Thank You, Department of Homeland Security, For Protecting Americans from British Novelists
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 07.12.04 | 9:18 PM ET
The author of “Amsterdam” and other acclaimed novels made the tongue-in-cheek remark in front of a Seattle audience after he was initially refused entry into the United States. Officials told him the $5,000 speaking honorarium he was to be paid disqualified him from a visa-waiver program. Unfortunately, he is but one of many writers who have been harassed by U.S. officials since the Department of Homeland Security took over border and immigration control last year, writes British journalist Elena Lappin in the New York Times. Lappin was handcuffed and detained for 36 hours after she arrived in the United States without a special journalist visa. Understandably, she wasn’t pleased. “American journalists working abroad, especially in free countries, are not accustomed to monitoring of this kind,” she writes. “By requiring foreign journalists to obtain special visas, the United States has aligned itself with the likes of Iran, North Korea and Cuba, places where reporters are treated as dangerous subversives and disseminators of uncomfortable truths.”
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Jim Benning is the editor and co-founder of World Hum.
Homeland Security Office 05.21.08 | 3:18 PM ET
Great post! Thank you