Re: [Goanet]Bogus anecdote about US Immigration officials
--- Gabe Menezes [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: RESPONSE: Using your yardstick, what is wrong in alerting people to the fact that US immigration might turn them down even at the point of entry? You seem to believe that the US of A is squeaky-clean and is a paragon of virtue and conformity. Mario replies: Hey, Gabe, Keep your shorts on. Fair enough. There is nothing wrong in alerting people to have their bona fides in place to ensure that their visas will not be rejected at the point of entry into the US. However, that's not what your author was doing. What I found offensive was the way in which he or she presented the issue, which was snide, patronising, misleading and hardly constructive. I do not deny that some people have problems with their visas on entering the US, especially post 9/11, when 19 Arab foreigners with supposedly valid visas attacked the US from within and killed 3,000 people, including dozens of fellow-Muslims and hundreds of Indians. On the other hand you need to understand the magnitude of the problem and the fact that there are processes in place by which people can usually get their problems addressed and misunderstandings cleared up. However, every now and then someone can be treated in a way that is unfair. It is a known fact, and a subject of much debate within the US after 9/11, that the US is more lax in allowing people entry and allows more foreigners to abuse it and its privileges than any other country.
Re: [Goanet]Bogus anecdote about US Immigration officials
On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 14:14:59 -0800 (PST), Mario Goveia [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- Gabe Menezes [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Life here is better by far, stay happy and hope you meet some nice Red neck who will party with you! Mind your backside though, ubiquitous Red neck needle! Mario replies: Hey, Gabe. Are you upset with US Immigration because they probably revoked your visa too, and you had no choice but to land up in dreary and damp and grimy London, who will take anyone who can still breathe? RESPONSE: Using your yardstick, what is wrong in alerting people to the fact that US immigration might turn them down even at the point of entry? You seem to believe that the US of A is squeaky-clean and is a paragon of virtue and conformity. Berna Cruz a Goan of Canadian citizenship was harassed and deported from Chicago Airport, back to Kuwait. To boot her passport was defaced making it unusable. http://www.goanvoice.org.uk/newsletter/2003/Feb/issue3/supp1/BernaCruz.html Canadian in passport fiasco Humiliated by immigration staff Jim Rankin (Staff Reporter) A Toronto woman coming home from India says she was pulled aside at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, accused of using a fake Canadian passport, denied consular assistance and threatened with jail. In tears and desperate, Berna Cruz says she told U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) officers she didn't want to go to jail. She told them she had to get home to her two children and was expected to be at work the next day at a branch of a major Toronto bank where she works as a loan officer. Instead of jailing her on Jan. 27, an INS officer cut the front page of Cruz's passport and filled each page with expedited removal stamps, rendering it useless. She was photographed, fingerprinted, barred from re-entering the U.S. for five years and immediately removed. Not to Toronto, but to India, where she had just spent several weeks visiting her parents. It took four days, and help from Canadian officials in Dubai and a Kuwaiti Airlines pilot, to get her back home. It was a total abuse, Cruz said in an interview with the Star. I want to see them punished for this and bring some justice. This week, Cruz sent a letter, along with a sworn affidavit, and the INS removal documents to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham. The letter arrived at the Prime Minister's office yesterday, and staff had not had a chance to look into the story. But Foreign Affairs spokesperson Reynald Doiron confirmed yesterday that staff in Dubai issued Cruz an emergency passport and assisted in getting her home, via London. We're going to bring her case to the attention of the State Department in Washington, request an explanation on the INS refusal to grant at least one phone call to Ms Cruz, and we'll see what the American response is going to be, Doiron said last night. A full report is also expected from a Canadian official in Dubai and will be incorporated into the query that will be sent to the State Department, said Doiron. A spokesperson for the INS in Chicago said she needed time to look into Cruz's story but did say that officers have the authority to use expedited removals when passengers have no documents or are carrying documents that are suspected to be fraudulent or tampered with. We have very high-tech technology out there to detect these kinds of tampered documents, said Gail Montenegro. Also, any individual who expresses an interest in speaking with their consular official, we grant that. We do it over the phone. We do it all day. We do it any time that request is made. Montenegro said Cruz is welcome to file a complaint and that the INS takes complaints about officer conduct seriously. Cruz feels she was harassed because of the colour of her skin. She says the INS officers