see my comments at the end of this:
On May 2, English journalist Elena Lappin was detained in a small cell, interrogated, strip searched and handcuffed for 26 hours at the Los Angeles International Airport when she arrived in the United States without an I-visa.
Due to a chapter in the Patriot Act titled Protecting the Border, foreign journalists are now required to apply for a special visa known as the I-visa in order to gain entrance to the United States.
The I-visa provision was reinstated March 2003 after it was revoked in 1952. Since the I-visa was reinstated, 13 foreign journalists have been detained and then deported.
Lappin was not notified that an I-visa was needed to enter the United States. She has worked in the United States many times before, is married to an American, was at one point an American resident, and has an American-born daughter.
Journalist requirements similar to the I-visa are also seen in Iran, Cuba, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia.
After her release, Lappin stated that "in the process of trying to develop a foolproof system of protecting itself against genuine threats, the US has lost the ability to distinguish between friend and foe. The price this powerful country is paying for living in fear is the price of its civil liberties."
(Source: Lappin, Elena. "Welcome to America." The Guardian, 5 June 2004.)
see, now this sounds like a totally crappy thing to do to an individual, especially someone with all of these ties to the US (married to an american, lived in the US, has a US-born child, etc.).
HOWEVER. i have to draw a line here. this is, imo, one instance where the patriot act DID RIGHT.
how so? very simple: ignorance of the law is NO EXCUSE for breaking it. period.
as someone who used to work in law enforcement, i cannot count the times i've heard a law breaker say "but i didn't KNOW it was the law!" tough teaters.
i cannot IMAGINE in my trips to various countries blotching up something as important as my visa and then saying, from a singapore jail cell, "but i didn't KNOW i needed xyz with my papers!"
someone who travels as frequently as this reporter especially should have GOTTEN THE INFORMATION about visa requirements before she made this trip. if she got lazy about it, that's not the cop's fault who arrested her. if her superiors didn't tell her about it, that's not the cop's fault either. it was HER RESPONSIBILITY to know the visa laws about the country she was traveling to. if not, suffer the consequences.
terrorists are not all going to be young mid-eastern men, especially that this is the profile being sought the most. more and more women of various nations' passports are going to be slipping in to do god knows what. we cannot afford to assume that a woman is okay or that someone with a non-arab passport is okay.
information on visa laws are EXTREMELY easy to find out, and anyone traveling to a foreign country is 100% responsible for knowing IN ADVANCE OF TRAVEL the documentation required in that country.
NO pity here!
