This and that

[juliet]

Intend to manage a proper update this evening, after the london.crafts meet, but in the meantime....

Greenpeace Rainbow Warrior crew take up knitting. I also discovered this week, from a friend who knows someone who roadied for the Breeders, that Kelley Deal used to knit when on tour as well. When she wasn't out of it on heroin, anyway...

The joys of new US immigration procedures - bloody scary. I am increasingly inclined just never to go to the US again.

Women choosing to be full-time mothers instead of staying with their former paid jobs. Now, obviously I am fully in favour of women choosing to arrange their lives as they wish, and giving up paid work in favour of full-time parenting is fine. But what struck me about that article was the complete absence of any comment on the role of fathers. Several of these women's partners are mentioned as working ridiculous hours - not getting in till 9 at night, for example. So these kids may be growing up with lots of attention from their mothers, but they're getting very little at all from their fathers. The continuing attitude that parenting is a woman's job really *does* disturb me. What we should be looking at is both improved legal rights for paternity leave, and in general a culture in which flexible working patterns are available for *everyone* (&, by the by, that does include those who choose not to have kids as well). And, more importantly, are *acceptable*, in that working 12-hour days isn't considered necessary to advance.

Comments

America

[emarkienna.livejournal.com]

That's scary. Even if it's accepted that she didn't follow the rules and it was fair to deport her, I'm lost how "deport" changes from "stick you on the next plane back home" to "interrogations, invasive searches and being taken to a detention facility". Oh, of course, "she might be a terrorist". It's worrying that power is giving to morons who think that actions are justified because they're not as bad as Iran.

A permanent fluorescent light and a television in one corner of the ceiling. It stayed on all night, tuned into a shopping channel.

This I just found bizarre. Is this just how bad commercialism has got in America, or is this part of their psychological torture tactics?

Re: Amerika

[exponentialdk.livejournal.com]

I'm lost how "deport" changes from "stick you on the next plane back home" to "interrogations, invasive searches and being taken to a detention facility".

"Next plane home" would cost them money for the flight, while letting you use your own ticket is relatively inexpensive (assuming they already have adequate space in a detention facility).

I'm told that those who sneak across the border from Mexico, and are caught, are sent back across the border on a bus. This lets them try again immediately. The US Border Patrol would rather they were flown to Mexico City, or some such, so their capture was more of a set-back to illegal entry, but for some reason (cost? protocol?) that's not done.

As for invasive searches, it has been my experience that law enforcement officials will take whatever measures they are allowed toward the goal of finding admissible evidence of crimes. If someone is taken into custody, the search for weapons becomes a search for illegal drugs and anything else that might buttress the prosecution of a criminal. If the bad guy gets off without a conviction for the crime the police all "know" he is guilty of, they might still get him for the cocaine he was carrying for a party that night, or the illegal knife that he (and a large fraction of the population) carries. (Note: In Massachusetts, many (most?) Boy Scouts feloniously carry an illegal knife, not realizing that it is illegal, and a shoe becomes a dangerous weapon or a burglarious tool, depending on how it is used.) While the INS(?) officers in the article may not have had a police background, I expect the culture and the training are very similar.

From the Guardian article: "Our enemies are now more important to us than our friends ... Much of the obsession with homeland security seems to turn on the idea of the world infecting the US."

Other than Canada (and perhaps the UK), the rest of the world seems rather foreign from the US perspective. The UK is quite familiar to the US ~northeast (Boston, NY, DC), and Mexico is quite familiar to the US southwest, but I think only Canada seems universally neighborly. US citizens who haven't travelled abroad probably do think of the world as infecting the US (which is odd, considering it is the US that infects the rest of the world, with movies and such).

It's worrying that power is giving to morons who think that actions are justified because they're not as bad as Iran.

It seems to be very common for officials to envy the power of despots, so they can use it to good ends. Most of them don't realize that such power comes hand in hand with its own abuse. In general, we are relatively blind to our own corruption. Most of those who would turn down such power would also be poor at law-enforcement jobs. The difficulty, as with judges, is to find people who have both the inclination to do the job and the wisdom to do it properly. Ideally, these people get put in charge of such organizations. Their underlings cannot be expected to approach that ideal without serious effort from their leaders.

Juliet wrote: I am increasingly inclined just never to go to the US again.

Would you go to a country such as Israel, Lebanon or Turkey? I doubt the US has gotten any worse than those (and is probably substantially better, still). One indication that the US isn't all that bad is that relatively few of my friends have been considering changing their citizenship. And while the current trend is disturbing, in 1 or 5 years, depending on who wins this presidential election, I expect the trend to reverse.

Re: Amerika

[emarkienna.livejournal.com]

"Next plane home" would cost them money for the flight, while letting you use your own ticket is relatively inexpensive (assuming they already have adequate space in a detention facility).

It would be nice to have the option to pay yourself at least..

Surely though, it would cost quite a lot for what they did to her? Even if they have a spare space in the facility, there's still the cost of transport, supervision by guards and so on - and saying there might be space is like saying there might be spare space on a plane back home. At the end of the day, if this is their standard procedure for dealing with people, they've got to have extra allowance in terms of prison space, which costs.

