How to make friends and influence people

just toss'em into jail for the "crime" of visiting America. With no recourse to lawyer, no ability to call your embassy... yeah, this sure the fuck helps tourism, eh?

Since the New York Times will disappear it behind their paywall any time now, here's the bottom line: Domenico Salerno, an Italian citizen, arrived at Washington Dulles Airport to visit his girlfriend. And after several hours of being interrogated, when he told them he wanted to talk to the Italian embassy, an ICE officer instead made a bogus charge that Salerno was an "asylum seeker" and threw him into the gulag for asylum seekers, where he was held without charges, without recourse to a lawyer, without any contact to the outside world until his girlfriend with the help of Senator John Warner and two former immigration officials managed to find out where he was being held. “Now an innocent European, who has never broken any laws, committed any crimes, or overstayed his visa, is being held in a county jail,” his girlfriend, Caitlan Cooper wrote in an e-mail message to The New York Times last Wednesday, prompting a reporter’s inquiries. After the New York Times started asking immigration officials what was going on, higher-ups in Washington *finally* overruled the ICE gestapo agent who had interned Salerno into the ICE gulag for the crime of demanding to speak with the Italian embassy and got him on a plane back to Rome.

This is Soviet America today, people. So if you're not an American citizen, here is my advice to you: STAY AWAY. Flying into the United States today is like flying into a third world dictatorship. You will have armed goons abusing you, groping you, and humilating you. You may be thrown into prison at any time, without any reason, and without any recourse unless you have well-connected friends who can bring a U.S. Senator and the New York Times to bear on your case. I am ashamed for the nation that I was born in, which has given up its freedoms because it has become a nation of thugs and cowards and sometimes both at once. For shame, America. For shame. Except America and Americans have no shame anymore. Welcome to Soviet America, citizen! I love Big Brother. Don't you love Big Brother too? Let us all be good Sovoks and behave in a government-approved manner and dissent in a government-approved fashion and be good government-approved consumers, da!

-- Badtux the Sovok Penguin