A Canadian Law Professor Gives Up the Green Card

Sometimes, comedy is produced by people actively trying to be funny. Like, for instance, the "Two and a Half Men" writers. Those guys are funny and they're funny on purpose.

But the most sublime comedy, the type that produces the best and deepest laughs, are those that come from people who are earnestly trying to be serious and are completely unaware at how hilarious the resulting product is.

Don't believe me? Here is some proof:

Why I Gave Up My U.S. Green Card," by Michael Byers, law professor, University of British Columbia, from the Globe and Mail of April 22, 2006:

"This is the first time I've met someone who wanted to do that." The U.S. immigration officer's southern drawl, so out of place in the Vancouver airport, was accentuated by incredulity.

A "green card," which is actually off-white in colour and called a Permanent Resident Card, provides full rights to enter, live and work in the world's most powerful country. It conveys most of the advantages of U.S. citizenship, so much so that it can be traded in for an American passport after just five years. Yet there I was, 41/2 years after I had acquired it, asking for my green card to be taken away.

This is a flat out lie, so obvious to anyone with any knowledge of the process that only a cock-sure foreign law professor would miss it. As any State Department or DHS person who deals with aliens will tell you readily, Resident Aliens give up the Green Card in droves, every single day. They do so for a variety of reasons, usually having to do with making a decision to leave the life they had in the U.S. behind them and--to their immense relief--to go home.

Also hilarious here is the stereotypical lefty sneer at the Southern accent. Vancouver is a hive of diversity to be celebrated, but apparently one must draw the line somewhere.

Acquiring U.S. permanent residency is an arduous process, involving blood tests, chest X-rays and numerous documents, including police certificates attesting to a crime-free past. Even with a prominent sponsor, Duke University, it had taken me three years.

Apparently in Canada they don't teach that "equality before the law" stuff becuase, hey, he's a smarty-pants who works at (name-drop alert) Duke University, a "prominent sponsor." And it STILL took the U.S. the same goddamn amount of time to get him his Green Card as any other immigrant who isn't as prominent. It doesn't seem to occur to him that he waited the same time and went through the same process as everyone else. He also has an interesting definition of "arduous." I get the feelng that he may have lived a somewhat sheltered life.

Apart from the 50,000 "diversity immigrants" selected by lottery each year, the 50,000 refugees and the roughly 140,000 who, like me, are targeted for universities and high-tech jobs, most of those who aspire to live and work in the United States have no chance of legally settling there. Still, millions flock to the country, like moths to a flame.

Where they will be BURNED TO A CRISP by our evil powers!! Bwahahahaha!

I was on my way to a conference in San Diego when I surrendered my green card. The next morning, out for an early run, I saw scores of Mexican men tending lawns and flowerbeds. Later, a woman from Guatemala cleaned my hotel room. I remembered one of my grad students at Duke, now a law professor in Mexico City, explaining that most of these labourers have forged social-security cards that are convincing enough to protect their employers from the police, while providing no protections for the workers.

Did he really need a law professor from Mexico City to "explain" common knowledge? And, gasp!, people here illegally might not enjoy the full protection of the law??? Tell you what, professor. I'll pop up to Vancouver this weekend, get a job without Canadian documents and then ask you what my rights are. Any different than those enjoyed by that Guatemalan hotel room cleaner?

Six years ago, Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson estimated that 660,000 Canadians were living and working illegally in the United States. Most Canadians blend in easily. But after Sept. 11, 2001, fear replaced curiosity as the standard response to things unknown. Before 9/11, my wife's English accent often generated a friendly response, including the comment "You sound just like Princess Diana." After the attacks, the warm chatter gave way to a strained silence.

Ah, yes. The famous wave of anti-British prejudice following 9.11. A shameful episode in American history that we will probably never live down. Here in Portland a tea shop was burned down and a man assaulted on the Max for reading the Guardian Weekly. Masterpiece Theatre was cancelled. Monty Python no longer seemed quite as funny. Perfectly innocent men who just happened to have very bad teeth were assaulted by rednecks who couldn't find any turbaned Sikhs at convenience stores.

At least my princess had a green card and was, therefore, on the legally advantageous side of the divide between "us" and "them." Thousands of men of Arab ethnicity were rounded up and either detained or deported without charge or access to lawyers. Significantly, none of them were citizens or permanent residents of the United States.

