An Iron Curtain is Descending: And Most Americans Don't Know It.

By PARIAH -

"Why are you travelling so often to Canada?" the tough U.S. border
guard barked. I was on Amtrak, going from New York to Montreal, as I'd
done dozen of times before over several decades. This was my first
experience (summer 2006) of the increasingly standard and intrusive
"U.S. Exit Interviews" on trains crossing the border. I've been
hassled on every train crossing since then, most recently January
2007. The U.S. now has a combined FBI-compiled file of all arrests and
charges at all government levels for millions of Americans, and this
is instantly viewable by police in many jurisdictions, including
border officials of the U.S. and most other countries. In some cities,
local police can access this file via one's license plate. The files
do NOT show the favorable disposition of arrests that did not lead to
charges or of dismissals and findings of innocence. "And what's this
entry stamp from Canada, with no country of departure? Was that from
Cuba? You know U.S. citizens may not travel to Cuba--you could be
imprisoned and fined."

This line of questioning has been part of every exit interview since.
The first time, the guard took my passport and kept it for about 30
minutes. Others--Canadians and foreigners as well as U.S. citizens--
were getting similar queries, but mine took much longer. "We'll let
the Canadians handle this," the guard said as he handed back the
passport. Moments later, across the border, I heard a Quebecois
immigration agent tell her colleague, gesturing at me, "He's the one."
She, too, took my passport for quite awhile. "She came back with
information from my FBI file-- I have a long record of political
arrests from civil rights and anti-war actions. The Canadians said the
FBI file showed a conviction in 1970 for a draft-board sit-in. The
agent said I would be admitted only for two weeks and could not re-
enter until my file was fully investigated. She told me she understood
the conviction was for a political act with which "Canada agreed at
the time," but said the Canadians had an agreement with the U.S. to
investigate such cases.

Two weeks after I returned from Canada, the Canadian immigration agent
called me: "We have fully investigated your dossier--you have been
approved and are welcome to return when you wish." Since that time, I
continue to be hassled by the U.S. "exit" police, but I am always
dealt with quickly and politely by the Canadians. It is clear from my
experience--as well as that of U.S. Green Party and peace activists
barred from entering Canada during anti-globalization demonstrations
two years ago, that a million or more former peaceniks and other
radicals will now see more and more attempts to keep them at home.

Most Americans are unaware of the new police state procedures of U.S.
officials who seek to keep millions of Americans from traveling--
including trips across the border to our North, once thought the least
difficult international frontier in the world to cross. There are now
regular stops an "internal" checkpoints for cars traveling toward,
away from or near the border in states from Maine to Washington. This
includes permanent checkpoints on interstates one hundred or more
miles from the border in New York and Vermont, as well as moving
patrols who stop motorists in all parts of the border states. Some
have called these "whiteness checkpoints," since the border guards
often pull over dark-skinned motorists and people perceived as Middle
Easterners. Civil libertarians and others in the border states--
including conservative farmers--have protested this dramatic departure
from the assumed tradition of allowing Americans freedom of travel--
certainly freedom to leave their own country. Homeland Security, which
supervises the "U.S. Customs and Border Protection" squads (CBP),
admits that few terrorists (some say none) have been apprehended by
this dubious process, but various "sex offenders and other criminals"
have been caught, and drugs and other contraband seized. This is in
addition to the "exit interviews" of Americans leaving by train or
bus, which are now routine.

One group, aside from dark-skinned people and Muslims, targeted by the
internal checkpoints, are students and other young people. Persons
under 18 cannot cross a U.S. border alone, unless they are with a
guardian and have notarized letters from a parent, as well as a
passport issued in their own name. Persons between 18 and 21 may be
questioned about their intention to engage in behavior (sex or
drinking or marijuana use) strongly penalized in the U.S., but either
decriminalized or lightly punished in Canada. Up until three years
ago, unaccompanied persons over 16 were seldom checked--and longer
ago, even younger persons could travel alone or with a non-parental
adult. Student groups, including bus tour groups, now report very
close scrutiny from the U.S. Exit police. Some bus companies now
refuse to take groups of students under 21 across U.S. borders because
of hassles they face. Gone are the days when an 18 or over driver
could skit across from Burlington to Montreal with a car-full of late-
teens hoping to taste the more liberal morals up north.

