It’s that time again. Every 10 years, we renew the wife’s visa for the US. And each time to my amusement, a standard question has been if she had ever been a registered member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Until now. Being asked as recently as 2005, the last time she renewed, that question has disappeared. So finally, we assume it’s safe for her to join up.
All sorts of new questions are being asked though including if she’s ever been engaged in terrorist activities or torture or human trafficking or recruiting child soldiers. So I guess she can’t do those things yet.
Is it my failing memory or is it the case that, back in the 80s when the world was a more placid place, the visa question about genocide only asked about genocide conducted by Nazi Germany and its allies? I’m sure I recall being struck by the fact that other mass murderers were free to go to the US.
As I recall, back in the post-McCarthy era, they used to ask if it was your intention to overthrow the Constitution of the United States, and Peter Ustinov always claimed to answer “Sole purpose of visit”- and they never noticed.
I understood the purpose to be that it gave them a pretext for deporting you - a false statement on the form - if it turned out you were one of those things
Grucho Marx did something similar but on the border pass between Mexico and the US .
From ze wiki>
“Groucho’s son Arthur published a brief account of an incident that occurred when Arthur was a child. The family was going through customs and, while filling out a form, Groucho listed his name as “Julius Henry Marx” and his occupation as “smuggler.” In the line asking the price of items brought into the country, Marx wrote “wouldn’t you like to know?”. The customs agents were not amused and the entire family was detained for several hours.”
I myself refuse thumb scans on internal flights simply because I can and screw with them until they yield.
You gotta mess with them now and then to enjoy yourself in that overtense atmosphere.
It’s like the “report illegal income” instructions on tax forms – nobody really expects compliance, but it’s something else to throw at somebody if they get caught.
I also recall a (possibly apocryphal) case where the question was “Do you support the overthrow of the US Government by violence or subversion?” and some of the forms came back with “subversion” circled.
One thing I have most definitely learned is that border patrol guys don’t have a sense of humour. I think it’s plain bred out of them. So, just in case anybody had the hankering to, don’t answer the question “do you have anything to declare ?” with “only a 14 year old prostitute in a suitcase with her ass full of cocaine”. In something not quite, but almost entirely unlike the holy words of AC/DC, say that and you’re on the highway to a rather rough cavity search.
Actually, I don’t think they can do anything to you if you do declare illegal income on your income tax forms. If they could, then that question would violate your right to not self-incriminate.
Oh god. Unless these fucking blacklists existed…I would screw around so much. I do wonder what would happen if one brings little baggies of wheat. You know, quality ecological wheat, etc. =)
Does the original Nazi Party (NSDAP) even exist anymore? I know that the old East German Communist Party survives as Die Linke, but I was under the impression that Hitler’s party was simply shut down with no specific successor organization specified, and that the “Neo-Nazi” parties were all independently founded. Am I wrong?