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Disabled Woman Denied Entrance To US Due To Private Medical Records
Jah-Wren Ryel writes "In 2012, Canadian Ellen Richardson was hospitalized for clinical depression. This past Monday she tried to board a plane to New York for a $6,000 Caribbean cruise. DHS denied her entry, citing supposedly private medical records listing her hospitalization. From the story: '“I was turned away, I was told, because I had a hospitalization in the summer of 2012 for clinical depression,’’ said Richardson, who is a paraplegic and set up her cruise in collaboration with a March of Dimes group of about 12 others.'"
Due to her medical condition being advertised all over the internet: https://www.tatepublishing.com/bookstore/book.php?w=978-1-60604-911-2
If this is the same Ellen Richardson, a disabled author, the DHS did not need her medical records. She posted her suicidal tendencies on the internet. http://ellenrichardson.ca/ http://ellenrichardson.ca/bio/index.html
We don't want no evil Canadian paraplegic terrorist to assault our defenseless citizens with kind words.
Meh. Canadian medical privacy is kind of ridiculously done--they put diagnosis (rather than just prescription) on the slips they give the pharmacist, which means for most of small-town Canada, there is near-zero medical privacy. (These are places where the post office knows everyone by name.)
All the recent mass murders in the U.S. have got the right wing blogosphere screaming for a crackdown on the mentally ill.
I think you got it backwards; it's the right wing which associates what it considers vague wu-wu diagnoses of mental illness a way for a potentially tyrannical government to deny them rights. Like the right to bear arms. It's generally liberals and lefties who want to limit such rights, and if they can't get enough traction to limit them for everyone they'll settle for what they might consider a dangerous subset. The former is clearly a more theoretical concern as we don't have a tyrannical government (in fact it's pretty damn benign, obsessed with rule of law, not dictatorial), while I think the latter is a bit naive. Clearly once made law to be enforced it will include some number of people not originally envisioned. And I think this is more what we're seeing here, so I don't think we can really blame the right wing on this one.
There are plenty of cruises that will leave from Britain, mostly Southampton. 1. You avoid idiocies like the one in the article. 2. There are no Americans on board!!!! Or only those that want to avoid Americans.
Let's be honest, they're a pain in the arse and the last people you would want near you on a relaxing holiday.
is it not just a little bit disingenuous to make it the first word of the headline, implying that it was her physical disability rather than her mental illness that caused the issue at the border?
Since I wrote the headline, I'll tell you why I did it that way -- In order to emphasize that she was not a threat. The agent would not have needed "private medical records" to deny her entrance for being in a wheelchair.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
No they don't. Being a Canadian, and having a had a prescription I can state that only the drug name and person it in prescribed to is on the package.
Bull fucking shit. If your sister handed me your diary, I'd tell her shes a fucking bitch and that I don't want to read it. Then I'd inform you of the breach in trust.This is a two way street. Both parties are responsible for their own behavior.
If you are thinking they are discriminatory, I'm here to assure you that they fuck with us just as badly. I generally refuse to fly because of the DHS (our airlines having some of the worst service on earth doesn't help either) but the last time I flew it was to adopt my son, so I absolutely had to. The airline screwed up our tickets so we had to have them reissued which not only delayed us so we were barely make the flight but also flagged us because it was now a 1 way ticket to Africa paid in cash. It was like my wife were the duke boys, they were Rosco P Coltrane and had finally caught us dead to rights. The amount of grovelling, and debasing of myself I was willing to do to get them to allow me to board the plane so I wouldn't miss my foreign court date so I could finish the adoption truly amazed even myself. Alas, they really didn't give a shit, and the only thing that saved us was our bulldog of a social worker who was already well aware of our situation due to the ticket screw up and somehow got our congressman to call the DHS and demand our release from the circle jerk they called security and let us board the plane. I'd also like to mention that my congressman and I don't see eye to eye politically (I let him know when he showed up on my doorstep campaigning once) so I'm sure I'm on his naughty list, but adoption seems to be one of the last vestiges of decency in politics.
This sounds like good advice, but really isn't
If you apply for a visa to the US for a visit that doesn't require one, you are acting suspiciously! The request will likely be denied for the simple fact that it is suspicious, and here's the kicker: if you have been denied a visa once, it becomes very difficult to enter the US. You can never make use of the visa waiver program again, and having previously been denied a visa may be grounds for rejection the next time you apply for a visa.
A better advice: just do exactly what is required.
No he doesn't have it backwards. The (campaigning part of the) NRA has specifically demanded crackdowns on the mentally ill in response to the latest shootings. The NRA (again, the lobbying group) is generally considered a right wing group by most standards, to the right generally of the core NRA's members indeed.
I see no upswell of demand that mental illness definitions become more relaxed by the right. While the left has generally been supportive of moderating things like the DSM to avoid harmless consensual sexual activity (until relatively recently, BDSM, for instance, was considered a mental disorder.)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
This entire article is flamebait. She published a book one year ago about her ordeal with depression and suicide attempts leading to her being paraplegic. It's on a her own website, ellenrichardson.ca - yet the articles frame the issue as if her medical privacy was compromised? She published herself right on the Bio page about seeking repeated medical help.
I'm starting to get tired of this shit Toronto Star.
This is like the fourth time in this article I have seen this. She wrote a book that was published something like 4 years ago, but yet the DHS knew about something that happened last year. Holy shit do you people pay any attention to what is going on? Or did you skim the summaray and then off to googling in the hopes you would earn some modderations if you brought back a tasty treat.
You people sometimes, no fucking common sense.
What made McCarthyism bad not the hunt for subversives per se, it was tossing out the constitution in the hunt for subversives.
Gee, now why does that sound so familiar?
It's deja vu all over again.
Those who fail to learn from history...
Strat
It sounds familiar because your hero Michelle Bachman was recently calling for an investigation of people in congress who are not "American enough" So yeah... Deja Vu.