Significant, because they were all detained and deported in connection with immigration law violations, a matter of executive power that doesn't involve the criminal law. But, hey, Mikey wouldn't know about that complicated law stuff. It's not like he's a professor of law or anything.

Of course, even U.S. citizenship does not provide the protections it once did. In 2002, the Bush administration jailed two Americans without charge or access to lawyers, in direct denial of habeas corpus, a common-law principle that dates back to Magna Carta. And then there is the secret, unconstitutional wiretapping program.

Considering that the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court disagree with you professor, what exactly is your point? That you are more qualified to pronounce on matters of U.S. Constitutional law than they? Or that you are just another wilfully ignorant lefty distorting the facts and the law for political benefit?

"Are you sure you want to do this?" the immigration officer whispered as she ushered me toward the secondary-screening room.

"Yes," I replied. "I don't want to lie to you. I no longer live in the United States."

Under U.S. law, permanent residents lose that status if they leave the country for more than one year. Yet many green-card holders do precisely that, returning to the United States periodically to "keep their options open." They often maintain U.S. addresses, sometimes with family or friends, but just as often with commercial providers, in order to sustain the fiction that they reside in the United States. Some companies even rent street addresses, as opposed to box numbers, and will automatically ship any mail received there onward to a designated foreign address.

Absentee green-card holders often use their driver's licences to cross the border, or new passports that are free of stamps that might alert an attentive immigration officer to their dubious status. If asked, they will deny having a connection with the United States.

Such ploys are becoming riskier as the computer systems of different U.S. government departments, and different national governments, are linked together to improve security. At particular risk are green-card holders who have failed to file U.S. tax returns, as all permanent residents are required to do.

"At risk" apparently is a Canadian legal term meaning "liable to be caught intentionally breaking the law." No wonder shopping on Yonge Street is not what it once was.

As of Jan. 1, 2007, anyone entering the United States by air or sea will be required to have a passport or other as-yet-unspecified "secure" document. From Jan. 1, 2008, the same requirement will apply to those entering on land. The Canadian government has lobbied against this move because of concerns that it will deter millions of Americans -- less than one-quarter of whom currently have passports -- from visiting Canada. The cruise-ship and conference industries are particularly vulnerable, along with the 2010 Winter Olympics.

The new requirement will also make it more difficult for green-card holders living in Canada, and Canadians living illegally in the United States, to move freely between the two countries.

At last month's Cancun summit, George W. Bush indicated that he supported the passport legislation: "Congress passed the law and I intend to enforce the law." At record low levels in the polls, Mr. Bush is not about to veto a bill brought forward by members of his own party in preparation for the mid-term congressional elections this fall. Prime Minister Stephen Harper quickly conceded that Canada could do nothing to resist.

Hold on there, Professor! Don't talk so fast! You mean to say that Congress passes laws, the President enforces them and the Prime Minister of Canada has no input in this process? Hold on, let me take some notes here....

At the secondary screening, I was greeted by an immigration officer whose name tag and features suggested Vietnamese origins.

Racial profiling!!! Racial profiling!!!

"Which form should I use?" he asked his supervisor. The supervisor, a stout man with a mid-western accent, gave a world-weary sigh. "Voluntaries get the short form."

Giving up a Green Card never happens, but there are multiple forms for it ready for immediate use by immigration authorities....Hmmmmm?

It took 45 minutes to complete the short form. It was an entirely business-like procedure: No small talk, no smiles. At one point, I commented on the complexity of the process. He said, "Well, this is a big deal. It's like getting married."

No, I thought. It was more like getting divorced.

My wife and I had moved to North Carolina in 1999. The stock market was booming, most Americans felt prosperous and secure, and Bill Clinton -- despite Whitewater and Lewinsky -- was still capably in charge. It seemed obvious that one of two smart, experienced, open-minded internationalists, Al Gore or John McCain, would follow in January, 2001.

But then we were amused, perplexed and finally disgusted at the dirty tricks deployed in the 2000 election campaign, first to defeat Mr. McCain, and then to steal victory from Mr. Gore. And we felt nothing but horror as the Twin Towers collapsed, knowing not only that thousands of lives had been lost, but that Mr. Bush's neo-conservative advisers would seize their chance to plot a militaristic course.

Proof that an advanced education is no barrier to the worst sort of conspiratorial thinking. I particularly like that stolen election bit.

