Some Parts of America Are Not In America

Emily Feder, a human-rights worker who spent time in “secondary inspection” at JFK Airport, reports on the appalling conditions tolerated and encouraged by Homeland Security, and compares them (unfavorably) to analogous places in Syria and Russia. This is the mildest part:

The guards processed me then, ignoring the order of arrivals, if there ever had been one. They refused to distribute more complaint forms or call the supervisor back down at the request of Arab families. One officer threatened, “I’m talking politely to you now. If you don’t sit down, I won’t be talking politely to you anymore.” One announced that because “the American girl” had gotten angry, the families would have to wait a few more hours. “The supervisor is not coming back.”

...

In the past five years I have worked for human rights and refugee advocacy organizations in Serbia, Russia and Croatia, including the International Rescue Committee and USAID. I have traveled to many different places, some supposedly repressive, and have never seen people treated with the kind of animosity that Homeland Security showed that night. In Syria, border control officers were stern but polite. At other borders there have been bureaucracies to contend with—excruciating for both Americans and other foreign nationals. I’ve met Russian officials with dead, suspicious looks in their eyes and arms tired from stamping so many visas, but in America, the Homeland Security officials I encountered were very much alive—like vultures waiting to eat.

Read the whole thing and answer a pop quiz question: If an awareness of American values is one thing we want immigrants to have, so they can play well with others in the United States, shouldn’t those guards be deported?

     posted 19 August 2008 by Michael Scott Moore

  1. Honestly, and I am not kidding, I thought you were talking about James Polk and the pig war when I read the headline.I’m still pissed off that a pig died because Canucks stood their ground. Enemy combatants I tell you. North American traitors! Don’t get me started!!!!

    Shhhheeesh…next thing you know people are going to get on John McCain’s case because he wasn’t born in the U.S…cats and dogs living together! The humanity. Pop quiz for John Mc…sorry, I digress.

    e

    — e    Aug 19, 12:44 pm    #

  2. Hear, hear! Deport then to someplace where English is not spoken, where they’re required to have a visa and stay a good long while, preferably in the Middle East somewhere, then let them come back through U.S. customs at a land-border crossing via Mexico. Make them responsible for a simulated infant the whole while, as well.

    — na    Aug 19, 07:11 pm    #

  3. I have to ask…is a “simulated infant” a bag of flour? I think Fonzie even failed this test, and he was in Milwaukee and still got a bronze statute yesterday.

    e

    — e    Aug 21, 05:40 am    #