I’m glad to see that the bureaucratic mentality that asked me to to declare whether or not I planned to “overthrow the Government of the United States” when I first came to the US is still alive and well. From Harry Mount in New York:
Before Euan Blair took up his job this summer as an intern working for the House of Representatives in Washington, he had to fill out a DS-157 visa form from the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square.
The DS-157 is a special extra anti-terrorist form that asks Euan to give honest answers to questions like “Do you have any specialised skills or training, including firearms, explosives, nuclear, biological or chemical experience?”
It’s a pretty pointless form. If Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein were applying for a visa, they’d hardly tick the box marked “Yes – please explain.”
But, in any case, they wouldn’t have to.
The form is only for men aged 16-45 wanting an American visa. Saddam Hussein (b. 1937, Iraq) and Osama (b. 1957, Saudi Arabia) don’t have to go through this extra level of American security. Euan Blair (b. 1984, England) and I (b. 1971, England) do.
[…]
Issuing precise, catch-all prohibitions on the sort of post you’re allowed to send, or precise age ranges for extra visas, just means that terrorists work out ways of getting round the restrictions. They develop 15-ounce letter bombs that you are allowed to send by plane. They train adolescents and geriatrics to become suicide bombers.
If [you are going after] terrorists, you catch them by going to war with them abroad, or by using intelligence to track them down in your own country. You do not catch them or kill them by restricting what they send through the post or what diplomatic forms they fill out.
(From today’s Expat.telegraph, a newsletter that I subscribe to containing a few stories and many ads that might be of interest to expat Brits around the world.)