The "charming" morons hired by Immigration

A friend of mine, who is Canadian, lives there with her American husband. The husband's father recently died and they have had to come to the U.S. a couple of times to settle matters of the father's estate. Having just returned from one of those trips she told me what happened as they were driving down to the U.S.

At the U.S. border they had another one of the insufferably long waits that Immigrations now routinely inflicts, discouraging millions in revenue for the country. These waits have basically killed off the previously thriving industry of Canadians coming to America to do shopping.

At the border they were approached by a Immigration thug who shaves his head and wears military sunglasses—a look I suggest is consciously thought through to make a statement that is supposed to be intimidating. I still contend that many people attracted to this line of work are actually petty thugs and bullies who are attracted to the job because they like to order people around—perhaps it is to compensate for small dicks, I'm sure it is to compensate for small brains, however. The productive marketplace, that is non-government employment, does not have much demand for bullies, especially dumb bullies.

The border thug demands to know why they are visiting the U.S., remember the driver is a U.S. citizen and the Canadian is his wife. The husband informs the curt skinhead that the trip was to settle his father's estate. Having looked at the passports, that is government permission slips given to "free" people allowing them to do what they did for millenniums without permission, the skinhead knew very little, but enough for his next question, so he thought.

He then asks my friends, "What is the status of the father?" A truly odd question if you think about it. After all they just told him they were going to settle the father's estate. The husband was so baffled by the question he sat there trying to figure out what the skinhead was talking about.

My friend, the wife, was startled by the question because it seemed so patently absurd to her as well. She responded: "He's dead."

That was sufficient to "set the guard off. He tore into me with a lecture about how [her husband's] father needed a status to have a residence and an estate in America, etc., etc., etc."

Actually, owning an estate is entirely independent of having "a status." And by status it was now clear that the skinhead was demanding to know if my friend's father was an illegal alien. So, what would trigger that line of questioning?

One thing, and one thing only. His surname is Hispanic. Remember he is a U.S. citizen, born in the U.S., his father was NOT an illegal alien. His only crime was having a Hispanic surname. Racial profiling and skinheads go together, and only the government gives the skinheads authority like this. Normally when they engage in racial harassment it is illegal, but not when working for government.

I am sure that the surname was the reason this sort of profiling was done. I also suspect that there was a second factor: the skinhead didn't know what it meant to "settle the estate." Given the intelligence level of people attracted to government employment I suspect he gave the term no consideration at all. All he heard was "father" and "estate" and then wants to know the "status" of the father, without realizing that normal people don't equate the word "status" with having permission papers from the federal authorities.

When my friend blurted out, rather surprised by the question, that the father was dead the skinhead realized he made a stupid assumption. Actually he made two stupid assumptions. First he assumed that having a Hispanic surname would mean the father could be an illegal alien. Second, it didn't dawn on him that the father was not living in the U.S., but was dead and buried in the U.S.

The reason he "tore into" my friend so heavily was because he was trying to cover up his own ignorance. But why bother? Surely the skinhead-military-sunglasses look already revealed the kind of ignorant moron that he clearly was. Opening his mouth only confirmed the obvious.

Yes, assuming a Hispanic name means "illegal" is stupid, but government policy encourages that sort of thing. But having a name assumed to be Hispanic doesn't mean one is either Hispanic or an alien. I remember one incident where three people I knew well all received solicitations to subscribe to the Spanish edition of Time magazine. All three had surnames that are widely assumed to be Hispanic, none were Hispanic and none could speak or read Spanish. Such false assumptions, in the private sector, are just amusing anecdotes with no harmful consequences possible.

Such assumptions, when made by morons with guns and the authority to use them, have very bad potential consequences. For example, remember the case of the man in Chicago, who was incarcerated for days because the morons didn't realize that Puerto Rico is part of the United States, not that it should be.

The skinhead mentality is alive and well, and it is always unpleasant. In the private sector when it exhibits itself the law is supposed to restrain it to non-violent acts. But when the mentality is backed by government power it becomes quite dangerous and potentially lethal. And while my friends on the Left would applaud much of what I say here, I want to remind them that it is the concentration of state power that makes this a problem. Skinheads acting privately are restrained by the law, skinheads with government "authority" are set loose on the public. The same disgusting mentality is magnified when combined with big government.

Too many advocates of centralized power on the Left assume that only "good guys" will have that power. That is a very bad mistake to make. Reality shows that eventually the "bad guys," regardless of how you define them, will get that power and use it as they see fit. If you want to protect minorities and civil liberties you have to work for smaller government. Otherwise you do get skinheads running immigration policy and fundamentalist "abstinence" types teaching sex education. In the private sector both are jokes, endowed with state power they are a danger.

Is it news or satire? With the Travel Nazis Who Can Tell?

Government strips away your right to pee!

According to Air Canada, the travel Nazis at the Transportation Security Agency are once again using a minor incident to strip all Americans of freedom—actually they don't discriminate they are stripping everyone who flys within the US of their rights as well. There is good reason to be seated during take off and landing. But the new regulations, according to Air Canada basically make you a prisoner in your seat.

First, consider the circumstances. Some idiot from Nigeria tried to light a powder he had strapped to his leg. There was some smoke and popping sounds and some flames but no explosion of any kind. The flames were quickly put out by passengers and crew members and the man incapacitated.

So the travel Nazis are now allegedly announcing new regulations that chain passengers to the seats for much of a flight, if not the entire flight. The New York Times reports that the government "was vague about the steps it was taking, saying that it wanted the security experience to be 'unpredictable' and that passengers would not find the same measures at every airport—a prospect that may upset airlines and travelers alike." Great, now you can't even prepare to satisfy the increasingly strenuous regulations pushed by these bureaucratic thugs. And since when is this a "security experience?" That is like calling rape a "sexual experience." Experience has far too benevolent a feel to it to describe the way the travel Nazis treat people.

Here, however, are some of the new rules. "passengers on international flights coming to the United States will apparently have to remain in their seats for the last hour of a flight without any personal items on their laps." So, if you fall asleep, wake up one hour before landing with a full bladder the government mandates that you wet the seat because using the toilet one hour before landing is a security risk. Apparently it is not a security risk to use the toilet 62 minutes before landing but at the magic 60 minutes your urinary tract becomes a tool of terrorism.

It has been noted that one can't move about on a flight for about the first 30 minutes until the plane reaches cruising altitude. So any flight of 90 minutes of less means all passengers are confined to their seats by bureaucratic edict—remember these rules are not laws that are debated by elected officials. These are rules that unelected bureaucrats make up any time they feel like it. So unless you can hold your bladder for at least 90 minutes you should not board one of these flights. I think a flight of 95 minutes would be interesting as there is just a five minute window for the entire plane to use the toilet. Personally I hope there is a rash of people wetting their seats. And if I were the airlines I would send the stinky seats and carpeting directly to Janet Napolitano, the new Reichfurher for Homeland Oppression.

Napolitano, a Janet-Reno wannabe (which is bad news anyway you look at it), says that new measures are "designed to be unpredictable, so passengers should not expect to see the same thing everywhere." Oh, joy! Don't you just love it when some brain dead travel gestapo member, the very people who didn't find the explosives that were strapped to the man's leg, are allowed to act in an upredictable way.

Airlines say that more incompetent TSA employees will be required to staff more check points to try to catch what the other incompetent TSA employees miss at the other checkpoints. The government's hope is that if you line up enough overpaid, under-thinking bureaucrats with the power to bark at people and act like mini-gods, that one of them will eventually prove useful.

And what I don't understand is the logic here. Everyone will be confined to their seats because a man, who was in his seat at the time, tried to light powder he had strapped to his leg. The man was "confined to his seat" when he did it—that didn't stop him from trying set the plane on fire. The individual in question would have been in compliance with the new rules had them been in place. In other words, they would have done absolutely nothing to stop the incident that happened. But then all the other measures put into place didn't stop this incident from happening either.

