Re: I need help finding a way to juggle in London!
- From: web@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (sylphskin)
- Date: 04 Apr 2008 14:42:50 GMT
Yes it's true - the Americans bring it on themselves in this way. in fact
- i was trying to find back-up online to my story below, can't be bothered
to find it now - i'll just link what i found: www.immigrationcontrol.com
seems pretty liberal and not at all racist.....umm...
Brazil has my favourite attitude towards diplomatic reciprocation like
this....
Only Americans have to have their photo taken on passing through a
Brazilian airport. Some of them take offence to this, given the generally
slack attitude Brazil has towards immigration, obviously not realising the
long and laborious process most foreigners have to go through trying to
get into the US. While I was living there, there was a story in the news
about a US Air Force pilot who stuck his middle finger up at the brazilian
camera....he got deported. justified? i think so!
love and kisses,
SuchaMuggle wrote:
Laura Ernst wrote:
Hey guys,
I've got the opportunity of a lifetime in front of me, but visas and
paperwork are standing in my way. I was offered to join a juggling troupe
based in London. They would want me to move to London for 1-5 years and
perform all over Europe.
The problem is that we can't find any kind of work visa that will work for
this situation. No one was really thinking about jugglers when they wrote
the laws of immigration. They want to have me as a freelance worker for
their company, but every possible solution we come up with gets shot down.
I know there has to be a way, somehow, that this can work out. I don't
want to miss out on this because of something as stupid as work visas.
Please help!
You would think there "has to be a way," but the whole European feeling
toward us Americans, at least among officials and bureaucrats (sp?) has
changed in the past 8 years.
I grew up thinking that the United States was very friendly with Europe,
and for the first few years I traveled overseas, my blue US passport
always got me smiles and a quick wave-through into the countries I visited
in Europe.
Recently, however, European countries have begun to limit the time we
Americans spend inside their borders. Not each country, mind you, but all
of Europe, counted as a single country. And guess where they got this idea?
If a European tourist on a tourist entry stamp or visa (good for 90 days)
stays for 91 or more days in the US, that person is BANISHED from the US,
and not allowed to come back! Even if that person buys a Winnebago and
drives around the US spending Euro cash in many of our States, he's
considered a criminal if he passes the idiotic 90-day limit. So, within
the past few years, Europe has "united" too, and they have copied the
90-day limit and banned some Americans for backpacking around Europe for
slightly longer than a summer!
The United States, in these days of the Bush Administration and its
Patriot Act, has also begun to mistreat our European visitors.
Have you all heard the story of Jouni Temonen (sp?) from Finland? He's a
great juggler. He has a LIFETIME BAN from the United States because once,
ca. 5 years ago, he was asked by some border guard at a US airport if he
had ever tried marijuana in his entire life. How is that our business in
the US, and especially for a person coming to visit? Anyway, Jouni
answered that he might have inhaled some smoke once in Amsterdam, where it
is commonplace and not prosecuted by laws.
Our good old, super-efficient border people, the ones who allowed Saudi
terrorists to move into the US to learn to crash airliners, immediately
put Jouni's name into the Big Computer (and I really wish I were making
this up) and then sent him back to Europe, making him miss his juggling
competition.
Years later, he was hired as Special Guest for a juggling event in the
States, so he flew here again. His name was still flagged as a CRIMINAL!
So they sent him packing RIGHT FROM THE AIRPORT and made him miss his
event again.
My girlfriend came to the States in 2006 and the border people shouted at
her and pushed her to near tears because she had an apple in her bag. An
apple! They didn't bother to take 10 seconds to explain why that's not
allowed (foreign vegetable matter can contain diseases which could
devastate US crops). They just yelled at her on her first solo trip to the
US, as if she were carrying a grenade.
My friend Jeff told me that his brother was stopped and detained
(illegally) for 12 hours in Miami airport because he truthfully answered a
question about whether he had ever been arrested. He had indeed been
arrested 10 years earlier in Australia for something minor involving a
joyride in a car while he was a teen.
The United States border people, protecting us from all these evil
foreigners, chucked Jeff's brother out after the 12 hours, at his own
expense.
When we allow our border guards to abuse our visitors, many of whom bring
us their tourist dollars, we must start expecting their border workers to
respond in kind.
It's none of our border patrol's business if any visitor ever tried a
joint, or had a misdemeanor on their record a decade in the past, and it's
part of their job to explain, PATIENTLY, why a foreign-grown apple is
considered contraband.
I hope Laura will get to work for the UK juggling group, but at this time
in history, with our President so universally despised, our aggressive
foreign meddling getting civilians killed, and our Draconian rules about
visitors to the US, we Americans are not as popular around the world as we
once were. Shame on us.
John
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