My instinctive response was to put words to paper. Five days later, on Sept. 16, 2001, my article, "The hawks are hovering. Prepare for more bombs," appeared in London's Independent on Sunday. I continued to write, almost exclusively for British papers, chastising the Bush administration for its unnecessary violations of human rights and international law.

Writes for the Independent....well, it's all becoming a bit clearer now, isn't it, Professor Fisky?

Needless to say, my opinions attracted considerable hostility, all the more so because I was expressing them from within a conservative law school at a conservative university in the very conservative South. I stood my ground, but it wasn't easy. And then it occurred to me: The United States wasn't my country; it wasn't a place for which I wanted to fight. My thoughts drifted northward, to the place where my values had been forged.

The place were Prime Minister Stephen Harper of the Conservative Party of Canada now rules. Welcome home!

The immigration officer worked his way through a series of questions designed to confirm my identity and soundness of mind. The last question was the toughest: "Why do you wish to surrender your permanent resident card?"

How do you explain to an American -- especially one with a flag on his shoulder and a gun on his hip -- that you no longer wish to live in the United States?

Hint: he has to ask this for the form. He doesn't care. Nor do the rest of us.

I thought about the man across the counter, how he would have fled the postwar chaos and poverty of Vietnam, how he might have been plucked off a rickety boat by the U.S. Navy and may have gravitated toward the immigration service out of an innate sense of gratitude to his new homeland.

My principal motivation in surrendering my green card was not to avoid problems at the border. I was seeking to commit -- without hesitation or qualification -- to my own special place. As someone who was born in Canada, I never had to affirm my citizenship. I never had to demonstrate my deep love for this country. Unlike the millions of Canadians who were born outside Canada, I'd never made my choice.

The moment was upon me. My heart bursting with pride, I looked the immigration officer in the eye and said, as simply and non-judgmentally as possible: "I have chosen to live permanently in Canada."

"Permanently?" he asked.

"Yes," I said, "Of course."

Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.

A French Philosopher Speaks

"Consider, for example, the perplexity of a citizen of Montana or Tennessee upon learning of his nation's intervention in the former Yugoslavia. He might with good reason have asked himself what interest the United States could have in plunging into the bloody quagmire of the Balkans, that centuries-old masterpiece of Europe's matchless ingenuity. But Europe found herself incapable of bringing order to this murderous chaos of her own making. So, in order to stop or at least diminish the massacres, it devolved upon the United States to take charge of the operation in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia. The Europeans afterwards offered thanks by calling them imperialists--although they quake with fright and accuse the Americans of being cowardly isolationists the moment they make the slightest mention of bringing their soldiers home."

-- Jean-Francois Revel, from his best-selling book L'obsession anti-americaine: Son fonctionnement, ses causes, ses inconsequences.

Voter Intimidation

Imagine if you will the following scene: In Los Angeles, the local chapter of the Democratic Party and the AME Church are working together on a get-out-the-vote project designed to deliver Democratic voters to the polling booths on Election Day. To that end, the two institutions rent a large number of vans, assign drivers, plan routes and engage in weeks of preparation. Then, the evening before Election Day, a small group of young, well-to-do men--some of whom are the sons of prominent local Republicans--are caught red-handed in the act of slashing the tires of the rented vans in an obvious effort to disable them and thereby prevent Democratic voters from exercising their franchise.

What do you suppose the reaction of the press would have been to that story?

You know the answer to that as well as I, liberal or conservative, radical or otherwise. It would not only have been a national story with campaign implications, it would have been an international story.

In the real world, despite the many, many unfounded, scurrilous and contemptible stories told by Democrats--white and black--regarding the Republican effort to "disenfranchise" minority voters, the only story of real, existing, actual voter intimidation resembles the hypothetical above, with just a few changes in key facts. But what a difference those few facts make.

Fox News picks up the story:

MILWAUKEE — A U.S. lawmaker's son and three Democratic campaign workers were sentenced Wednesday to four to six months in jail for slashing tires outside a Bush-Cheney campaign office on Election Day 2004.

The men pleaded no contest in January to misdemeanor property damage. A fifth worker was found not guilty.

"This case had to be a public example of what can happen when you interfere with voters' rights," said Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Michael Brennan, who rejected prosecutors' recommendation of probation for the four men.

The Wisconsin state Republican Party had rented more than 100 vehicles to give rides to voters and poll monitors on Nov. 2, 2004. The cars were parked outside a Republican campaign office when the tires were punctured. The vandalism left the drivers scrambling for new vehicles.

