Yes. And I will never get that 30 seconds back.
No.
This is the inane part of your logic. How would they know I lied about being a member of Al Qaeda? And if they find out that I am a member, why do they need additional cause to exclude me?
Because maybe that’s the cause they have. I don’t know. I don’t know the law. I’m just putting forth that that’s a possibility as to why they ask you the question in the first place. Logically and morally they don’t need any more reason than that, but maybe they do legally. I wouldn’t know.
Are you an immigration lawyer?
What difference would that make?
By this logic, if I answered “Yes”, they would have no legal reason to exclude me.
No, presumably they would also be legally able to exclude you for saying “Yes”.
If you were, you might be saying “no” based on actual knowledge, rather than the desire to be right.
Then why do they need to charge me with lying if I say “No”, since to know that I am lying requires them to know that I am a member of Al Qaeda, which you now say is grounds for exclusion all by itself? What more can they do to me by adding “…and you lied about it” ? Double-Secret Probation?
One ceases to desire what one already posesses.
In the course of applying for a data-entry job I learned that the US Government is hardcore about asking such questions. (Note: If you ever apply for a job with the government, be prepared to fill out lots and lots of paperwork. LOTS.)
Anyway, I still have most of those forms in PDF format if anyone’s interested. For a really low-level, non-security-cleared job, they wanted the past five years addresses, five years employment, and references who could account for you at every job and every address. They also did a fingerprint check, required three forms of ID, and we got to answer fun questions such as “have you ever used illegal drugs”, “are you delinquent on any federal debt”, “have you ever been arrested for any reason”, and “do you want to overthrow the government?”
They also actually sent out forms to every reference we listed, which for me led to a bit of hilarity. They also make you take an oath of office to protect and uphold the Constitution.
They did not, to my great disappointment, ever ask me if I was a communist.
In the 1950s, my father had to sign one such form that asked if he or any member of his family for three prior generations had been a member of an organization dedicated to the overthrow of the United States. He answered yes.
About six weeks later, he was visited by two FBI agents and invited to explain his answer. They went away muttering about his being a smartass when he explained that his grandfather had been a Brigadier General in the Confederate Army.
Great story, except virtually impossible that his grandfather was old enough to have been a soldier in the Civil War.
Note that the member couldn’t pin it down to closer than a 20 year period. And, he got the name wrong. It was Gilbert Harding, a humorist/writer, from your next cite. He might as well have said it was Gilbert Gotfried or Gilbert the Grape.
Note also,
http://weblib.wl.dvgu.ru/?action=view&form[book]=oxfrd_mq.gz
" 8.16 Gilbert Harding
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1907-1960
Before he [Gilbert Harding] could go to New York he had to get a US visa
at the American consulate in Toronto. He was called upon to fill in a long
form with many questions, including "Is it your intention to overthrow the
Government of the United States by force?" By the time Harding got to that
one he was so irritated that he answered: "Sole purpose of visit."
W. Reyburn Gilbert Harding (1978) ch. 2"
[/QUOTE]
The other side of the NSA asking those questions is that if you have and you aren’t willing to say so, you’re blackmailable, which is the absolute last thing they want. You can kick puppies while shooting black tar heroin as long as nobody can hold it over your head.
Given that taking illegal drugs is enough to lose a federal job over, someone can hold your heroin habit over your head if you work for the NSA regardless.
psst. It’s called “hyperbole”.
Okay, evidently literary license isn’t called for. In practice, you can have had a severe drug habit without it automatically disqualifying you, though it’ll take a lot of doing for them to believe you’re not an addict if the drug was addictive. You can have questionable – even questionably legal – tastes, but if it doesn’t affect your ability to perform the job you just have to be open about it.
My point is that the fact you smoked up or spread a little peanut butter for fido does not in and of itself make you ineligible to be hired. What they’re looking for in a lot of those interviews is that you’ll let someone “out” you before you compromise the agency’s security.
Oh, and the question that up until recently was right up there with bestiality (and might still be, textually): homosexuality. Back in the '60s you could be as gay as springtime as long as you weren’t blackmailable about it.
