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Congress Considers Forcing Travel Registration
macduffman writes "Congress and the Department of Homeland Security are considering several new visa restrictions, including forcing some foreign travelers to register their travel plans online 48 hours in advance. Business advocacy groups are worried about both foreign relations and the economic impact of such legislation, while privacy concerns see this as another possible 'in' for identity thieves. From the article: 'Along with online registration, the updated program would require new and existing member countries to improve data-sharing; more rigorously report lost and stolen passports (not just blank passports); and guarantee they will repatriate nationals if those people are ordered out of the United States. "It's really a 21st-century model," said James Carafano, a Heritage Foundation analyst who specializes in homeland security. "It'll all be done electronically and biometrically. And it really doesn't compromise your privacy."'"
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Sooner or later, this will be applied to ordinary citizens, as well.
"I'm sorry, sir, but you didn't register your travel plans to go from Oakland to San Francisco."
"But my wife's having a baby and that's the nearest hospital!"
"Then where is the BABY's travel registration."
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
There are figures that your economy is losing out in the magnitude of tens of billion dollars due to decreased tourism to the USA because of stupid procedures. I know that I'm not willing to go to the USA as long as I'm treated as a criminal and I'm not alone with that sentiment.
These new plans are just bound to make it worse.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Ah, I forgot, the sub-human foreign travelers. Nice. My Japanese citizen wife and mother of my son will really appreciate your point.
from TFA: Paragraph 2:
The requirement, proposed by the Homeland Security Department...
Pass the tomatoes.
"Piter, too, is dead."
Visiting the usa again got less desire-able. No i don't think i will be doing that conference in the US this year again.
While i respect the feeling that getting blown up by saudi arabian (bin g. w. bush relative) is a valid fud for the american public i don't like the aspect that all 'aliens' go to America to cause trouble.
I'm not of middle eastern origin etc but I'd still rather not visit. A thing in a national newspaper in england recently from a Journalist said that even stopping in america to jump on another plane (two hour stop-over) at Miami was the pits.
Republicans seeking tax cuts might like to know that the tourist promotions e.g. 'visit usa' might be got rid of on the basis that america it seems does not really like the concept of 'short term visitors*'
* a month or less.
"It'll all be done electronically and biometrically. And it really doesn't compromise your privacy."
Someone should shoot these people that come up with these concoctions for security solutions. Need to fly last minute to Toronto or vice versa sorry you didn't schedule it 48 hours in advance so you must be a terrorist. Give me a damn break. Then don't get me started on his convoluted assertion that it doesn't open people up to invasions of privacy or identity theft. Every additional time you have to transmit your information, every additional database with your information, every additional set of eyes that gets to look at your information is just another spot in the chain at which point information can be stolen and/or misused. We should send this guy through dressed as an Arab with a head scarf a few times and see how he feels after getting a few rectal exams for foreign objects and the verbal abuse at every stage along the way that 'suspicious' people take.
Contrary to what Bush thinks the terrorist did succeed in setting into motion the process of destroying our freedoms that this country used to stand for. After that we should put his personal information up on the bulletin board at the post office for everyone to see and ask him how he feels after someone empties out his bank accounts and owes thousands of dollars in back taxes.
Yeah, this was a requirement for visiting the old communist countries, wasn't it? And that was the differentiating factor between the 'free' countries and the rest of the world. Whats next? Secret police and wiretaps without warrants? Prison sentences without trial? Gulags? oh wait..
Je ne parle pas francais.
Me, last year I had an invite to go to the US - I've never been but would truly like to go - but was in two minds because it overlapped with something else - and after taking a look at what it might involve in terms of proving I'm not a terrorist (I have an old-fashioned paper passport) I gave it a miss.
And purleease, when I fly long-haul I like to take a big bottle of water to stop me dehydrating. A effing bottle of HO for chrissake. Whaddy think I'm gonna do with it, split out the hydrogen and ignite it? Yet I can buy a bottle of whisky at the duty free.
(sorry about the rant, feel free to mod me down, but I have to get it out of my system before I go on a rampage on my next flight).
I have just one thing to say:
"Papers, please."
In Russia's old-fashioned system, as an American I have to register my travel in Russia as I travel. But in the USSA they're going to require 48 hours advance notice. What an improvement.
This would be even more restrictive than it used to be travelling to East Germany, which was not really fun either. I feel less and less a free human who can move around this world, that i was born into, freely. Just when you thought it couldn't get much worse (so soon!)...
Growing up, I graduated highschool in 1992. I was fed a whole bunch of crap about how the 'bad soviets spy on their people' and the 'bad soviets imprison people with no chance of trial' and 'bad soviets take their peoples' rights and tell them it's for security'/
Exactly. When I was a kid the USSR was bad because of all those things they did, and the USA was great because we didn't do any of those things.