Among those sentenced Wednesday were Sowande A. Omokunde, the son of Democratic lawmaker Gwen Moore, and Michael Pratt, the son of former acting Milwaukee Mayor Marvin Pratt.

"I love my son very much. I'm very proud of him," Moore said. "He's accepted responsibility."

Omokunde was sentenced to four months in jail; Pratt and Lewis Caldwell of Milwaukee were sentenced to six months; and Lavelle Mohammad of Milwaukee was sentenced to five months. All were granted work-release privileges.

Brennan also ordered them to pay a $1,000 fine each, in addition to the $5,317 in total restitution ordered earlier.

The four could have faced up to nine months in jail term and fines of $10,000.

Wisconsin's 10 electoral votes in the 2004 election ended up going to Democrat John Kerry.

Three cheers for Judge Brennan. I would have ignored the prosecution's recommendations as well. This case is much too important and involves too central a principle to deal with it as business-as-usual.

Remember this story the next time you hear Senator Clinton pandering, down to lopping the "g" off of words ending in "ing," to a liberal Black crowd about Republican efforts to supress the vote.

Let the record show that the only persons caught, prosecuted and sent to jail for preventing people from voting on Election Day 2004 were the well-off sons of prominent Democrats, who attacked vehicles rented by the Republican Party and who used violence to intimidate Republican voters.

John Kerry won Wisconsin by a total of 11,384 votes out of the 3 million cast.

Dodger Blue

This is getting a lot of coverage today in the Blogosphere, but I wanted to add my own personal recollection here.

I was eleven years old when Rick Monday saved an American flag from being burned in center field at Dodger Stadium. I remember the picture in the paper the next day, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner.

(That's how long ago this was. The picture was in the Herald Examiner!)

I smiled like all the others, but what I remember most was the reaction of my lower middle-class family and our neighbors in La Mirada. Even as a child I could sense their overall reaction. It wasn't loud patriotism or an obnoxious jingoism that greeted Monday's feat.

It was relief.

Relief, mixed with the pleasant surprise one feels when one sees something one loves that one has thought long gone from the scene.

Once common, then almost lost, Monday's public display of respect for our flag and our country at at time when such thoughts were still actively frowned upon by the liberal establishment had an emotional impact on people who, if you asked, couldn't really tell you why, exactly, it resonated so.

People had been told for years it was right to hate America, to suspect her, to sneer at any expression of patriotism as the mark of an unsophisticated dupe, to think her flag a smiling front for imperialist profit-seeking.

In their reaction to Rick Monday's deed 30 years ago today the American people expressed an on-going central characteristic, maddening to liberals everywhere: they are resistant to the lessons their betters have imposed.

They still love this country. They still revere her flag. They still admire a man for standing up for both.

Why FSOs on the Line Need to Watch Their Tongues

The BBC has a story about a poor, oppressed Muslim lad who has to wait longer for his visa to visit the Great Satan because, according to him and the Muslim Council of Britain, Uncle Sam don't cotton to nobody named Mohammed. Says Auntie Beeb:

Muslim 'must pay for visa checks'

A Muslim student had to pay extra for security checks when applying for a visa to visit the United States, because his name was Mohammed.

Mohammed Umar Haleem Khan, 22, was told by US Embassy officials that "a lot of bad people" shared his name.

The Manchester Metropolitan University student had to pay an extra $80 (£45) to have his fingerprints checked against a US terror suspect database.

An embassy spokesman said it could not say how visa applications are assessed.

"We do have expedited procedures for exchange visitors and students that should allow us to process the visa before the travel date," he said.

"In general, there are any number of reasons why one visa application may be different than another or take longer to process.
"The important point I must make is that if someone needs a visa, they should apply well in advance of the travel date."

Mr Khan was planning to work for the Camp America project in Philadelphia.

He said: "She asked me all the usual questions like what was my purpose for visiting and what was the nature of my job and then she said there was a problem with my name.

"She said there were a lot of bad people in the world with that name, meaning terrorists.

"Then she told me I would have to have some additional security checks, which meant all my fingers were fingerprinted and she told me these would be compared to a database in Washington. I had to pay an extra 80 dollars.

"I was totally speechless. I didn't know what to say to her.

"Now I am worried I may not get a visa and travel to the States because of my name.

"I'm sure that if some white candidate came along there would have been no problem."