Meanwhile, people are refusing to fly in larger and larger numbers. Traveling to the US is such a horrific experience, due to the terrorists who work for Homeland Security, that tourism is down significantly. Billions of dollars have been diverted from the US economy by chasing away tourists. In addition, the US has merely soiled its reputation with world travelers as an unpleasant, nasty country to visit. Not long ago a friend told me that she and husband flew to China and had better treatment, and were treated more like free people, flying into China than when they enter the United States. Yep—a totalitarian nation is not as bad as the United States when it comes to travel.

Welcome to the world's largest prison.

The fear-mongering of Bush, combined with the hysterical cries of the "secure the border" crowd led to new restrictions. Of course, contrary to what the hysterics says, these restrictions actually restrict Americans not terrorists or would-be gardeners and day laborers.

The war on terror was a fraud from the start, it was always a war on Americans. Every measure that was passed was used, first and foremost, against Americans not against potential threats to the country. All the new spying on bank accounts isn't being used to crack down on drug cartels or international terrorists but on Americans who have funds overseas, where the greedy hands of politicians have a harder time grabbing them.

To "secure our borders" the government also imposed new rules on how Americans are allowed to travel. Of course, it wasn't Americans who flew the planes on 9/11 but Muslim terrorists, all of whom had official permission to enter the U.S. To protect you from the people they let in they restrict your movement.

Perhaps you don't think these new regulations and controls of Americans actually restricts movement. The data is in and it proves that it does. In 1972 Canada started keeping track of how many Americans visit that country. In the last five years the numbers have dropped in half. Canada's Globe and Mail reports:

Travel from the United States hit a peak in 2002, when about 43 million Americans crossed the border, but since then, it has eroded. One reason for the decline in recent years, said Randy Williams, president of the Tourism Industry Association of Canada, was the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative. Two years ago, passports became mandatory for cross-border air travel, and the original plan would have required passports for land crossings as of Jan. 1, 2008. While that was delayed, confusion over the need for travel documents kept some people home, Mr. Williams said. “Only about 30 per cent of Americans have a passport, so that limits the number we can attract into Canada,” he said.

Any economist will tell you that when you drive up the cost of something the demand goes down. Cost doesn't just mean how much money you pay. It also means how much hassle you have to go through to secure something, and what you have to give up in order to obtain it. Forcing Americans, who are visiting Canada for a shopping trip, to carry as passport meant that the number of visitors dropped. Passports aren't free, there is a great deal of hassle, more than ever actually, in order to get government permission to travel. That is what a passport is, it is government permission for you to travel. Something that was once consider a right of all free people is now considered a privilege which governments can dole out, and withhold, at will.

The world is a poorer place because of the morons in Homeland Security. They have trapped millions of Americans within the United States and they have discourage many millions more from visiting the U.S. Airlines are now avoiding connecting flights in the U.S. because the travel Gestapo mistreats and abuses visitors to our country. So, these measures are now keeping Americans from traveling abroad and keeping foreign visitors from coming here. Hundreds of millions of dollars of profits, both here and abroad, have been destroyed by this heavy-handed government intrusion. Government is the great wealth destroyer.

My recommendation: If you don't have a U.S. passport I urge you to get one. It will only become more and more difficult to get one. You are not a free person if you are not free to walk out of your own country. When you are restricted to a specific geographical area, by armed men, and only allowed to travel with special permission slips, you are a prisoner. It may be a very large prison but it is still a prison. Second, I also recommend that you try your best to send assets overseas, as a precaution. Be warned though, since the Bush regime was in power it has become very difficult for you to do this. Many overseas banks will no longer touch American clients due to the way our government threatens foreign banks that allow Americans to open accounts.

