Sometimes the less said the better. We have all witnessed the erosion of our rights to the “necessities” of homeland security. As Middle Eastern Americans we are used to a certain amount of prejudice. We have come to expect it as the price of living in a new country and collectively wish that our children will not have to face it. But certain actions go beyond our comfort zone. I suggest you read the following as a prime example of this abuse.

Monster Mistake
Job site's move to drop Iranians raises legal and ethical questions

On April 24, Monster.com, the world's largest online job search and career management company, will delete the word "Iran," along with the names of six other countries--Burma /Myanmar, Cuba, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria--from its standard format for resumes. According to the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, the U.S. government has not encouraged Monster to make this decision and does not find it necessary.
In addition to the change to the resumes, individuals and organizations with addresses in these countries will be dropped from Monster's website. Resumes with addresses inside Iran or any of the other countries will be taken down, and employers with an address in any of these countries will no longer be able to use Monster's hiring services. International organizations such as the United Nations, non-governmental organizations, and foreign companies with addresses in these countries will not be exempt, and will no longer be able to use Monster's employment services.
In a form letter dated April 18, and emailed to job seekers with the names of these countries in their resumes, Monster states:
The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, as well as some states, maintain sanctions which prohibit U.S. companies from conducting certain business activities with organizations located in or residents of the following countriesÖ In order for Monster to comply with applicable U.S. Federal
and state regulations, we will be removing the Sanctioned Countries from the site. Your resume included one (or more) of the Sanctioned Countries. Therefore, your resume will be altered, removing all Sanctioned Countries from your resume(s).
On April 21, Kendra Morley, a Monster customer service representative explained the policy to the National Iranian American Council (NIAC): "We are simply taking the names of these countries off our site. We can't have references to these particular countries. Our legal Department found it in Monster's best interest to take those references out."

A Monster.com user in the United States, who in 1994 received a Bachelor of Science degree from Iran University of Science Technology, received the April 18 notification. Monster's customer service department advised him to move that information, currently under "Education," to the "Other Skills" section of his resume because that section "is not searchable." He was also told that Monster decided to take the step as a protective measure from the U.S. Department of Treasury. After contacting the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the individual was informed that no directive or regulation from OFAC required Monster to take such action.

Founded in 1994 by Monster Chairman Jeff Taylor, the company describes itself as "the leading global careers network on the internet." It maintains sites in 22 countries, almost all in Europe, cites millions of job seekers, over a million job postings, and profiles of 130,000 employers.

"My Monster," a free service for job seekers, allows individuals to create and post a detailed resume profile on Monster's website to be searched by employers worldwide. It requires users to type the contents of already existing resumes into a standardized Monster format. As a result of the company's new policy, the names of the specified sanctioned countries can no longer appear as an official location on Monster resumes.

According to Monster, the new policy is not censorship. The company says it will not be scanning resumes for words and deleting them arbitrarily, rather, the sanctioned countries will be taken out of Monster's standard drop down format of countries--this, Monster alleges, is to prevent Iranian employers and individuals from putting up profiles and listings on Monster's website.

Author
Dokhi Fassihian (M.A. in international relations from Johns Hopkins University, Maryland) is a political analyst in Washington DC and member of NIAC. This article first appeared on NIAC's website.

This article, reduced here for editorial purposes, was originally published on the website The Iranian on April 23, 2003