British Expatriate Network

Haven't posted alot here lately so this is a few weeks old, but wanted to tell you how disgusted I am with what happened to a friend of mine.

A few weeks ago a female friend of mine travelled from Buffalo NY to Toronto to attend a conference. The conference was on how Middle Easterners/Muslims and Americans/Canadians can all get along better. On the return back into New York State my friend was stopped and detained. My friend is originally from the Middle East, but has been a US citizen for many many years. She was informed that she had been chosen at random for a standard search. Coincidentally, everyone else in the detaining room was Middle Eastern, or East Asian. Ironically, most of them were travelling back from the conference. My friend had her 3 year old daughter with her - also a US citizen - and asked why they were being held for so long. When she was offered no explanation, she threatened to phone the local news stations on her cell phone. At this point she was ordered by Immigration Officials to surrender her cell phone. She wanted to call her lawyer but had her phone taken before she could. She and everyone else was then held overnight for "observation." No explanation was ever given.

If this wasn't disgusting enough, she has since been visited by immigration services asking what she had been doing in Canada. Other people from the area who were detained have told that the ywere interrogated and asked to "offern any information they have" oabout things they have no idea about. My friend is rightly angry that after years as a US citizen, she is treated otherwise. I'm angry too, if not simply because I cross the border regularly and have never been held for more than a minute. Thankfully my friend managed to get her story on the news. I'm a million miles from thinking that the US is a police state, but when crap like this happens, I begin to lose faith. Tie this with the 3 Brits released from Gitmo ONLY because they're British and I must say I'm sick to my stomach.

And just because it's tenously linked - a friend of mine upon buying a house last month had a copy of the details sent to the Dept of Homeland Security. Wah? Anyone?

Word can't do justice Gavin, I share your outrage.You are right, America is not (yet) a police state, but you don't have to have a wild immagination to see where all this could go.

I don't like quoting Tony Blair, but to paraphase what he said about the Auchwitz memorial The Holocaust didn't start with concentration camps and gas chambers - it started with abuse on the street and bricks through the windows of Jewish businesses.

We all need to shout loudly now, before this all gets too big for us to handle.

Compeltely agree, its bollox, but its the old question of whether profiling is valid or not, I am not sure if it is or not. I think this all comes down to the fact that the US as a country and as a people are the most paranoid, scared group I have ever met. Everything is a conspiracy, everyone who looks "funny" is an enemy, the government are watching all of us and what we do, 24 hours a day. Give then 6 or 700 hundred years and they may mature into a great country....but I doubt it.

Is it no wonder that millions of americans insist they have been abducted by aliens, funny how no-one makes that claim from say..Belgium.

When I crossed the border up at the falls the canadian border patrol were polite and obliging but the american border patrol made snide comments to me about the UK and how 'they shouldnt let us' (english people) from going into the US. My parents had worse treatment than I did the comments what the border guard said to my parents and my sister were nothing short of Xenophobic evil

I can't say that I totally agree with racial profiling.
The terrorists that flew the planes into the world trade center entered the US from Canada, it's only natural for them to be over cautious in this area now.
There is no reason it should take them overnight to verify a legitimate US citizens with an easily checked reason for being in Canada and returning to the US.

I do believe anyone who is not an American citizen buying a house or opening a bank account has their details sent to Homeland Security.
I know mine was in both cases.
I suppose they believe it could help track terrorism money or suspicious behavour, not sure if it really helps or not.

Does the UK track these same kind of things?

i'm not going to get into the racial profiling thing again, other than to say that there is a diference between legitimate and focused 'profiling' and this stuff - which is just racist ignorance dressed up as security measures. It doesn't make America any safer at all.

The second part. I'm not sure about bank accounts in the UK, they do ask for ID now but that is as much an anti fraud thing, I don't believe they pass the details back to the Home Office.

On land sales, in England & Wales there is no procedure for checking or recording the nationality or immigration status of the purchaser - so no, they don't.

Frankly, knowing the nationality of a land owner is not going to help with Homeland Security one jot. I don't know why they take this information (if they do) - it could be part of the endemic hysterical stupidty that permeates the DHS or it could be for some reason totally unrelated to Security at all as the DHS consists of 22 different organizations - many of which have only a partial interest in Homeland Security.

Waco maybe, although they were mostly home-grown.

That would only help if you also had to register you religious beliefs as well :D

e.g.: "Owner: David Koresh - religious maniac and apocolyse lover"

as opposed to "Owner: Mohamed Atta, Saudi National".

They probably just inputting it all into "TIA" (variously Total Information Awareness, and when Congress balked at the bill for that Terrorist Information Awareness - known to DHS employees as Total Information Overload.)

When you dance with the Bush you will get burned.

I think this is a very unfortunate event, and one which should have been quickly and easily solved. However, I do believe that this occurs quite often. I travel a lot with some of my graduate student friends to conferences around the world, yet every time one of us is stopped and questioned at immigration on the way back to the USA it is always the same person. He happens to be from the Middle East, with a beard and olive complexion. Coincidence? I think not o

The trouble is, disturbing though MrB's story is, I know of many Americans who would think this is a good thing. Therefore no public outcry, and we won't stop it anytime soon.

It is, without doubt, a bad thing - from a Homeland security point of view as much as from a civil liberties point of view. although you are right, many Americans think such actions are a good idea.

In truth all that is happening is a waste of resouces that should be directed at finding real threats and the alienation of people who might actually be able to help. I don't know Gavin's friend or anything about her, but she is an American citizen and someone who most likely abhors terrorism as much as the vast majority of American citizens. Being from the middle east she is more likely that most Americans to meet other people from the middle east (statistically if for no other reason) - and might potentially be aware of suspicious behavior that white WASP Americans simply don't recognize or understand. (Gavin I'm talking in the broadest terms here) - as such she is an asset to this Country - someone we all need - not someone we need to alienate.

What is perhaps most disturbing about these incidents though is that they betray the fact that over three years on from 9/11 - Boarder Security still have little if any idea of what they are doing - frankly we'd all be safer if they just weren't there and we left it to the Canadians.

This isn't just my view, I gather that people in DHS have similar concerns about what is happening; but DHS is a big mess and likely to remain so for the forseeable future.