Of course, the American travel gestapo has been harassing everyone. Individuals who have connecting flights in the international section were forced to exit through customs and passport control merely so Big Brother could accumulate data on each person, even though who really aren't intending to visit the US. Individuals who only wanted to catch a flight from Canada to Mexico, with a brief US stopover, had to go through customs. If the U.S., for any reason, decided the person was unwelcome (and billions of people fit that category these days) they were not allowed to finish their flight to Mexico, but forced onto a plane to return to Canada.

The U.S. has mistreated foreign tourists so much that airlines are dropping the United States from their itinerary when possible. Air Canada had a flight to Sydney with a stopover in Hawaii. They dropped the stopover promising travelers their new route helps them "avoid the United States." Air New Zeland had a flight from Auckland to London, with a refueling stopover in Los Angeles. They dropped the US and moved the stopover to Vancouver, so that their customers wouldn't be harassed by the travel Nazis. Wikitravel warned:

You may wish to avoid transit in US airports because:

• Anyone arriving into the United States or one of its territories (like Puerto Rico) and not covered by the Visa Waiver Program requires at least a C-1 transit visa to transit the airport. This can be expensive (US$131 minimum) and time-consuming to obtain, and you can be denied the visa: the requirements are the same as the full B-2 tourist visa. If you arrive without this visa, even for a fuel stop or transit, and aren't eligible for a waiver, you will be sent home and recorded as having been denied entry to the US.
• The United States does not allow sterile transit, which means that even if you have an immediate connecting flight, you have to pass through Customs and Immigration. This is time-consuming and tedious (4 hours or more is recommended to be safe), and all travellers transiting in the USA using either a transit visa or the Visa Waiver Program will be photographed and fingerprinted.
• You have previously been denied entry to the US or overstayed in the US, and have been advised that entry may be refused in future. Transit entry is as likely to be refused as any other entry, it will almost certainly be easier to avoid risking it.

Discover America Partnership is a collection of businesses that rely on tourism. They have been complaining that government mistreatment of tourists has become so pervasive that American business is suffering. The U.S. government is scaring away customers. Geoffrey Freedman, of the group, says: "International travelers will tell you that they find that they are treated like criminals, that they are barked at by US officials. They simply feel unwelcome and that is leading them to choose other countries." The group estimates that these actions by Homeland Security thugs has cost around 200,000 jobs in the United States.

A survey of international travelers found that more of them listed the U.S. as the most unpleasant place to visit when it comes to bureaucratic abuse. Freeman noted that a survey showed that foreign visitors have "more fear our immigration officials than of terrorism or crime." (Alas, Mr. Freeman seems to think those are three distinct categories, as the US government proves, they often overlap.) All this means a dramatic drop in tourism.

So now the morons in the U.S. Congress have decided to fix the problem. Congress, which voted in the proposals that are scaring people away, wants to finance a program which will encourage visitors. Please note that none of the Congressvermin are suggesting changing the way we treat tourists. Instead they want to create yet another government program for the purpose of encouraging travel. Of course, such programs cost money. So the idiots in DC are wanting to pass a new tax on foreign visitors. They want to charge tourists who do come to the US an extra $10 on each trip in order to encourage more tourism.

John Burton, the European Commission's Ambassador responded: "Only in Alice in Wonderland could a penalty be seen as promoting the activity on which it is imposed."

Associated Press reports: "Sponsors have been promoting the law as cost-free to the U.S. taxpayer." Even that is not true. US travel thugs have cost the economy hundreds of thousands of jobs. Raising the cost for people to visit the US will only reduce the number of visitors even further. Americans will pay for the stupid proposal in several ways. More jobs will be destroyed and the tourism industry will suffer further declines. Hotels, theme parks, even National Parks will see less business and lower profits.

And the EU says that if the U.S. imposes a new $10 fee on Europeans, even those who aren't require a have a visa to visit, then the EU will consider retaliation by imposing a similar tax on Americans who travel. Personally $10 to get OUT of the Homeland Security States of America might be a bargain. But who wants to pay extra to visit a prison?