humiliated her, and Canada, by refusing to allow her to contact Canadian authorities. Her ordeal began shortly after her flight from India, via Kuwait, arrived in Chicago the night of Jan. 27. With about two hours to spare before her connecting flight to Toronto, she had to first clear U.S. customs and immigration. At the counter, she says an INS officer told her the picture on her passport looked funky. She was brought to a room where other passengers were being checked. They all seemed to be people of colour, she says. She says she noticed that a passenger from her flight who spoke Punjabi had also been pulled aside. Cruz insisted the passport was real. INS officers, she says, said otherwise and became abusive. Cruz was born in Trivandrum, India, and immigrated to Canada in 1994. Five years later, she became a citizen and traded in her Indian passport for a Canadian one. Her birthplace is noted in the passport, and it's the same passport, she says, the INS officers suspected was a fake. An officer, says Cruz, suggested she had bought it in Sri Lanka and asked how much it cost her. Cruz says an officer also asked here why her
Re: [Goanet]Bogus anecdote about US Immigration officials
--- Gabe Menezes [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Life here is better by far, stay happy and hope you meet some nice Red neck who will party with you! Mind your backside though, ubiquitous Red neck needle! Mario replies: Hey, Gabe. Are you upset with US Immigration because they probably revoked your visa too, and you had no choice but to land up in dreary and damp and grimy London, who will take anyone who can still breathe?
Re: [Goanet]Bogus anecdote about US Immigration officials
On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 08:19:20 -0800 (PST), Mario Goveia [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- Gabe Menezes [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://in.rediff.com/news/2005/mar/23guest11.htm Mario replies: Gabe, You, and the author of this article, have entirely too much time on your hands. You had to know that this was not an honest report but an opportunity for both of you to take a cheap shot at the US, It's an odd way for a nation that sanctimoniously trumpets its commitment to the rule of law to behave. This about a country that has an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants wandering around, many protected by the US rule of law and due to the acceptance of foreigners by most Americans. RESPONSE: You are a sad, sad man - with too much time on your hands - when you post 'surreptitious needles' on the Goanet. Opinions or writings/post which don't conform to your liking are given short shrift irrespective of their merit. Thousands of Mexicans are clamouring to enter the USA. Does that mean that they are not being exploited? If one earns a decent wage in the USA as opposed to a run down job in India; according to you USA becomes the land of milk and honey. Keep dreaming man. Everyone is clamouring to live in the USA because it is so nice? Well I for one turned down the USA - I worked at #1 Wall street, ( one of the greatest buildings ever built and a most prestigious address) http://nycarchitecture.columbia.edu/0242_3/0242_3_s2_7_text.html Life here is better by far, stay happy and hope you meet some nice Red neck who will party with you! Mind your backside though, ubiquitous Red neck needle! -- Cheers, Gabe Menezes. London, England
Re: [Goanet]Bogus anecdote about US Immigration officials
--- Gabe Menezes [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://in.rediff.com/news/2005/mar/23guest11.htm Religiously against Modi March 23, 2005 Visas, or rather their revocation, make strange bedfellows. A week ago, one would have said Ram Guha, anthropologist and historian, had little in common with Narendra Modi apart from the usual complement of four limbs, a mouth and two eyes. Mario replies: Gabe, You, and the author of this article, have entirely too much time on your hands. You had to know that this was not an honest report but an opportunity for both of you to take a cheap shot at the US, It's an odd way for a nation that sanctimoniously trumpets its commitment to the rule of law to behave. This about a country that has an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants wandering around, many protected by the US rule of law and due to the acceptance of foreigners by most Americans. Neither you, nor the author have any idea why Ram Guha's visa was denied. The authors explanation is patently absurd, that a US Immigration official refused to believe that a Third World academic would be invited and paid a generous honorarium to deliver lectures by an American university. This makes no sense at all in the context of all the Indians and other Third World academics swarming around the US. Every US Immigration official is well aware that Third World academics, whether scruffy or not, are coming into the US in droves, every day of the week, on every single flight. Highlighting further how ridiculous and lame the author's explanation is is the fact that all Ram Guha had to do was make a phone call to the sponsors who invited him and they would have clarified what may have been incomplete or questionable paperwork regarding the reason for his visit. There are endless legal ways in the US Immigration laws for someone like Guha, had his case been genuine, to appeal, clarify and overcome any misunderstanding, which renders this article totally bogus.