And well, she may have been wrong to sign the form, but it's surely not comparable to sneaking across the border, especially when she freely volunteered that she was a journalist, before actually being allowed entry to the US.

Would you go to a country such as Israel, Lebanon or Turkey? I doubt the US has gotten any worse than those (and is probably substantially better, still). One indication that the US isn't all that bad is that relatively few of my friends have been considering changing their citizenship.

Answering for myself, I would try to avoid going to any country where they treat non-citizens like this. The US might not be as bad as some places in the world, but surely things have got rather bad if we're now making comparisons to these countries, rather than looking at what other 1st world countries do?

Presumably US citizens are unlikely to change citizenship over how the US treats non-citizens.

And while the current trend is disturbing, in 1 or 5 years, depending on who wins this presidential election, I expect the trend to reverse.

I hope so! Though sadly, it seems that once lost, freedoms are hard to regain.

Re: Amerika

[exponentialdk.livejournal.com]

Surely though, it would cost quite a lot for what they did to her?

From an economic perspective, the resources are only consumed by her detention if they would have been consumed regardless of other needs. (Even the truck fuel was already being spent, to transport the other two people.) My guess is that she would've gotten by fine if those resources were being stretched (i.e. trucks in use for genuine illegal immigrants) -- that she would have been viewed as someone who made an unfortunate mistake, not a law-breaker to be deported. But that's just a guess.

Also note that by spending those resources on her, the officers (their management, really) were able to rack up numbers that argue for the expansion (or at least retention) of their resources (trucks, cells, guards). By letting people go, they might have reduced their own budget. Sad, but true.

it's surely not comparable to sneaking across the border

How true, from our perspective. But I've found, from being around policemen, that those who aren't well connected to non-police culture have a very different perspective on things. The guards in question spend their days trying to stem the tide of illegal immigration from Mexico. They're unlikely to see things from the perspective of a travelling journalist, and more likely to see any unauthorized entry as a failure of their duty, or even to view the situation from the eyes of a hypothetical evil/greedy would-be immigrant.

Also, one of the problems of any large organization is that the extenuating circumstances almost never get preserved across interactions. Once the first officer treated the journalist as an illegal (as the message from headquarters seemed to indicate he should), everyone else down the line viewed her as just another of the myriad enemies to their duty.

surely things have got rather bad if we're now making comparisons to these countries

Yes, I agree. And I think this attitude comes from the top, which is why I think it is as much a result of GWB's presidency as it is a result of terrorism fears.

Presumably US citizens are unlikely to change citizenship over how the US treats non-citizens.

Good point.
:-)

The US citizen complaints are largely about how the US treats its own citizens. These are mostly issues of civil liberties, but not all (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/05/opinion/05KRIS.html) (NYTimes, free reg or bugmenot.com required).

once lost, freedoms are hard to regain

They tend to be regained some when an obvious threat (e.g. war) has clearly gone away. Unfortunately, as in the film Brazil (http://imdb.com/title/tt0088846/), that's not likely to happen any time soon...

Re: Amerika

[exponentialdk.livejournal.com]

Oh, and speaking of our governments and immigration, perhaps you haven't already seen this. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/Refugees_in_Britain/Story/0,2763,1234563,00.html)

[sbp.livejournal.com]

I am increasingly inclined just never to go to the US again.

Me too. And the EU unelected people just rolled over and did what the US said and ignored the EU elected people who were saying "hang on a minute".

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

It's not as bad if you have the right visa, so future rescue missions to salvage reasonable nice human beings are not entirely doomed.

[hieroglyphe.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately a lot of people who can have a kid and still have jobs/careers as well are those who have family to help them out because childcare is so ridiculously expensive. If you're single you are utterly shafted without the help of family (unless you earn silly amounts of money that cover living expenses as well as childcare fees), and if you are a couple, so often one person (usually the lower earner - in most cases the woman) sacrifices their job.

The nicest set up I ever saw was when I worked in the Bradford office - flexible hours there were between 7am-7pm and a couple who worked there applied to both work part time for about 5-6 hours a day each, with one coming in early whilst the other looked after the baby and then they swapped over halfway through the day, meaning that they both had their jobs/careers and they both had equal contsct with the baby :-)

Unfortunately that involves two people who are both forward thinking which is very often not the case - there were another couple in the same office where the woman had to drastically reduce her hours because the man wouldn't (despite them being on equal pay/grading) and whenever the kids were sick etc she always had to take time off because he saw it as her job as a mother, as well as the fact that her job was less important (despite being near identical to his). Interestingly, he actually got pulled up over this by both their line managers ;-)

[the23.livejournal.com]

paternity rights => higher costs => fewer jobs and/or longer hours.

how often does inflexibly imposing flexibility work?

i agree that the us is stupid to harass foreign journalists in this way, but i am surprised she didn't know of the law, given that i did and i am not a journalist, and have previously read about it in british papers online.

us immigration is awful in general as i know from experience.