It may be your rules, but you do make an inordinate amount of effort specifically trying to persuade us to holiday over there with a strongly implied assumption you won’t laugh and say “hah! You just wasted a months’ pay on a plane ticket! Now go back home!” based on a trivial tweet.
I mean, if that’s the deal, we’ll spend our money in China instead. They have cool old stuff for us to look at.
Absolutely not in the US government’s interest to do this as it would set a precedent and the demands for compensation would be endless. A private group, as you say, maybe, but not the government.
Fair point. If the US did it, they should bend over backwards to make it clear that they’re not legally obligated to do it.
The only way to compensate them would be to have a third party (such as a private travel agency, or a tourist board), offer to give them some $$.
Sorry, I just repeated the word used in the article. They spent a night in jail. What is the legal definition of being deported?
Because they should have a reasonable expectation of being able to enter the country, if they chose to believe what our State Department tells them (see list of entry requirements for people coming from a country participating in the Visa Waiver program, such as the UK) and were denied entry for frivolous reasons.
I think a better comparison would be: you live in North Dakota, you are told by California authorities that all you need to visit California is a plane ticket, you buy a ticket to come here, and when you get off the plane, a guy at LAX says that since you had tweets threatening to dig up Marily Monroe, you have to spend a night in jail and go back to North Dakota.
I fully support any punishment that can be meted out to these Family Guy-quoters.
Homeland Security owes every American taxpayer an apology for frittering away money on this frivolous exercise, and to every American citizen for making them look foolish to the world.
Maybe I’m old, but to me, spending a night in jail would not be something minor. And when I was 24, if I had planned a three-week vacation overseas, being forced to lose my money and my vacation plans would not have been minor either. I was just out of school and didn’t have a lot of money to spare. I would have been very disappointed.
One might argue (OK, I will argue) that it would be in the US government’s interest to show to people that we try to treat travellers fairly and equitably. One could also say that it’s not in the state of California’s interest to compensate people who have been unjustly imprisoned. It’s still the right thing to do.
I don’t know how far Administrative Law has developed in the uSA but in England we have Judicial Review, and from JR the concept of ‘legitimate expectation’ (of a public body):
To be clear, I said “as minor as being deported.” I did not mean that it’s objectively minor; rather, it’s minor compared to the things that merit compensation.
Otherwise, every time someone ended up spending a night in jail due to a stupid cop’s misunderstanding of the law, we’d have a ginormous lawsuit on our hands. That’s not the case, I believe, nor am I sure we want it to be the case.
Folks deserve compensation for things like wrongful conviction and imprisonment for years based on police corruption, or for things like involuntary sterilization. Compared to those things, losing your vacation and spending a night in jail ARE minor.
To be deported, you actually have to be in the country. The people in question were simply not admitted to the US.
My understanding over the jail thing is that a person who is being refused admission will be held in a “jail-like” place until a suitable flight is available to take them back to their point of origin. They weren’t in jail in the normal sense since it’s not a crime to present yourself to an inspector and request admission to the US, even if the answer is “no”.
If there were no negative consequences, I’d agree. but there are, and they are enormous. Our court systems would be tied up in knots handling all the cases that were based on this precedent.
Again, if there were no negative consequences, I’d agree with you. But there are.
Were they even arrested? I’m guessing they were ‘detained’.
I would find it infuriating to be in jail overnight for something like that, as illegitimate as if some guys in masks had bundled me into the back of a van and kept me in a cellar for a night. Plus yeah, I’m 24 and 3 weeks in the US would probably take more than a year of planning and saving for me.
Anyone who actually thinks there should be no compensation, I find it hard to believe you wouldn’t be demanding some reparations if in that situation yourselves.
I don’t know…
I don’t think anyone here has discussed compensation in terms of “ginourmous”. I think that compensation in the form of paying for out of pocket expenses such as the cost of the plane ticket and other holiday expenses that the tourists could not recover would not be out of order.
I agree that folks who have been wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for years deserve large compensation. Folks who have been wrongfully denied entry to the US should be given small compensation to recover their lost money - to “make them whole”.
Of course, it won’t happen, because then homeland security might have to admit error.
Let this be, as they say, a teachable moment. Don’t make tweets about destroying America as you are flying in here. Otherwise, enjoy your stay!
Or tweets about how you’re going to rock this place. (throwing rocks through windows)
Or tweets about how you’re going to tear up the town. (self explanatory)
Or tweets about how you dig Marilyn Munroe. (could be misconstrued)
ETA: Or in fact, make the bad assumption that folks at Homeland security possess a working brain cell.
This sounds a lot like: “Our border security is so injust that we can’t possibly hold them accountable.”
To me, that’s an argument for starting to fix things, not continuing to ignore it.
Where did I say that they shouldn’t be held accountable?