Last Call: Borderline Insanity
Rocca, Francis X.
Borderline Insanity by Francis X. Rocca THE HARDEST THING ABOUT getting into Britain, in my experience, is walking the inhumanely long distances around Heathrow. No one has ever searched my...
...When I met her on the other side we laughed with naughty pleasure, as if we'd gotten away with a crime...
...No one has ever searched my bags, or asked me anything more than where I planned to stay and for how long...
...This is supposed to take two months, but a lawyer assures me it can easily take six...
...Because I am married to an Italian citizen, establishing residency was easy...
...The immigration officer might believe her or he might not, I was told...
...It was hard enough going there on vacation...
...SO WHEN MY WIFE ARRIVED at the airport in Washington, she wasn't wearing her wedding band, lest it provoke inconvenient questions...
...and while I have nothing to hide on this score, the thought is unsettling...
...Likewise in the other European countries I've been to...
...If my wife and I choose to live in the U.S., however, she must apply for a visa ahead of our move...
...So it is with personal disappointment that I observe the current tendency to keep out newcomers...
...If someone's married to a U.S...
...Luckily I mentioned this to a consular official first...
...Many, if not most, of its government employees can be said somehow to have "participated in the persecution" of persons on account of"political opinion...
...I explained that my wife had no intention of moving to the U.S...
...THE RHETORICAL INTENT IS CLEAREST in the question about Nazis...
...But surely there aren't many cases of marriage fraud involving Italians, I suggested...
...MY MOTHER IS AN IMMIGRANT to the U.S., and my father is the son of one...
...Are you a member or representative of a terrorist organization...
...Couldn't she just enter on the 9o-day tourist waiver, like any other citizen of the European Union...
...It sounds lawyerly and precise, but begin to parse it and it turns out to be absurdly broad...
...It tells the rest of the world that mischief makers are unwelcome...
...MIND YOU, THIS IS THE preferential treatment I enjoy as an American citizen...
...How, then, should a retired Spanish bureaucrat reply to the question...
...Too many foreigners slip in as tourists and then try to remain on grounds of marriage...
...Have you ever ordered, incited, assisted, or otherwise participated in the persecution of any person because of race, religion, national origin, or political opinion under the control, direct or indirect, of the Nazi Government of Germany, or of the government of any area occupied by, or allied with the Nazi Government of Germany, or have you ever participated in genocide7" AN UNTRUTHFUL ANSWER GIVES the authorities another arrow for their prosecutorial quiver...
...When I go there not only must I describe all my purchases and gifts acquired abroad...
...I have to list every country I was in...
...I think you can understand why we can't have one policy for white Europeans and another for Filipinos and Mexicans," he said...
...As it happens, we don't plan to live in America...
...I should note that I am myself a stranger in a strange land-Italy...
...I dropped in at our local police station and in less than two hours received my "sojourn permit," good for two years...
...The information no doubt goes into some computer, never to be expunged...
...If they can't get you for pushing drugs, maybe they can deport you for denying that you pushed them before...
...The immigration officer might not let her in without a green card," he warned...
...Among the questions: "Have you ever been a controlled substance (drug) trafficker, or a prostitute or procurer...
...Foreign nationals have another, longer form to fill in before being granted a visa to enter the U.S...
...Not so in the United States...
...Consider: Franeo's Spain was an ally of Hitler's Germany...
...Do you seek to enter the United States to engage in export control violations, subversive or terrorist activities or any unlawful purpose...
...citizen, the assumption is they intend to reside there...
...The procedure for determining that such unions are not ruses to obtain the coveted green card takes time (sometimes separating couples for more than a year, I later learned...
...But what self-respecting terrorist would agree that he belongs to a "terrorist organization...
...The official gave me a look of pity for my na'/vet6...
...And why such particular fuss about Nazis, now that most of them are dead...
...What business is that of the Treasury Department...
...There would be little reason to doubt my wife's word...
...Thus she passed unhindered through the gates...
...To be safe, she hadn't even packed it in her luggage...
...She had a teaching job in Italy, to which she would return at the end of the summer...
...78 February 2000 _9 The American Spectator...
...Nor had she flown on the same plane as myself--doing so would have meant answering "yes" when asked whether she was traveling with any member of her family...
...The vagueness of the language suggests its purpose is as much rhetorical as legal...
...SHORTLY AFTER OUR WEDDING, we decided to spend a couple of months in the States...
Vol. 33 • February 2000 • No. 1
