Letters to the Editor
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Tourism is down in the US????
Don't think so. This isn't effecting tourism and the INS doesn't treat people anymore like criminals than they always have. Outrage is ok, but blind outrage is pointless and throwing around facts that aren't really facts is another.
I don't really mind the article, although it is pointless. All these people complaining, and yet they talk about how they used to just have to use their birth certificate?!?!? What? Who carries their birth certificate around with them? I just bought a copy of mine the other day since I didn't have one for the past five years. Carrying a passport is easier and is no different and it is easy to get. The complaining about how long it takes to get one is about a year too old. I got one for my daughter in 8 days, yes 8 days. Wow, lets whine about that. Not to mention there is plenty of time to get it.
Then there is the issue of terrorism and terrorists crossing the border (unless of course you want to pretend that terrorism is a Bush creation and then you can bury your head in the sand and feel ok about it). One of our main sources of info in the article is some guy named Mastrounandi who quips that they (Canada) only has 800,000k Muslims to our 1.8 million and he laughs. Of course if he can do math he would realize that is about 2% of their population and only about .5% of ours. We want to talk numbers or percentages? Either way, theirs is growing and he can ignore if he wants, but we are just taking extra precautions.
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Not so ideal in Europe...
> But I would not surprised if Homeland Security will next require all of us to have a National Idenity Card(with an RF ID so we can be tracked) and permission to reside in different cities.
In the UK, for example, our government is trying very hard to introduce exactly this kind of national identity card.
And they claim they must do it, as well as adding all kinds of intrusive extra features to our passports, because the US demands it! How's that for a circular argument?
This in a country that leads the world in CCTV cameras, is trying to introduce detention without trial for up to a month and which has left our voting system horribly compromised and open to fraud.
And today we are having local elections in which less than a third of the population will probably bother to vote.
I hear Canada's nice at this time of year!
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Incompetence at the Border
About 2 years ago, my mom & I drove back to NYC from Montreal through Vermont. As usual, we shopped. A lot. And purchased more than our allotted number of cases of beer at duty free. We were asked to pull over at customs, accused of smuggling by a swaggering deputy, and told we'd have to empty our car and all our bags so they could check the price tags and see what we bought.
While we were being interrogated (yes, interrogated for buying too many kitchen gadgets), I listened to a woman being questioned by another officer. She was visiting NYC, but had no one there to contact, no hotel reservation, and no family, in Canada or the States. She had no passport, no birth certificate, just a Canadian drivers license. They let her through after 5 minutes of questioning.
I also watched them wave through a truck with a boat attached without checking either.
If you're going to establish border patrol regulations, they should be carried out in a way that makes sense.
After 2 1/2 hours, we were finally allowed to get back on the road and head home, but not without paying a $50 fine and returning 2 cases of beer.
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Funny, Virtual Dave...
...but the only people who ever tout a unified North America are, well, Americans. Frankly, I like my country. I don't want your politics, your legal system, your medical system and your currency. You may think Norte America would be a delightful playland, with free healthcare and Mexican vacations for all, but the truth is, it would all become the good ole USA with a few more quaint regional accents, that's all. No thanks.
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Canada is a foreign country
Canada is a foreign country and Canadians would like to keep it that way. We are not swimming across lakes or scaling fences to illegally enter the Excited States, but thousands of ill Americans come over with illegal health cards to get treatment that your own system can't or won't supply. Guns and drugs also flood over.
Meanwhile, a significant percentage of Americans think the 9-11 hijackers came in from Canada when the truth is they came legally to the States.
In its mad rush to protect the Fatherland thru Fatherland Secruity nonsense, the U.S. is jeopardising trade relations with its biggest customer.
Remember, we are your biggest supplier of oil and gas and pissing us off could be dangerous to your SUV.
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Dismantle Homeland Security
The very name is an offense to everything that the United States has always stood for. The entire department was misguided, proto-fascist, and based in heedless fear-mongering from the very beginning, and no death will be too severe or too untimely.
Eliminating Homeland Security and restoring its agencies to their original, undistorted missions is 2009's version of impeaching Bush in 2001. Nobody will take it seriously because it sounds too extreme, until inaction has led to irremediable catastrophe and everyone demands that something be done after it's too late.
Unless, you know, we've all actually learned something from the past 8 years. Maybe? Just a little?
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Just too bad.
My first thought upon reading the article was You got what you wanted. But, I'm a nasty decadent European so you don't have to take me seriously.
I'm an EU national and before I grew up to be a big girl, I wanted to go and study in the US because they have the best schools there and such. Meantime, the situation changed and, no, thanks. I don't want anyone to take my fingerprints to store them for future reference. In our small, backward post-commie country, this is only done to criminals. I'm an art historian, not a criminal, thanks for offer.
I'm however old enough to remember the good old commie days when everything was cheaper, the grass was greener, you need to sit and beg to get a passport, then you had to pretty please ask the police for a permit to leave the country, then you had to bribe someone at the bank to be allowed to buy some foreign money and only then you could apply for visa. Planning a holiday abroad in August usually started around Christmas. It was very, very good. The people wouldn't mess around and complain that in, say, Sweden (where we got in summer '89, four months before the revolution for which all the relevant deities be thanked) they have things in shops and newspapers bring news, not Party communications.
Maybe, after all, it's the ultimate goal of U. S. administration - not to let the people out to see that things can be done differently.
I'm going to do my Ph. D. in Italy.