Undoing the dream: Iranians look for "somewhere civilized" to call home. (Enemies of the State).

When Houman Mortazavi left his horneland of Iran for the United States six years ago, he brought with him grand visions of opportunity and freedom that he believed awaited him in his new country.

"I really bought into the open, western democracy story that we grew up with when we were in Iran," the 37-year-old artist said.

Unfortunately, those dreams were never realized, but were replaced instead with a more bitter reality of registration lines, mug shots, and fingerprinting at immigration offices across the country. For the Iranian community, whose largest concentrations can be found in the Los Angeles area and the Great Neck section of Nassau County, the issue hits very close to home.

"This is not my war. I'm just a casualty," said Mortazavi, who lives in Los Angeles, and is one of the more than 500 estimated Iranian men who underwent voluntary registration there. "The thing that scares me is that we're going to become like Israel, a police state with institutionalized segregation." Mortazavi is in the country on an extended work permit and is currently seeking green-card status.

Guiti Lami came for something else. She left Iran in 1978, a year before the revolution, in search of a better life. "We went from a place where they were profiling, not racially, but politically. We came from that zoo and now ...