinsaid, "because we rely on governments to give us those figures. But the research suggests that there may be up to 11,000,000 people globally without a country or nationality of their own."
without citizenship, according to Tim Erwin, a spokesman for the office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees.
The senior's situation, however, is the result of an administrative process not an act of war. The Byzantine nature of immigration and Visa laws can be
SEE COUNTRY ON PAGE 6A
ARTS
French play puts couples' troubles in amusing light
Outrageous romantic entanglements and physical comedy surround the French farce, "A Flea in Her Ear". The
show begins tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. in Mutphy Hall.
FULL STORY PAGE 4A
WOMEN'S BASKETBALL
index
Kansas helps ESPN kick off college basketball season
The women's basketball team will appear on ESPN for the first time since 2000 when they host Iowa at 1 p.m. on Nov. 18. The game is part of a season kickoff on ESPN
that will feature 14 games across the ESPN family of networks.
FULL STORY PAGE 3A
Classifieds. 3B Opinion. 5A
Crossword. 4A Sports. 1B
Horoscopes. 4A Sudoku. 4A
All contents, unless stated otherwise. © 2008 The University Daily Kansan
SENATE PASSES $700B FINANCIAL BAILOUT
After the addition of tax breaks and other sweeteners', senators passed the financial bailout bill 74-25. NATIONAL |3A
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