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A young blonde Icelandic woman’s recent experience visiting the US — Signs of the Times News — Read this whole thing. It is fascinating in light of the fact that the country is crawling with illegals from Mexico who are never deported. Not only that but some convicted felons who served jail time and were illegal aliens are not deported. Why this girl? And EXACTLY how does this benefit the USA and the tourist trade? Seriously.
During the last twenty-four hours I have probably experienced the greatest humiliation to which I have ever been subjected. During these last twenty-four hours I have been handcuffed and chained, denied the chance to sleep, been without food and drink and been confined to a place without anyone knowing my whereabouts, imprisoned. Now I am beginning to try to understand all this, rest and review the events which began as innocently as possible.
Last Sunday I and a few other girls began our trip to New York. We were going to shop and enjoy the Christmas spirit. We made ourselves comfortable on first class, drank white wine and looked forward to go shopping, eat good food and enjoy life. When we landed at JFK airport the traditional clearance process began.
We were screened and went on to passport control. As I waited for them to finish examining my passport I heard an official say that there was something which needed to be looked at more closely and I was directed to the work station of Homeland Security. There I was told that according to their records I had overstayed my visa by 3 weeks in 1995. For this reason I would not be admitted to the country and would be sent home on the next flight. I looked at the official in disbelief and told him that I had in fact visited New York after the trip in 1995 without encountering any difficulties. A detailed interrogation session ensued.
I was photographed and fingerprinted. I was asked questions which I felt had nothing to do with the issue at hand. I was forbidden to contact anyone to advise of my predicament and although I was invited at the outset to contact the Icelandic consul or embassy, that invitation was later withdrawn. I don’t know why.
I was then made to wait while they sought further information, and sat on a chair before the authority for 5 hours. I saw the officials in this section handle other cases and it was clear that these were men anxious to demonstrate their power. Small kings with megalomania. I was careful to remain completely cooperative, for I did not yet believe that they planned to deport me because of my “crime”.
Then there is this news report in the Rocky Mountain News:
A federal study last year found that illegal immigrants in prison had been arrested an average of eight times. Another federal study released in May found that it would cost $1.1 billion for enough detention beds to ensure the deportation of all criminals.
Here is the federal study. This is an excellent collector’s item for people who are following these fiascos. Amazing amount of information. (caution PDF)
found by Eddie S.
I’d hold her too!
I think it’s a fair bet most of this goes unreported, and there is far worse that will never see the light of day.
They do this to show that they’re not doing racial profiling of terrorists.
That’s all it is. A demonstration of the idiocy of not using profiles, so we all have to play the make-believe game of “nobody’s more likely than anyone else to do bad things.”
Political Correctness at work, destroying civilization from the inside, a little bit at a time. It makes Osama smile.
As always–the shame is “what is legal.”
In this case, high level officials have determined that people who have overstayed their visa’s in the past are to be denied entry to the GOUSA. Doesn’t matter if they left on their own, have a round trip ticket, have cash in their bank account, and a job/family in Iceland.
Yep, we sure should be proud of ourselves. I wonder how far up the chain it goes? Chartoff? Doesn’t matter–good BushCo imcompetency on continuous display. Proud to be a Texan.
They were trying to create an opportunity for a strip search.
At times I’ve wondered what the illegal immigrant situation would be like if Central and South America weren’t predominantly Christian…
Payback to Iceland for offering citizenship to the late Bobby Fischer?
Maybe they should have a banner at the Reykjavik airport: “Welcome Back to the Axis of Sanity”.
8,
Nah, its all about that punk Icelandic kid that called GWBush on his private phone during nappy time!
8
http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=14983
Not really. Hispanics are an up and coming large voting block. You can’t get the vote if you are tough on their brethren. Standard political bullshit.
# 4 the Three-Headed Cat™ said, That’s all it is. A demonstration of the idiocy of not using profiles,
You gotta be kidding me. You read THIS story and THAT’S the lesson you learn from it? That the US should use profiling more?
Oh, man! Please for the love of America, don’t vote this year.
Yep. Not using statistical profiles brings about this very sort of waste of time money and manpower, while bringing the law to bear on exactly the people the law was NOT intended to address. The time wasted on fucking with her could’ve been better spent trying to catch someone who had actually done something wrong.
I guess you think that wasting law enforcement resources on someone like her while thousands and thousands of Mexican illegals walk the streets unmolested is fair and just, right?
I bet you’d like to tell us that Mexican illegals commit no more crimes nor cost the American taxpayer any more than Icelandic ‘illegals’, even proportionate to their numbers in the U.S., am I right?