Mr Khan added that he had never visited Afghanistan or any other trouble hotspots and could think of no reason why his name would cause a problem.

A spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain Inayat Bunglawala said: "This is a worrying incident and seems to fit a recent pattern whereby the USA appears to be treating all Muslims as potential terrorists just because of their religion.

"Although Muslim parents name their children from a wide variety of names - just like other parents - many of them, especially those from the Indian subcontinent, will often give their male children the name of Muhammad as a kind of respectful prefix in honour of the Prophet, even though the actual name by which these children are known will be something else.

"US Embassy officials ought really to have had the training to cope with basic elements of Muslim culture which would help prevent these kinds of unfortunate situations."

Sigh. All you FSOs out there know exactly what happened here, don't you? The interviewing officer should not have said what he/she said, but there you have it.

Here is what happened here:

1) Mohammed applied for a U.S. Visa. British citizens don't need one for routine travel, so Mohammed is either not a British citizen or was planning to travel to the U.S. in a capacity other than routine tourism. From the story, I'd say he was gunning for a "J" visa, the "cultural exchange" visa that one typically sees many camps use.

2) Because of changes in our laws after 9.11, EVERY visa applicant must be interviewed by one of my former colleagues, a Foreign Service Officer, i.e. a diplomat who is a commissioned officer of the President with a commission specifically delegating the President's powers to that officer for consular purposes. There are no exceptions except for the very young and the very, very old (over 80). EVERY visa applicant means every visa applicant. Period. Brown, black and white, Christian, Buddhist and Muslim alike.

3) Mohammed filled out the visa application, paid the interview fee and was given an appointment date for his interview. He then travelled to Embassy London on the date and time specified, probably waited forever and then got in front of a really thick window behind which was a FSO working the visa line.

4) If the FSO was good (this one screwed up, but that's not to say he or she isn't good), Mohammed's application would have been reviewed while he was being called up. The FSO was probably working a batch of J visa applications, perhaps mixed in with student, perhaps not. In any case, the FSO knows what the standards are for qualifying for a J visa and the Foreign Service National staff in London would already have double-checked the bona fides of the inviting organization, i.e. the camp Mohammed was going to work on.

5) Mohammed would then be interviewed. Exactly what questions would be asked is a matter of the officer's discretion, but it's a safe bet to assume that he would have been asked what his purpose for going to the U.S. was, what he did for a living, what school he attended, whether he has visited the U.S. before, other countries he has visited in the past, etc. While this was going on, his passport would be inspected, the FSO constructing a mental picture of the applicant's prior travel.

6) Most non-immigrant visa applicants are considered as a matter of law to be intending immigrants unless they can convince an interviewing FSO otherwise. This FSO clearly felt Mohammed got over that hurdle since he was not "214-B'ed", which is the section of the INA that allows FSOs, as officers of the President, to pretty much deny a visa to anyone they feel doesn't overcome that presumption of illegal intent.

7) Now, here is where it gets tricky. I can't discuss what happens next, but I can say that the FSO should NOT have said "there is a problem with your name." What I can say is that given the security threat to the United States, the U.S. Govt. has made great strides in updating its computer databases and getting the latest and greatest information to its FSOs in the field, right there at the window.

8) And I think I can also safely say that cultures that produce a lot of similar sounding names will produce more problems for that culture's visa applicants than some others. There are a lot of Kims in Korea, and a lot of Mohammeds in the world. One "bad guy" named Kim Park or Mohammed Sayif is going to cause a lot of headaches for a lot of applicants in the world.

9) If the FSO decides that an application like Mohammed's requires further processing, fingerprints must be taken and the applicant has to pay $80 more in fees. NOT because he is brown and not white. NOT because he is Muslim and not Christian. Rather, it is because the application, as a whole, has raised an issue that needs closer scrutiny.

Believe me, I personally sent loads of upper-class, white, Catholic, Latin Americans to the fingerprint desk for further processing.

10) I can't tell you what the government does with the fingerprints. You'll have to figure that out yourselves. (Think really, really hard and you can figure it out!).

11) 99.9% of the time, the visa for a fingerprint case is ultimately issued within 2 weeks of the fingerprinting.

In short, Mohammed was subjected to a standard law that is bothersome to thousands and thousands of US visa applicants every year and is imposed on whites, blacks, browns and yellows of all sorts of beliefs.

It is imposed, however, not without reason nor without cause.