Meet Mehreen Faruqi.
Source: The Australian
She is an Australian politician who is an MP in the New South Wales state of Australia’s Legislative Council since 19 June 2013. She is also one of MangoBaaz‘s Pakistani Super Women who are changing how the world views Pakistanis.
Mehreen was questioned at the Los Angeles International Aiport on Thursday in a case of what she is calling “racial profiling”.
Source: Daily Life
Travelling with her husband, who is also a Pakistani-born Australian, Mehreen said she was stopped by airport authorities after she had her fingerprints done and presented her passports for identification.
The authorities, she said, asked, “how we got Australian Passports”. To this she replied, “we said it was because we lived there and they asked where we were originally from. When we said Pakistan we were told that someone would be escorting us to the interview room.”
She was asked in a “really aggressive” manner to present identification other than her Australian passport.
Source: The Daily Telegraph
Having been an Australian citizen for 22 years and a resident in Australia for 24, Mehreen said she was humiliated by the way she and her husband were treated.
“The interview was along the same lines: why are you here, do you have a Pakistani passport, have you been to Pakistan, what do you do there,” reported The Guardian.
“To be asked how I got an Australian passport is ridiculous on one level and heart-wrenching at another,” she said. “You don’t expect it, you know you haven’t done anything. It’s a little bit embarrassing.”
Mehreen tweeted about her ordeal, getting response from those who had undergone the same treatment
After fingerprinting etc, we were asked how we 'got' Aussie passports & marched off to the interview room for grilling. Welcome to America.
— Mehreen Faruqi (@MehreenFaruqi) January 14, 2016
She said her case might be noticed because she held a public office but “I know that people are treated this way every day”.
“The concern for me is that the political debate about racism and Islamophobia is at a very low level at the moment and it feeds into this sort of thing,” she told The Guardian.