Pfffffft.
…and I wonder how many young, bearded Middle Eastern males were waved through while this girl, this obvious threat to our safety and our way of life, was being prevented from blowing us up?
Maybe the U.S. is worried about a Viking invasion.
Seriously though, this sounds messed up.
another perspective…..
http://foreignpolicy.com/story/files/story4137.php
So why was she not allowed to contact her consulate again?
Awhhh, boo hoo hooo she was humiliated.
Too bad!
i’m shure some ultra left liberal is going to give me some flack about this however,
New York and the USA has a real problem with people from outside the USA not wanting to leave when they are suppose to.
Just because she got away with it once doesn’t grant her any special rights to try it again.
its good to know that The Homeland security office did his job.
Now they need to go after all the illegals.
American Citizenship is our most valuable asset. People from other parts of the world should earn it or be born into it.
In New York we have tons of illegals that work off the books, Pay no taxes, send their money back to their
homeland contributing nothing to our economy.
She stated
“”I looked at the official in disbelief and told him that I had in fact visited New York after the trip in 1995 without encountering any difficulties.””
I would like to share a similar story.
I am of Lebanese descent. A friend of mine who is Lebanese and who is a CTO in a Wireless company in the Carribean came to visit me after Christmas ’03 to spend New Year’s ’04 in New York. Not that religion has “anything” to do with this but my friend and myself are both Christians. We planned to meet in Vegas, visit my hometown in San Diego and then fly to New York to spend New Year’s in Time Square.
My friend was detained when he landed in Miami. He had a valid Visa issued prior to 9/11. The homeland security officer decided to deny him entry. He was treated similarly to the girl in the story but was detained for 5 full days. After thorough investigations that unearthed nothing, after solitary confinement and being treated like a criminal, he was finally denied entry and sent back to where he came from.
So after being investigated for 5 days and being found innocent, the least they could do was to allow him entry. But ok, they wanted to be thorough.
Now, the story gets more insane: as I said earlier, I live in San Diego; I applied for a Sentri pass for easy passage back from Tijuana at the border. My application was denied. When I requested clarification, I was met by two border enforcement agents that showed me a picture of my friend and asked me what I knew about this guy. I said google his name and you’ll find him…
Anyway, I chatted with the two officers for 1 hour. I spoke honestly about my opinions and where I think our country should be going. One mistake I did is that I showed my exasperation with the religious fanatics that seem to be leading us. The agents were very cordial; one of them seemed a bit annoyed but I did not think that I said anything different from what an honest American would say or is allowed to express.
Needless to say, I applied again for SENTRI after the obligatory 90 day waiting period and got denied again.
Are all law enforcement agencies populated by brainless twits or what…
#5 “…people who have overstayed their visa’s in the past are to be denied entry to the GOUSA.”
That is a moot point in she overstayed her visa more than 10 years ago and since then she was allowed entry prior to this trip.
What happened is Homeland Security and INS are at odds with each other and there is limited sharing of information.
My wife has US permanent residency, we applied for naturalization and it was a recent trip to the US is how we found out that Homeland Security and the INS share only limited information.
Her residency was flagged but the Immigration officer did not and could not find out why. She was escorted away for an interview which I was allowed to attend.
The interviewing Immigration officer who was extremely nice and polite asked if we knew the reason for this flag. She told him about the pending naturalization interview – Homeland security. He then immediately smiled and stamped her passport and apologized for the inconvenience. I asked him why this happened. He explained that before Homeland Security the INS conducted naturalization interviews and they only share limited information to immigration – for security reasons.
His manner and tone indicated to both of us that he (and the Immigration dept) was not all happy with this situation and that Homeland Security falls short of achieving the task. He also added his wife went through the same process and wished us luck.
Upon reading this story it makes sense how something so stupid could happen from what I was told by that one Immigration officer.
She was taken from Immigration to Homeland Security – that is where the problem was in my opinion. If Immigration conducted the interview she probably would have been on her way – but it was Homeland Security who flagged her passport and took over. As there is limited information sharing between departments this lead to her experience.
Back to our story. When we told my family what had happened upon arrival to the US of course they were sympathetic but added “You must understand we are at war and these things are going to happen but they are necessary for national security”.
WTF!? At war with who…? oh yeah the ‘terrorists’ those guys!
I see the BushCO marketing had the desired effect. Everyday Americans are bombarded with headlines sound bites about terrorists and the “War on Terror(TM)”.
Listening to my family and from what I saw everyday during that visit I was reminded of William L Shirer’s best selling book of the 50’s “The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich”. Mr Shirer lived in Nazi Germany and had first hand knowledge of living in Nazi Germany.
