Canadian medical doctor reports for appointment with U.S. officials, he has the same name as an American car thief, brings with him the appropriate documentation to prove he is not that man, and is cuffed and jailed. Could he be of a dusky hue? http://www.canada.com/halifax/dailynews/story.asp?id={0C105C9A-D216-461D-8F90-6C1CB25B4B83}
You’ll have to cut and paste the url in, it doesn’t seem to work as a link but a cut and paste works.
Let me try: link
You know, I don’t think the Dept. of Foreign Affairs should have lifted that travel advisory. Warning: do not travel to the US while brown.
Fixed link. That story is a bit brief.
More info
There is no excuse for what happened to that man but “gestapo jackboots” is a fucking moronic analogy.
Haj
Hey, if the jackboot fits…
He’s still alive. Everyone like him isn’t being killed.
Asshole.
Haj
if he was a native Indian and his procreative rights were taken away or his children taken from him would that be jackbooted behavior or typical Canadian behavior? How about the actual harboring or known Nazi war criminals? For such a libelous statement about the US you are sitting right in the middle of a pretty jackbooted nation yourself.
“A libelous statement about the US”?
I’m very startled you regard an attack upon incompetent, possibly (judging from precedent) racist assholes in the INS with no regard for human rights, who have no qualms about imprisoning someone who follows procedure to the letter for someone else’s crimes, as an attack upon all of the United States.
What should we draw from this?
I would save my anger for the INS thugs who are doing such a poor job of representing my country, if I were you.
Speaking of moronic hyperbole, the doc’s mom is calling the INS’ actions “torture”.
Case poorly handled, profuse apologies due, yes. Torture - not quite…although that’s probably the headline that will appear in <i>The Guardian</i>.
She’s his mom.
Canada is a long way from perfect but the power of arrest is taken very seriously here and those who have it proceed very carefully before they restrain and detain someone. Cuffing someone and locking them up, without strong legal justification, is a very serious crime against their person, a physical attack. This man voluntarily reported to the office where this incident occurred and his skin colour offers the best explanation at this time as to why it occurred.
What other cases can you cite, with similar fact patterns but for skin color, in which the suspected foreign national was released rather than imprisoned? In other words, you suggest that, but for his skin color, this man would have been treated differently.
What evidence of this do you have?
- Rick
What a silly question - if they had been released, we wouldn’t have heard about them. I guess it’s because Maher Arar + Rohinton Mistry + Ricky Chadda looks like a pattern.
You require Bricker to demonstrate an absence of arrests ?
I regard the thread title to be libelous, not the content itself. The arresting agent(s) were displaying shithead behavior if all the avidence as presented is correct. But “jackbooted” implies a state sponsored reign by facist militants thus making the entire nation supporters of these actions. Both as a Jew and as a patriot who has served his nation in (admittedly mild) conflict I find any inference that my nation as a whole supports such action reprehensible. I further find it offensive coming from a resident of a nation with a history of non-interest in war criminals within it’s own borders, who refuse extradition in some case of those same criminals and who as a nation has a history of modern day mistreatment of it’s native populace. This same nation has a reputation as liberal and polite, which I have no idea how it maintains.
Now, to a couple of possibly mitigating factors on behalf of the agent(s) who made this bad call. Currently the FBI and several other agencies, including the INS, are under a heavy shakedown because they accepted forged documents from Al Queada cell members. There is a big problem with our system because of it’s sheer size and the number of nations we have to communicate with just to do simple business we have more holes than a cheese grater. Apparently a few of the terror suspects entered the US via Canada as Canada has much more normalized relations with some countries generally hostile to the US, so a pantload more scrutiny is being directed North. The current rule of the day for INS agetns and FBI alike is “better a few pissed of foreign nationals than a few million pissed of voters.”. With good reason as a Federal job is a pretty cushy gig and to loose one sucks major tochus.
That having been said this looks like a case of an overzealous agent who will likely pay a much greater price than an inconveniences traveler. It is also possible that there was a SNAFU in communication between Canada’s and the US’s immigration departments. But even if the agent was wearing Himmler underpants to infer that his action was supported by a mandate of the people is bullshit.
This is the sort of thinking that people find so alarming. The man was born and raised in Canada, is a solid citizen, has been established in U.S. hospitals for over eight years and has documents of the hoops he jumped through to prove that he’s not his car-thief namesake in hand. But he’s in the hoosegow. Why? In the name of national security? What does he have in common with the terrorists that y’all are understandably on guard against? Nationality? No. Ethnicity? No. Religious background? No. (Guessing from his name, his family’s religious background is likely Sikh, possibly Hindu-- if they haven’t converted to a flavour of Christianity, or agnosticism/atheism since they’ve been here.)
Talking of a few million pissed-off voters, what about those U.S. citizens who share Mr. Chadda’s complexion? How likely are they to look at cases like this and wonder what, if anything separates them from him? Ah-- probably not worth worrying about, since, if the demographers are right, most of them vote Democrat anyway. I wonder why that is?
For the record, I agree that the hyperbole in the thread title is excessive. But you’ve got to expect people to get angry when abuses like this take place. It’s symptomatic of having a conscience.
It should be an axiom around here that you can’t post anything that doesn’t mortally offend someone.
As far as jackboots are concerned, the Gestapo was the German secret police during the Nazi years. They did not wear jackboots. They dressed like Methodist ministers or Secret Service Agents—dark suit, narrow tie, short hair, no sense of humor. It was the German armed forces that wore jack boots.
As far as slander is concerned, I recall the phrase “jack booted thugs” applied to the IRS or the ATF by several congressmen back during the Republican Revolution. If the label is applicable to the IRS it ought to be equally applicable to any quasi-law enforcement agency that acts arbitrarily and with minimal oversight or need to substantiate its behavior. While it may not be fair to call a government agency that is a law unto itself a Gestapo, it is hardly slanderous.
Geez, the Gestapo Gestapo is back…:rolleyes: