Journalist thrown in jail for not having VISA

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1231089,00.html

Why don;t the US just shut down the borders and block out all foreign websites? Maybe the Chinese have some nice tips on how to keep a big country in ignorance. Or Russia?
This is taking censorship waaaay too far!

 

I went to Boston for four days and got back two days ago with my family. I find the immigration/customs thing quite intimidating... fingerprints, pictures, police, long queues when they could do it faster just to make 'baddies' sweat.

However, I loved Boston and the people there were very nice.

 

It seems to me that one of the best tools we have for finding terrorists as they enter the country is to identify the lies they tell as they enter. Giving false information on immigrations forms would logically be grounds for immediate deportment.

This journalist did sign the form indicating that she was not coming into this country to work as a journalist. Case closed. Moral: read things before you sign them.

It was hard to find but I am pretty sure that I saw a copy of the I94w immigration form and none of the writing appeared to be any smaller than any of the other writing on the form, i.e. there seemed to be no "fine print".

Furthermore the allegations that journalists are being singled out for mistreatment also appears to be "exaggerated" as the L-visa is designed for any foreign national coming here for work and not just for journalists.

She complains about the treatment she received but it was clear that a portion of it was due to her having a bad attitude. If you want people to smile at you and generally be friendly then you don't tell the customs official who is just doing his job to get his hands off your personal stuff. What you didn't expect that people were going to look at your stuff when you went on an international flight?

Can we trust anything this journalist says?

 

seriously...

do you seriously think you can close down a country like in the good ol' days? Journalists will have their say whatever the US throw at them. Even China is opening up and the US are clamping down? Isn't that a bit pathetic?

Treating people like criminals will never make them behave better.

 

Ewww. Boston. I've lived north of it for my entire life and that's almost all I have to say about the place. Your London is much nicer.

Except for the food. Sorry. We have better food.

 

the US is taking the border entrances seriously because illegal people from all over the world want to go to US and stay there. there are still jobs and high living standards there, and large SUV's, broad roads and so on.

 

I think that the treatment the reporter recieved was wrong. We are doing everything to protect America except the things that might work. But we do love to harass harmless people.