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Simon Phipps's personal commentary

Closer and closer...

You know stories about injustice make me mad, and this one's a cracker. It's about an American citizen whose German fiance was denied access to the US despite having a valid visa, handcuffed, imprisoned and deported. The reason? The whim of the immigration officer. He's not accountable and it seems there's no recourse - what's more, the incident will make it virtually impossible for the woman to gain access to the US in the future, regardless of the facts or their merits. As AKMA says, This Is Important, America. Beate has a first-hand account and the couple have started a 'help us' website.

I know plenty of you think I must be smoking something, but the threads of the police state in the US are drawing ever tighter. This isn't an isolated incident; there are many accounts of xenophobic heavy-handedness and they are getting closer and closer to home all the time. The amount of comment this instance gains in the US media will be a measure of the health of the nation over there - the less comment, the worse it is. And I'm not hopeful.

Update: Well, clearly some of you are smoking the same stuff. I have now had two readers contact me privately to say they have the same fears, but would prefer not to express them so openly for fear of repercussions. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."

posted at 10:04 PM (UK) | |