Iroquois National team stuck in New York another day despite US waivers on passport dispute

Canada also working on a deal. Team still needs UK visas.

Update:
New York City - Unable to fly today to compete in the world lacrosse championships because of a passport dispute, the Iroquois Nationals will spend the night in a hotel in New York and try again Thursday, team general manager Ansley Jemison said at 4:15 p.m.

Jemison said he is cautiously optimistic that the British, Canadian and U.S. governments would allow the team to travel Thursday to England on its Haudenosaunee passports.

But he said he did not know if the team would be able to arrive in time for their first game of the tournament.

The State Department agreed today to issue waivers that guarantee the U.S. born players on the Native American team will be allowed to re-enter the United States without U.S. passports.

But the British consulate in New York said it does not consider the State Department waivers valid travel documents, said Abigail Gardner, a spokesman for Rep. Dan Maffei, D-DeWitt, who is trying to help the team.

The British government has not agreed to provide team members with visas, Gardner said.

This afternoon, the Iroquois Nationals left JFK airport and returned to their hotel in New York City, where they will spend the night, Jemison said.

He said the team has not made reservations for any flights to Europe on Thursday.

"I"m making sure my team is in the right mindset," Jemison said.

"We’re trying to see what our next move is," he said.

Update:
New York City – The State Department may have given its OK, but the Iroquois Nationals lacrosse team still needs clearances from the Canadian and British governments before it can take off for the world championships in England, making it doubtful whether the team can fly today.

“I have not received anything in my hands yet. I’m just standing in an airport right now. I’m just waiting to hear back from by board of directors as to what’s going on,” team General Manager Ansley Jemison said about 2:30 p.m. during a hurried phone interview from Kennedy International Airport.

The 4 p.m. flight that the team booked was more or less standby, dependent on whether the team would get the travel documents it needed, he said.

“Unfortunately I’ve got a team full of guys sitting on a bus waiting outside the airport, just trying to wait for clearance,” he said.

He cut short the conversation to talk to an official for Delta Air Lines, the carrier with which the team and its entourage had tickets for a flight to Amsterdam. The team hoped to fly to London from there, then take a five-hour train ride to Manchester, England, site of the championships.

The prospects of making that flight improved this morning, when Cheryl Mills, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s chief of staff, and Iroquois lawyers worked out an arrangement that would let team members travel using Haudenosaunee passports.

Although Iroquois members have traveled for three decades using their nation’s passports without problem, U.S. officials balked on this occasion when British counterparts asked whether the United States would honor the passport when they returned from the tournament. The refusal was based on the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, which clamped down on the use of tribal documents for international travel last year.

The solution reached today was to issue a one-time-use document that would let the players born on this side of the U.S.-Canada border to travel with Haudenosaunee passports.

By mid-afternoon, however, Jemison said he had not received the needed papers from the State Department. He also had not heard whether the Canadian government would issue temporary papers for the players born on its side of the border or whether the British government would require them to obtain visas, he said.

“It looks like we’re getting shut out of our flights because this has been taking so long,” Jemison said. “If we had our documents in hand, they could start processing them.”

If the team misses today’s flight it will try again Thursday. The Nationals are supposed to play at 7:30 p.m. Thursday and would have to forfeit that game if they can’t get there on time, Jemison said.

Previously:
Syracuse, NY - The State Department agreed today to give players on the Iroquois Nationals team who were born in the United States a last-minute, one-time waiver that will allow them to travel to England and compete in the 2010 World Lacrosse Championships.

The waivers will not help Iroquois Nationals players who were born in Canada to travel to the games, however.

Oren Lyons, the Onondaga faithkeeper, is holding a news conference with the team at 12:30 p.m. at the American Indian Community House in New York City to discuss how the team of Native American players will proceed.

An Iroquois Nationals representative who was involved in the top-level negotiations with the State Department said that the team is working with Canadian authorities to get a one-time waiver for the Canadian players.

View full sizeRamin Talaie/The New York TimesJeremy Thompson of the Iroquois national lacrosse team stretches on a field with teammates during a practice session at Wagner College in New York, on July 12, 2010. The Iroquois helped invent lacrosse, but a passport dispute could prevent them from competing in the world championships.

"We did have a break-through," said Tonya Gonnella Frichner, an Onondaga and North America's regional representative to the United Nations' Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. "The State Department is making an accommodation. We’re very pleased with the positive results we’re getting."

If the Canadian players cannot travel to England, the team is unlikely to go without them, according to another Iroquois Nationals representative involved in the negotiations.

Cheryl Mills, the chief of staff for Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, approved of the one-time waivers for the players born in the United States this morning during a conference call with several attorneys representing the team and with Iroquois Nationals General Manager Ansley Jemison, said Joseph Heath, a Syracuse attorney who represents the traditional Haudenosaunee governments.

The Iroquois Nationals hope to travel to England using Haudenosaunee passports, as it has done since 1977.

The team applied to the British government for visas about three weeks ago, Heath said. It was notified last week by the British that it would not issue visas unless the U.S. Department of Homeland Security would certify that the players could re-enter the United States on the Haudenosaunee visas, Heath said. The Department of Homeland Security was unwilling to do that.