The big media story about all this has been the new requirement that
all U.S. air travelers returning home must now have passports,
including those coming from Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean, and that
citizens of those countries must also have passports when coming by
air--as of Jan. 23. Similar requirements for passports at land and sea
crossings will go into effect sometime after next January 1. (These
measures have been strongly protested by Canada and Mexico, to little
avail.) Aside from the expense of passports, which puts the usual
strain on low-income people, having to have passports even to go and
come from Canada or Mexico will limit a very large number of Americans
from international travel, period. With the passport requirement,
several huge new segments of the American population will be unable to
travel abroad, even on day-trips from Detroit to Windsor, Buffalo to
Niagra Falls, or Calexico to Mexicali.

One group that gets very special attention are registered sex
offenders, of whom there are now just over 600,000 in the U.S. The
public generally approves of all measures to limit or control this
group of pariahs, never mind the fact that few of these were violent
rapists, and that many are forced to register for decades or life,
long after minimal offenses--including prostitution and public sex, or
in some cases even urinating in public. Beyond sex offenders, though,
virtually all the 5 million plus persons who are on parole or
probation for state and federal felonies will be unable to keep or get
passports. Another large group are the 4 million or so who are "child
support delinquents." At the very least, about 2 million (mostly male,
but some female) "deadbeats" meet the minimum requirement of being
$5,000 or more behind in their payments, which triggers (since 1994)
automatic passport cancellation or denial. Among these are at least a
half million teenage fathers, mostly very low income school drop-outs,
often unemployed and sometimes homeless.

All of these groups who are forbidden international travel are related
to class and race discrimination. Of he 5 million on parole or
probation, a far higher percentage are black or Hispanic than would be
warranted by their prevalence in the overall population. By some
estimates, between 13 and 20% of all black men are now in this
category, and thus forbidden to hold or keep passports.

Most media attention about new U.S. travel restrictions has focused on
harm to tourism and other business--with considerable protest from
border communities about across border trade, and from U.S., Canadian
and Mexican travel agencies. A Canadian government website dedicated
to international trade, Strategis.Ca, estimates that there has already
been an 8% reduction of U.S. visitors to Canada and a 7% reduction of
Canadian visitors to the U.S., but that this will rise to 14% or more
by the end of 2007 for visitors in both directions. Gay tourism to
meccas like Montreal and Vancouver is decidedly down--some say as much
as 30%. This would reflect the greater likelihood that gay men and
women, like non-whites and the poor, would fall afoul of U.S. laws
more frequently due to discrimination.

At the beginning of the Cold War, Winston Churchill made his famous
comment about an iron curtain descending across Europe. Like many
others, I experienced this iron curtain. I faced incessant exit and
entry police interrogations in places like East Berlin and at the
Soviet borders. In those days, such long waits to get OUT of a
country, as well as to get in, were limited to the "Communist" block
primarily. Thank goodness, we'd think, this could not happen in
America. Now that virtually all travel barriers have fallen throughout
Europe--including Eastern Europe, and with travel in and out of China
or Vietnam far easier than before, it is around the U.S. that the iron
curtain seems to be descending. As in the Soviet or Chinese blocks
before (or more recently in Cuba), the elites could travel, but the
various dissidents, deviants and ordinary folk could not. This sad
fact is becoming increasingly the case for many U, S, citizens today.
So far, very few liberals or libertarians have taken note of this
chilling trend to limit travel for huge numbers of Americans. Unless
protests against these measures grow quickly, it will be too late to
stop or even slow them down. America, like Russia and China before it,
will become a prison for many of its people.

Pariah lives in Canada.

.