At some point, I'm not sure when, it no longer became about what we did The USA was just magically the best no matter what simply because it's the USA. I think maybe it happened around the same time you started seeing those bumper stickers with the flag and "The Power of Pride". Because apparently if you just believe that your country is super-awesome, it will do great things. Via magic.
How are pride and wishful thinking working out for us in Iraq? Maybe if I just have more pride we'll win...
BTW, someone needs to mod the OP up some more, because that was hilarious.
The enemies of Democracy are
Scientists don't want to come to conferences. Families don't want to go to Disney World.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_i
Are we safer? There's no data to prove it. Are innocent people suffering? Yes. Even Senator Kennedy got on the no-fly list.
It's stupid. It's costing us jobs. It's costing us the liberty our fathers died to preserve.
What's important is that the excuses are the same: the USSR had nothing against the hard-working fellow comrade, it was the enemies of socialism that were the problem. And, there really were enemies of socialism, very well-organized, funded and armed ones supported by the West, from the very earliest days of the Russian revolution. Just as in the US, the excuse happened to be based on a truth.
Also, it's not as if we'd be the first to implement such a plan in either case.
You are right! All those nice communist countries used to have very similar system in place.
AccountKiller
* Non-US Citizens have never (as in, "ever") enjoyed the full protection of US law (save for illegal immigrants, but that's a whole other argument, as we're talking only ostensibly here).
Right, mostly because we made forced internment camps and whatnot as knee-jerk reactions in times of war. While true, that doesn't mean it's a good idea, or even that it was legal.
I mean, if you were talking about, say, welfare rights or something, I could understand why foreigners don't get those. When we're talking about human rights (freedom of association, a 1st amendment right), or habeas corpus and due process, I get a lot less agreeable about denying them to anyone. Even denying them to the damn terrorists, who I'd like to gut with a rusty spoon for having caused all this crap.
I really, really am not going to agree with anyone who wants to create a class of 2nd class people in our legal justice system.
* Proposed? Great - so what branch of government is DHS again, and when did they get to create/codify law?
It's usually better to object before a bill gets voted on than after. As for when they got to create law, I don't know, but they seem to have a great record of ignoring it when convenient. Otherwise, we wouldn't have the courts constantly trying to coerce the DoJ into following silly anachronisms like the due process clause of the US Constitution.
I traveled to China last year. I talked to people there that tried to buy things from companies in the US but were unable to go to the US. They bought from Europe instead. One of the largest makers of networking gear got that way because the prices on US produced gear was high, and the import/export restrictions pretty much made it illegal to sell many versions of the products in foreign countries (encryption and such). The business travelers can't get in. The US sets up artificial barriers to prevent foreigners from buying US made gear. The end result is that money just flows out of the US, increasing the trade deficit and harming domestic companies. It just seems like such moves are economic suicide. I can't understand why we continue hurt ourselves with our immigration policies.
Learn to love Alaska
Be that as it may, our current president seems intent upon trampling all over the Bill of Rights and the articles of the Constitution itself. Maybe I'm just cynical, but somehow I don't think that a government that:
...is going to get all worked up over a (relatively) obscure interpretation of the 14th amendment.
1) allowed the NSA monitoring program to continue in spite of the fourth amendment, and
2) determined that since the Constitution only prohibits suspending a writ of habeas corpus rather than explicitly granting a writ of habeas corpus, then a writ of habeas corpus is not guaranteed by the Constitution
I hope I'm wrong, but the evidence so far suggests otherwise.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Rare risk and overreactions. A great article on human psychology and our "failures" inside our own brain: http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0706.html
I travelled around the world in April. The US was the only country I passed through (and I was only transiting through - I never went outside the airports) that wanted to photograph and fingerprint me, and my wife and *children*. And I am an Australian of British ancestry - a more WASP-ish Australian family you could not find. Not a group of people given to terrorist attacks on America.
Many of the countries I visited didn't even look at my passport (*cough* *cough* Europe) - I just drove straight over the borders quite legally and kept going (rather like an American crossing state borders). We even flew in and out of a one-party police state that treated us better as transit passengers than the Americans did. And as for New Zealand, which we visited in January 2006, they practically invited us to stay, get a house, a job and live there - no forms, applications or visas required. We had an automatic right to stay as long as we liked, and even settle there. Most hospitable and friendly and welcoming.
America is the only place I have visited that treated me like a person being charged with an offence (that is what I would have to do in Australia to be fingerprinted).
So about these other countries that you reckon behave like America: they are obviously not Europe or the UK or Australia, are they? China? North Korea? Iran? Is that who you are emulating?
I am anarch of all I survey.
And since you show so clearly the repetition of history, check out how the USSR is doing these day and think about how that would translate into the USA situation a couple of years down the road..
Either the next establishment will radically deal with the stupidity of the Bush administration and clean it up, or at some point the people will revolt and the USA will become a lot less United..
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB