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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsLegendary British R&B singer is in ICE Lockup - Jane Eugene
Overstayed visa by 26 years. Was picked up trying to cross into Canada

Scrivener7
(56,505 posts)Demovictory9
(36,804 posts)EllieBC
(3,520 posts)It happens more often than you think.
PittBlue
(4,582 posts)I really do not want to live here anymore.
Warpy
(113,706 posts)and after 26 years, unless they can come up with a criminal record for her, it's hers, too. They should just get her a green card and send her back to wherever she's been living.
This is my home. I'm not going anywhere. I just want jackbooted thugs with quotas to fill to back the fuck off and I want the people who issued their orders and their quotas to go to prison. Alligator Auschwitz sounds nice this time of year. Maybe some of the people who fell in love with this crazy quilt of a country enough to overstay their visas for decades will be willing to act as guards once their green cards come through.
I can dream, right?
malaise
(286,875 posts)Why is anyone so careless - why would anyone remain in any country without sorting out her/his immigration papers?
26 years - seriously? Rubbish dat.
Demovictory9
(36,804 posts)ancianita
(41,106 posts)The problem with this one is that the punishment doesn't fit the so-called crime of carelessness; iow, her crimeless life doesn't merit what amounts to death camp detention, which is against the "cruel and unusual punishment clause of the Eighth Amendment. She seriously needs a Democracy Forward or ACLU lawyer, and some help from the British embassy with Rubio.
Looks like the wall works both ways now.
Hekate
(98,600 posts)They were shot & killed while attempting to leave over the Wall, or if they were caught in the act of tunneling they were imprisoned and tortured.
So, lets just say that during his first term when trump was babbling on about his fantastic sea to sea wall to keep farmworkers out I just kept thinking how that works both ways. Now he wants to have Americans who would like to go in to Canada to have their papers in hand and to have their photos taken. Land of the free my rosy Irish ass.
ancianita
(41,106 posts)to keep bad people out of their country.
Unfortunately we were only 3 when Hannah Arendt wrote her classic, The Origins of Totalitarianism, which I'd not read until after I'd read corporate history. In all that time, though I'd studied humanities/philosophy and knew about fascism, I never imagined, nor would have believed if a crystal ball revealed the future, that our country could possibly do the same.
I knew OF oligarchs in the 70's, but have since learned that they've encouraged the well educated to "stay in the abstract," and so I'd only believed that totalitarianism was a sickness of other continents. I thought our leaders would always be rational.
And now? A convicted felon & his lawless henchmen, having flooded the zone with lies for years, pervert civil misdemeanors into major crimes.
It's part and parcel of the felon's racist theater for his hateful cult.
The root of their mutual secret depravity is that a) the cult themselves love to vote for an actual convicted criminal so that he will b) go after any and all "other" people who productively live and work and have families, constitutional rights and freedom, and then c) blackbag those "very bad people" off to death camps.
The felon's golf cart bumpersticker: "Immunity" for me; pardons for thee.
malaise
(286,875 posts)to remain in any country for 26 years without changing her/his status?
Remember how this went down.
Was the passport even valid? The Canadians said no - why?
ancianita
(41,106 posts)Even Rubio knows the British Embassy knows US law.
EllieBC
(3,520 posts)which youd have to be under a rock not to, why would you be careless?
Not even the Canadians want to play these games. Theyve turned people away before for numerous reasons like expired passports or possibly lying about why they were seeking entry.
But now the stakes are higher. The Canadian border patrol turned you away before and you just walked away salty and whining. Now you get screwed on the other side when turned away.
So I think maybe being careless now is really just crazy.
ancianita
(41,106 posts)706,952 suspected in-country overstays in the U.S., representing a rate of 3.04% of expected departures?
That in 2023 in country overstays totaled 510,400 people?
Business and Tourist Visas: Roughly 400,000 individuals with short-term (tourism) visas issued in FY2023 remained beyond their allowed stay.
And that the average overstay in the last couple of years has been in the several hundred thousands?
You didn't know? Me, neither.
But even if we didn't know the numbers, most of us Americans who pay attention have known for at least a decade (this issue has been on FB since I first got on it in 2007) that the majority of "illegals" were really people who'd have flown into the U.S. and overstayed their visas. Driving, I myself have shown a passport at the Canadian border at least eight times (in four trips) and entering/exiting, told them I was traveling on vacation.
She knew that the stakes were higher and tried to actually leave, she didn't know Canadian law, and she should have gone to the nearest British consulate or embassy. But she was careless, stupid, and finally getting a clue about her situation, so "maybe crazy" ... or she was busy working, not unusual for an entertainer.
Bottom line, are you saying you're OK with Homeland's treatment of her? that her being in the wrong means ICE can criminalize her and then do what they want with her? Because if you mean to say she deserves what she gets, then that's exactly what you're saying.
EllieBC
(3,520 posts)But this also shines a light on something that a lot of people know have called American exceptionalism. The belief that Americans have that laws dont apply to them. Policies regarding immigration dont apply to them. Trump mightve threatened to make Canada the 51st state but plenty of Americans have been treating it as a 51st state their entire lives.
How many times do we have to hear up here Americans saying theyre just going to move here after an election. Thats not how it works. Thats not how anything works. Yet its always how Americans treat things like they have the right to go and do whatever they want to do anywhere they are and they dont actually have to learn the laws of the country they are going to.
Learn the laws of where you are going.
Homeland security is a nightmare now. So dont be stupid. Canada has for quite some time turned people away. So put that together and plan accordingly.
ancianita
(41,106 posts)is many folks' urge to blame the victim of Homeland, when she's only a victim of her own carelessness and stupidity over what are really racist laws, anyway. When the felon called all Republicans to vote down their bipartisan comprehensive immigration "it will make me look bad" bill, they proved that immigration wasn't the point at all.
We all know this. It's what the felon and his cult are all about. Maybe you and/or others forgot.
I'll just leave you with this briefing on immigration history that I posted almost a month ago before ICE's SHTF.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220388026
malaise
(286,875 posts)folks from most other categories.
Thousands of people with expired visitors and other visas are deported from countries across the globe daily.
No one would have looked for her if she didnt head for Canada .with what Im hearing was an expired British passport.
26 years and you dont sort out your status. Sorry - This one is personal carelessness on steroids.
ancianita
(41,106 posts)'likely story' that they use to excuse overstaying visas.
The ONLY way all this could be solved is when corporations lobby -- as in buy off congress people -- to create unlimited H1B work visas instead of the current tight quota. They would then solve the employment problems for both them and American farmers who mostly run agribusinesses (and family farms on the side) anyway.
Why should corporations lobby for unlimited H1B work visas? Because corporations and our economy are global.
malaise
(286,875 posts)but what about personnel responsibility.
We have close friends - their son and his wife broke up because the wife went to the US with their two children - all on visitors visas. She put the kids in school- well now that the shit has hit the fan he is in the US to get his children and bring them home before they are put in ICE packs or trafficked by the goons. Note those kids have no social security numbers - in a few years they cant acquire drivers licenses etc. , or have access to college but in the meantime the government can pick them up and send them anywhere or the goons can traffic them
The mother is no criminal either other than committing crimes against her own kids. For what?
With or without these assholes, there are immigration laws
ancianita
(41,106 posts)But personal responsibility is assumed, and personal irresponsibility needn't be, nor must be, criminalized under immigration laws.
I don't know what else to say (-- since I reviewed the history of immigration in this country a while back about our undocumented immigrant framers of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution --) except to say that I believe immigration laws have always been another front for racism. Racism has always been the heart and operating core of the Republican Party.
Name one Republican who is not a racist. Oh right. Reagan & McCain. Both dead.
I'll leave you with this.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220388026
malaise
(286,875 posts)Thanks for the link
Initech
(105,693 posts)
SheltieLover
(71,891 posts)

Initech
(105,693 posts)

SheltieLover
(71,891 posts)Ty!
Let's hope fleaon's fuck ups designed it...another unscheduled disassembly. 🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞
Initech
(105,693 posts)
SheltieLover
(71,891 posts)

Initech
(105,693 posts)(with 40 being the odds of surviving)
SheltieLover
(71,891 posts)
serbbral
(328 posts)I hope things work out for Ms. Eugene, and like someone said, she was leaving. Jeeze! Sorry to see this happen, but not surprised. Loose Ends was one of my all-time favorite groups back in the '80s and '90s. Great music. 'Hanging on a String' was one of my favorites.
maxsolomon
(36,927 posts)Really strange story - when I go to Canada, I encounter no US Customs Agents. It's Canadians you talk to.
Did the Canadians turn her around for some reason?
WhiskeyGrinder
(25,343 posts)maxsolomon
(36,927 posts)Thanks for that info, I'm not watching a friggin video in GD. Canada won't let anyone with any convictions in.
WhiskeyGrinder
(25,343 posts)arrest here.
The video was just a music video.
maxsolomon
(36,927 posts)but there could be 3 reasons:
1. She's got a conviction for something in the US, even as "minor" as DWI, and she fessed up.
2. She was going there to perform and didn't have permissions.
3. Massively expired British Passport - they don't last 26 years.
DFW
(58,517 posts)Anyone who has a passport, and thinks its valid sixteen years after the expiration date is not living in the real world.
Demovictory9
(36,804 posts)I wonder if she was able to travel as an RB singer
DFW
(58,517 posts)In emergency situations the State Department can issue a temporary passport on location, but its intent is usually to get the citizen in distress back home.
During Covid, I was in the States in early August looking at a passport about to expire in January. Even DC said it would take 18 months for a renewal to go through. State said the best I could do was to get an appointment at the US consulate in Frankfurt and get a temporary passport there. It was good for a year in which time I was expected to get back to the USA, and the waiting time should have gone down drastically. I said, OK, better than nothing.
So, the moment I got back to Germany, I called the Consulate, asked to speak to Consular, and asked what I should bring with me. They told me, and I did. When I got there, I told the embassy guy I needed a one year temp. He looked at my passport and said, "Why don't you just do a normal renewal, which is good for ten years?" I said that Washington said I couldn't. He said that well, Frankfurt says you can. I told him I liked what Frankfurt said better.
He changed a few details on the application, said it would take about four weeks. Twelve days later, it was in a FedEx envelope at my house in Düsseldorf, having been issued in Washington, and I had not paid for expedited service. I couldn't believe it. I thought they must have invited a guest efficiency team from Switzerland or something.
JI7
(92,342 posts)citizens in either ?
She may have been using an expired passport?
EllieBC
(3,520 posts)Being a British citizen doesnt give you Canadian citizenship anymore than Canadian citizenship gives you Australian. Canada wont let in people with expired passports. Or people who they suspect are there to work without a permit.
Response to Demovictory9 (Original post)
Celerity This message was self-deleted by its author.
DFW
(58,517 posts)We could not foresee their lives paths when they were born, but getting eligible children dual nationality at birth is a lot easier than applying for it later on.
Its their responsibility now to get both their German and their American passports renewed on a timely basis, which they both do. One lives and works in New York City, and the other lives and works in Germany. Their childrentwo eachare now also both US and German citizens. It was more of a paperwork battle nowadays than it was in the 1980s to get the dual citizenship donetwo hours then, ten months now (theres progress for you). But it still can be done, and we are SO glad we did it.