America: Engaging in self-parody for way too fucking long.
I recollect seeing that, too. In fact, I think I’ve seen multiple authors/journalists with similar stories.
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Yes. It appears I interpreted your statement differently from how it was intended.
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We do still have right wing problems happening in the EU right now - though since Macron demonstrated that you can still win if you mess up the russian bots and hackers, we haven’t had any more major neo-Nazi victories - so do keep your fingers crossed for us, just in case.
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Thanks for providing this direct link. This and the notes below do slightly derail Cory’s headline of ‘every visitor to the USA’ (I’m shocked, I tell you. Shocked!)
Having looked over the linked info, the two proposals refer specifically to visa applications for non-immigrant and immigrant visas. Other comments on the thread mention ESTA - and surely this is important here? ESTA being the ‘visa waiver program’ where a visa is not actually required due to reciprocal arrangements with a set of countries:
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/tourism-visit/visa-waiver-program.html
While I’m in total agreement that the intrusion implied in the social media questions is outrageous, and also that this is a data dump which would cripple most government agencies, I can’t see that this will majorly impact things like tourism and general business travel from these 38 countries (this has been implied in stories elsewhere). Although I’m aware of scope creep and the fact that ESTA may end up with these questions added to it…
It’s undeniable that what the current administration is enacting in many areas seems protectionist/isolationist in the extreme, at present none of this is making me think ‘I’m not going there any time soon!’. US Government != ‘The US’ - the people make the country what it is, and I’ve met good people every trip I’ve had. The ongoing attempts to restrict visitors/immigrants from certain countries by ethnic/religious criteria does seem ‘un-American’ as others have pointed out.
And economically the administration knows that denying access to (in their definitions) the ‘right sort of people’ would be damaging - from the DHS Visa waiver program website: “The United States welcomed approximately 20 million VWP travelers in FY 2014 who, according to the Department of Commerce, spent approximately $84 billion on goods and services. VWP travelers injected nearly $231 million a day into local economies across the country.”
Right, time to start packing - Las Vegas here I come! (yes, I know that Vegas is not that representative of the US as a whole, but I have travelled more widely that that crazy place in the desert!) (and yes, I’m aware that being in one of those 38 countries - the UK - means I’m lucky enough to not need the visa).
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OK. Makes sense. 
If you drive in from Canada and are from one of the 38 visa waiver nations, then you don’t need a visa.
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The person in the department who has to scour though french Harry Potter slash fiction social media accounts made by visa applicants has to have the shittiest job in the federal government
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There is also an international agreement (the 1954 Statelessness Convention) which prohibits taking away someone’s citizenship if they have no other citizenship - that is, it’s considered a fundamental human right to have some form of citizenship in some country and countries should not render people stateless.
And of course the Trump administration would never flout international law that they found burdensome.
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so I’m guessing that I’m not the only one that doesn’t use a landline any more and has moved house a couple of times in the last 5 years. That’s several different telephone numbers that will be in my name, but I have absolutely no clue what they were/are.
What are they going to do, make me stand there while they look into it? Or refuse entry to everyone who doesn’t have a photographic memory?
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You’re right, I guess that shouldn’t surprise me.
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