The propaganda the German people were subjected to daily is so similar to what Americans are subjected to now its alarming.
How it goes: The people are at risk from an unseen threat and the only way to be safe is to give up personal freedoms to the government who will protect you and destroy that threat.
Of course with Nazi Germany it was the Jewish conspiracy which of course never existed, today its the terrorists which is a real threat.
However the point I am making is the propaganda both then and now is so similar in method and effect. It removes all rational thinking from a frightened populous who readily submit and hand over power to the government.
Who can argue that the people have now become subservient to the government instead of the government being subservient to the people and most of the people are happy about it?!
What a mess…
Cheers
#18 Richard Brill –
Its not as big of a deal overstaying a visa as you would think. It depends on the country circumstance and reasons. Three weeks might not be such long time to overstay but if she was not working illegally or otherwise involved in criminal acts Immigration would not have banned her for life or longer than 10 years!
The first time I visited Indonesia long ago I overstayed my visa almost two weeks by accident. I was to be fined but then that was dropped and I was told to just be more careful next time.
I had a British friend in Australia who overstayed his visa for a few years and was working. He was caught and banned from travel to Australia for 5 years. I saw him again after about 3 years as he applied was still able to get an Australian Visa! This time he only visited. BTW Everyone needs a visa to visit Australia except New Zealanders.
The fact this girl was issued a US visa on arrival after she had overstayed her visa in 1995 is enough to allow her to visit this time unless she had overstayed her visa that time as well.
I do think its interesting that visitors to the US get a stamp in their passport on arrival but not leaving. So how does Immigration / Homeland Security knows when someone leaves and when?
I assume the airline sends visitor departure information to Immigration / Homeland Security when a visitor leaves the US…or do they? If they do what if there was a mistake? Opps, with no stamp in your passport its just your word against theirs unless you happen to produce your old boarding pass when you departed – like you keep them anyways. (Yes I know she would have had an arrival stamp in her Icelandic passport but she may have already changed it due to when it expired)
Perhaps that is where the problem is…yeah? 😉
Cheers
I think they profile young blonde females. My daughter travels a lot. She gets stoped almost everytime.
It is so sad to see the great nation of yours turning into a Soviet style security paranoia – with brain-deads to guard you.
#22 – THIZ_Ho:
“So how does Immigration / Homeland Security knows when someone leaves and when?”
My thoughts exactly. I have no idea how immigration keeps track of who has not overstayed when leaving the US. Although possible, it seems unlikely that airlines would share this information
#22 – THIZ_Ho:
“Yes I know she would have had an arrival stamp in her Icelandic passport but she may have already changed it due to when it expired”
Although I have no idea about Iceland’s immigration procedures, the home nation generally does not stamp passports issued from their own country for their citizens leaving or entering the country.
I felt a little discrimination with the Mexicans in your comment, but that’s ok…
When I was in NY last year, a stupid fat girl from the Immigration offended me and my wife, and we have to stay quiet.
Xenophobe is still too strong in your country, shame on you.
Welcome to Government Bureacracy. Isn’t this story just an extreme case of “You need to stand in that line, not this one.”?
#26 thedude said – “…the home nation generally does not stamp passports issued from their own country for their citizens leaving or entering the country”
Hey, that’s right! I just check my passport and I never noticed that before…though I haven’t lived the US for quite some time so it is easy to see why.
#27 EduardoFromBrazil – Why call her FAT why not just stupid? If I may respectfully comment it sounds like you have some issues as well.
Speaking of being offended by others in another country…my wife and I attended the ABRAFATI trade show in San Paulo a few months back.
My wife is Chinese and she commented that she was treated as a second class person on more than one occasion. Aside from that we enjoyed the trip very much and the actions of some stupid people did not spoil our impression of Brazil. I would suggest you ought to do the same – fat or otherwise. 😉
Cheers
Her young carefree last minute behavior probably set off some red flags and then by not knowing what to expect she probably blew the Q and A session.
We all probably reading into this too much,and yes its a bitter pill to swallow, however,
The fact remains the United states of America was attacked on 9/11/2007 and if means kicking some chick back to the cold country she came from it goes with the territory. So be it.
TIHZ_HO said,
“Of course with Nazi Germany it was the Jewish conspiracy which of course never existed, today its the terrorists which is a real threat.”
Please explain?
5 million Jews where killed!
Hey they have to prove that all the money they are getting is needed. just like cops who go on speeding ticket binges so that the city gets more cash. So why not detain a cute blonde that they’ll probably molest.