U.S. senators: are they as powerful as portrayed in the media?

Northern_Piper · June 18, 2012, 3:57am

sadly, you’re not helping me appear at all plugged into popular culture - who’s Chani?

Really_Not_All_That_Bright · June 18, 2012, 4:23am

By way of example, she made her own Catwoman costume and showed up during pre-production for Batman Returns to try to get Tim Burton to cast her.

ETA: Chani was the wife of sort-of-protagonist Paul Atreides in Frank Herbert’s Dune novels. The image in the link is Sean Young as Chani in the 1984 film adaptation of the first novel.

Northern_Piper · June 18, 2012, 4:30am

Thank you for indulging my ignorance. One of these days I may acquire a patina of popular culture.

Elendil_s_Heir · June 18, 2012, 4:40am

A quick consultation of Wikipedia might be useful.

Northern_Piper · June 18, 2012, 5:03am

I’ve just come back from there, actually. Searching “Sean Young” on wiki eventually led me to a discussion of Scott Baio’s politics. I apologise if I’ve derailed this thread.

AK84 · June 18, 2012, 7:40am

gunnergoz:

I learned about the power of US senators when I was very young. A US senator wrote a bill for me that allowed me to re-enter the US and receive my citizenship when I was only 7-8 years old. That was because my dad wrote to him and got his cooperation.
I was born in the Free Territory of Trieste, a city East of Venice, Italy. After World War II, the city was contested by both Italy and Yugoslavia. It was occupied by US and UK troops pending a plebiscite (popular vote) that would determine which country the city would join.
My mother was an Italian citizen who met and married an American GI who was in Trieste as part of TRUST (Trieste United States Troops).
In 1953, my parents and I left for the United States. About the same time, Trieste voted to become a part of Italy.
In 1954, my parents filed papers to have my mother and me become permanent US residents. My mother’s application was accepted. Mine was not, because the US Immigration authorities determined that I was a “stateless person” since the place I was born in (The Free Territory of Trieste) no longer existed. Despite the desperate appeals of my parents, who were permitted to remain in the USA, at the age of 6 I was declared by the United States to be “Persona Non Grata” and ordered deported (by myself) to Italy, where I would doubtless be placed in an orphanage.
Needless to say, this was unacceptable to my parents. My father finally determined that a position was available for him at a US Army post in Italy, if he submitted to a voluntary reduction in rank from Sergeant First Class to Sergeant, a step backwards in his career. To preserve his family, he did so and the three of us returned to Italy.
My father’s military career never recovered from this setback, however his subsequent efforts to enlist the assistance of US Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri did eventually result in the latter’s passing a bill in the US Senate by which I was declared a “war orphan” and permitted to return to the US and reside there permanently on that basis. It is an irony of political necessity that I was neither born during the war, nor was I an orphan, but one cannot look a gift horse in the mouth, as they say.

Well I must say that I am surprised that you could not get US citizenship through your dad. Furthermore, while I understand that the US Court are (from a common wealth POV) ridiculously deferential to the executive, the decision to send a six year old back while allowing the family seems a textbook case of capricious and irrational use of power. Would the courts not have been easier?

Rysdad · June 22, 2012, 8:35pm

She was in the movie. Dune, from the book by Frank Herbert.

Rysdad · June 22, 2012, 11:21pm

I leave for five days and come back to make an entirely unnecessary reply. Sorry.

Elendil_s_Heir · June 24, 2012, 4:43am

Uh oh. It’s catching.

Koxinga · June 24, 2012, 7:33am

She was also the model for the famous album art for Rio, by Duran Duran.

gunnergoz · June 24, 2012, 7:27pm

I could not get into the US to get the citizenship. They refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of my entry documents. So I was ordered removed from the country. This was in a US Immigration Court in New Jersey. My parents took the only option open to them that would keep our family together…to leave the USA and return to Italy.

Recall that my “dad” was not my biological father, as it turned out - he had adopted me. The original immigration court determined that the adoption papers were insufficient to let me enter the USA, but they were used later once my legal entry was arranged by the US senator’s actions.