This is exactly why I left the US:
Under the new US immigration rules, all male immigrants aged 16 and over from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria had to register with authorities by Monday unless they had been naturalised as citizens.
How long before the end of that sentence is removed — “regardless of whether they are naturalised or not?” How long before the armband stars and the concentration camps (oh, excuse me, internment camps) in the Arizona desert?
*sighs heavily*
we walk the same line.
What do you think Camp X-Ray in Grenada is?
Bush is a fucking fascist. Yay for AmeriKKKa. :P
-Ben
Not to suggest that I am or sound like some jingo nationalist freak but I sorta gotta look at it like affirmative action. It isn’t a perfect solution. It might not even be a real solution (and yeah admittedly I’m not an arab or muslim or anything that might be confused with them nor have I been going through what they have), but at least the country is attempting to do.. something. After all, doing something even making a mistake at least takes action that can be corrected as opposed to sitting around and doing nothing. And seems like too many people right now need to do something whatever it is. This isn’t to say that what is done is necessarily right or moral. I don’t really know myself how to decide between searching arabs/muslims simply because there’s little other way to distinguish who might be who and allowing more thousands of citizens to come under attack like what happened before. While it might be easy for any of us to make that decision one way or another, we aren’t personally or professionally held accountable for the consequences of making that decision. That’s why we have a president. And as much as I dislike the general philosophy at times of our current President, I don’t envy his position of having to make those decisions while running the rest of the country as well. For the most part, this DOES seem to reflect the sentiment of enough of the country that it will happen. In some ways, I think it’s good that that sentiment is reflected and acted upon (else those segments would be left out of the voice which I think is worse in the long run — it’s already felt like that’s been happening for a while). In other ways, it’s bad in that it relies on the general population to actually be conscious of the decisions resulting from its will and sentiment and to take responsibility for when they are going too far. And yeah, the US’s history has demonstrated time and again that it has gone very very far. Dunno, I have to think that’s the price of being able to live together as a society and have the finer things in life beyond hiding in a mud hut. On the other hand, I also think it’s good that people somewhere ARE watching what the country is doing like a hawk. If anything, taking some sort of action is good but they should be aware of the consequences of those actions as well; heaven forbid we do something and remain entirely ignorant of what happens…..
Alright, after being a good boy and going to READ the article in your link that just seems… hmmm.. The quote itself didn’t sound that bad.
Doods showed up to register, following the law and cooperating… and they were arrested? The only legit reason cited being these suspicious infractions of immigration stuffs they’re supposed to go through. Hmm.. presuming the article is valid.. just dunno. Suppose those are valid reasons in a sense, though I’d have to agree in that there’s something going on.. Most people can tell when something isn’t quite right, even if they don’t know exactly what it is or why it’s happening.. :P
Watch http://www.usps.com for ticket EU719814054US. The boots are finally on their way!
BTW, Zo-zo went in to register (he’s Pakistani) – and came back to tell the rest of the guys to get their visas in order BEFORE going in –
I don’t know what to think – were so many people on expired visas and INS was so scaled back they couldn’t do anything about it until these people walked in the door for them?!
Excuse me, but didn’t you leave the country BEFORE 9/11/01 & all subsequent events? What prompted you to leave before all this happened? The situation here isn’t great but I don’t think any other country would act differently if it happened to them.
SirV
I left the country prior to the terrorist attacks, true. But this is part of the reason I never intend to return. And the tone/culture was already changing when I left (around the time of the 2000 elections). This is just its logical extension.
If you think all countries would react this way, then you’re definitely wrong. But even if I ended up living in a different country that pulled the same stunts, I’d leave that country too.
THANK YOU! :) :) :)
I really don’t get it, yeah. And wouldn’t the INS already know of their expired visas? This just implies that the INS has absolutely no clue what’s going on…
Can you give me an example of a country that wouldn’t respond the way the US has and what they would do instead? I really don’t know what is the “enlightened” way to deal with something of that magnitude.
SirV