IME in the armed services, you’re pretty well fucked if you admit to smoking pot more than three times. IIRC the FBI has a limit of 15 times of pot use in your life and local police limits are similar.
Don’t know much about the NSA (who does? 
) but it seems to me like logically it’d be pretty damn tough to get a security clearance after more than a couple dorm-room bongloads.
samclem, it’s not at all impossible what Clothahump said. In fact, a good friend of my family who was born in 1926 is the grandson of a Union veteran of the Civil War. His father was born in 1893, and his grandfather was born in 1834 (yes, he was a father at 58).
And Clothahump was referring to the 1950s, when it was even more likely that a man could be the grandson of a Civil War veteran. The last Union and Confederate veterans themselves died in the 1950s.
During the 50s? Why not? He himself could have been, say, 70 yo hence been born around 1880. So, not only it’s plausible that his grand-father could have fought during the civil war, but even his father could have.
Apart from that, the questions on the US forms, not only for immigration, but even for mere tourism visas are world famous.
There’s an exemption from the bar if a naturalization applicant can prove that the membership was necessary for various reasons (and I believe the same exemptions apply to temporary stays in the U.S., though as a practical matter nobody cares anymore…can’t find the cite at the moment, because boy, do I miss having Westlaw access just for noodling around!).
"TITLE 8 OF CODE OF FEDERAL REGULATIONS (8 CFR)/8 CFR PART 313 – MEMBERSHIP IN THE COMMUNIST PARTY OR ANY OTHER TOTALITARIAN ORGANIZATIONS/Sec. 313.3 Statutory exemptions.
Sec. 313.3 Statutory exemptions.
(a) General. An applicant shall bear the burden of establishing that classification in one of the categories listed under Sec. 313.2 is not a bar to naturalization.
(b) Exemptions. Despite membership in or affiliation with an organization covered by Sec. 313.2, an applicant may be naturalized if the applicant establishes that such membership or affiliation is or was:
(1) Involuntary;
(2) Without awareness of the nature or the aims of the organization, and was discontinued if the applicant became aware of the nature or aims of the organization;
(3) Terminated prior to the attainment of age sixteen by the applicant, or more than ten years prior to the filing of the application for naturalization;
(4) By operation of law; or
(5) Necessary for purposes of obtaining employment, food rations, or other essentials of living.
(c) Awareness and participation.
(1) Exemption applicable. The exemption under paragraph (b)(2) of this section may be found to apply only to an applicant whose participation in the activities of an organization covered under Sec. 313.2 was minimal in nature, and who establishes that he or she was unaware of the nature of the organization while a member of the organization.
(2) Exemptions inapplicable. The exemptions under paragraphs (b)(4) and (b)(5) of this section will not apply to any applicant who served as a functionary of an organization covered under Sec. 313.2, or who was aware of and believed in the organization’s doctrines.
(d) Essentials of living.
(1) Exemption applicable. The exemption under paragraph (b)(5) of this section may be found to apply only to an applicant who can demonstrate:
(i) That membership in the covered organization was necessary to obtain the essentials of living like food, shelter, clothing, employment, and an education, which were routinely available to the rest of the population–for purposes of this exemption, higher education will qualify as an essential of living only if the applicant can establish the existence of special circumstances which convert the need for higher education into a need as basic as the need for food or employment: and,
(ii) That he or she participated only to the minimal extent necessary to receive the essential of living.
(2) Exemption inapplicable. The exemption under paragraph (b)(5) of this section will not be applicable to an applicant who became a member of an organization covered under Sec. 313.2 to receive certain benefits:
(i) Without compulsion from the governing body of the relevant country; or
(ii) Which did not qualify as essentials of living."
My first job after college was in Soviet refugee resettlement, and while most of the people I worked with were not Communist Party members, plenty of them were members of Komsomol, the youth wing. It didn’t stop anyone from gaining refugee status or eventual permanent residency/citizenship, that I’m aware of; most Soviets were members at one point or another. Komsomol membership was more ubiquitous than membership in any nonreligious organization I can think of, in the USSR or elsewhere.