I am now officially eligible for deportation! Yay!!

The BBQ Pit
21

Of course it’s my responsability to stay informed somehow. The law says so. Same law that says i can’t kiss my wife’s breasts and can only have sex with her in the missionary position.

And for your information, the americans staying in Morocco are treated like honored guests which means BETTER than moroccans in most situations. I don’t want preferential treatment or favors. I just want to be treated according to what I do and who I am. Ah nevermind…

As i said, i’d never hold any group, nation, race responsible for the actions of a few. I wouldn’t be able to look at myself in the mirror if I did. And most people here on the SDMB wouldn’t either. I’m not trying to garner pity nor am I hoping to accomplish anything by speaking of this here either. I’m just venting and wasting bandwidth as well as my time and yours.

22

I wouldn’t say that too loudly. You’re in enough trouble as it is. :frowning: Sorry you got stuck in our country when we decided to supersize our national tendency towards paranoid xenophobia. Hope it all works out okay for you.

23

huh? Say what too loudly? I’m not following you…
What I said is that most people affected won’t do a thing about it. They’ll just go on with their lives.

Mind to explain?

PS: what happened to freedom of speech? I can’t even disagree with a government policy without being afraid? Ugh…

24

No, actually I was referring to you saying “macha’llah” in public. I was playing on the tendency of some portions of the American public to automatically equate “Muslim” with “terrorist,” with a side-dish of paranoia about our new obsession with homeland security. Just trying (and, evidentally, failing) to make a bad joke. Hope I didn’t offend.

PS: you’re not the only one who’s a little afraid of disagreeing too vocally with the American government. I spend more time worrying about what the folks in the Whitehouse are up to than I do about the terrorists. I mean, the terrorists can only kill me…

25

I sympathize with the OP, but as a (former) long-time resident of a foreign country, I have to say that there’s little excuse for not keeping oneself informed. I didn’t kid myself that I had some kind of boo-hoo entitlement to be living in Taiwan or Hong Kong. For me and my assorted mates of the time, “deported” was one of the scariest words our vocabulary. But there was never any doubt in our minds that if the sword fell for whatever reason, that was that. The only thing we could do was keep ourselves informed on the situation as clearly as possible.

26

Way back,Eva Luna said:

Now that’s an interesting statement, especially coming from someone like Eva Luna.

You know, many many years ago, I worked for a computer offshoot of a major oil company. Similar advice was given to me in a training session for employees going to Soviet Union, as well as in some of the (shall we say) less democratic countries in South America, Africa amd the Eastern Med. “Always let someone know when you’re going to see someone in a government department, so if you disappear without trace we can start looking for you.”

How ironic that in 2003, the same advice applies in the US. I wonder how many years it will take to undo the damage that the current regime is doing to human rights and the world opinion of the USA (former bastion of freedom).

27

Seeing how the INS are the first who can’t get their act together and how it is full of corruption and abuse, I can’t see how they have any moral standing to demand perfection from anyone. What became of punishment fitting the crime? I suppose those who think it is fitting to jail and expel a student for some minor bureaucratic omission would be just as tough on Americans? Suppose you forgot to mail your property tax check (it happened to me once because I didnt receive the bill). Penalty: The cops come and take you away without warning and you lose your house. After all, it is your responsibility to pay your taxes.

Those strict law and order people only feel that way when it applies to others. If Americans were jailed in other countries for such minor things you’d hear the same people outraged.

28

If ** Eva Luna ** is the resident expert, may be s/he can address my puzzlement over the focus on F-1 visa students?

29

What does one expect of a nation that can appropriate people from other nations as it pleases, incarcerate them, deny them any right to advocacy, and yet provide no public justification for said ongoing advocacy without any right of challenge by the incarcerated

30

oops

Should of course read “said ongoing incarceration”

31

Funny, I thought it had to do something to do with the fact that we’re at war.

32

With Morocco?

33

Yes. Now I see. Sex offenders. Arabs. Me. It all follows. Thank you for clearing it up.

34

While the choice of examples made by dave316 may have been unfortunate (nobody feels sympathy for sex offenders), his point is a good one. As time goes by, it seems that the federal government and big companies that regularly lobby it are gaining more and more power at the expenses of u.s citizens and residents. It’s quite subtle too. Not that any of this comes as a surprise of course. I guess that eventually, many many years from now, people will wake up and realize that the remedies they have been administered are worse than the diseases.

35

i was paraphrasing a famous quote

“First they arrested the Communists – but I was not a Communist, so I did nothing. Then they came for the Social Democrats, but I was not a Social Democrat, so I did nothing. Then they arrested the trade unionists – and I did nothing because I was not one. And then they came for the Jews and the Catholics, but I was neither a Jew nor a Catholic and I did nothing. At last they came and arrested me – and there was no one left to do anything about it.”

  • Rev Martin Niemoller (Nazi Prison Survivor)
36

I was responding to casdave’s assertion that the US is just arbitrarily rounding up people in foreign countries and holding them incommunicado for no reason at all. You’ll have to ask him whether he includes Moroccans on this list.

37

As opposed to unsubtle?

38

From this report in today’s paper.

It sounds like there are some groups keeping watchful eye on the whole registration process, at least.

I’m surprised that there hasn’t been a great deal of talk about this issue all over your campus Gozu, especially among other students affected by it. I’m also surprised that the requirement to report changes of address wasn’t made extremely clear to you when your via was granted - it’s not the kind of thing I’d expect the INS to tuck away as a footnote somewhere in you paperwork.

FWIW, the INS is cracking down on visa violations in general. They deported an Aussie woman last week who had overstayed her visa by two days. As she knew damn well when she should have left the US and had no valid reason for not having done so, I don’t blame the INS one bit for their action (perhaps the two weeks she spent in detention before her deportation will teach her to take a bit more notice of her obligations next time she travels).

39

Why all the America bashing?

I’ve gone to school in many countries, done business in many others, and travelled in a few others.
Everywhere I went, as an American, it was MY responsibility to register with the local police, MY responsibility to let them know if I changed addresses, and MY responsibility to pay for the cost of registering me with the police of said democracy – e.g. 40 pounds when Iwas a student at the London School of Economics.

When I was in South Africa, the same thing. Other Eurotrash countries, same thing – and before I finally ripped it up in disgust, My Euro passport made things a lot easier for me than for Americans.

When you are living in another country, you have to be on extra special behavior. It’s the same for everyone, anywhere. Americans have no special rights abroad; they in actuality have less. Same for others in other countries. This is the way it works.
I was offerred hash once in someone’s home in an Arab country. I didn’t stop running until I was two miles away. If you can’t be on your best behavior, then don’t leave your country. When in Rome, don’t fuck with the Romans.

America is no different than anyother country. I was always surprised at the lack of security here as opposed to just about everywhere else. Trust me, they keep better tabs on foreigners in other countries now than they do here now.

Why are we evil for doing something that everything else is?

Why is everyone so eager to bash the US?

Why is gozu using incediary thread titles? (My friend, you are always eligilbe for deportation, if you are a foreigner.)

You also state that in Morocco, Americans are treated extra special. Nonsense. Please prove to me, that it I chose to go to University in Morocco, I would not have to register with the police and whatever immigration authorirtes there are there, just like you have to here. Please prove this. And tell me why Arabs in that part of the world, once they figure out you are not a tourist, will not let you go a day without calling you a “Jew Bastard” in a language they think you can’t understand? (I’m not even jewish) None of this should be happening if americans are treated “special” there.

40

So has the INS reformed at all since the past fuckups? If not, will this debacle have any other effect than more piles of paper lost in the bureaucracy, along with some unfortunate souls?