{"id":11297,"date":"2007-10-01T12:00:23","date_gmt":"2007-10-01T19:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2007\/10\/01\/yeah-watch-out-for-those-crafty-welsh-speaking-violin-players.html"},"modified":"2007-10-01T12:00:23","modified_gmt":"2007-10-01T19:00:23","slug":"yeah_watch_out_for_those","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/10\/01\/yeah_watch_out_for_those.html","title":{"rendered":"Yeah, watch out for those crafty Welsh-speaking violin-players"},"content":{"rendered":"

Because, you know, they’re probably terrorists.  Or, perhaps, bit players in a story by Kafka<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Ms. Ghuman\u2019s descent into the bureaucratic netherworld began on Aug. 8, 2006, when she and Mr. Flight returned to San Francisco from a research trip to Britain. Armed immigration officers met them at the airplane door and escorted Ms. Ghuman away.<\/p>\n

In a written account of the next eight hours that she prepared for her lawyer, Ms. Ghuman said that officers tore up her H-1B visa, which was valid through May 2008, defaced her British passport, and seemed suspicious of everything from her music cassettes to the fact that she had listed Welsh as a language she speaks. A redacted government report about the episode obtained by her lawyer under the Freedom of Information Act erroneously described her as \u201cHispanic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Held incommunicado in a room in the airport, she was groped during a body search, she said, and was warned that if she moved, she would be considered to be attacking her armed female searcher. After questioning her for hours, the officers told her that she had been ruled inadmissible, she said, and threatened to transfer her to a detention center in Santa Clara, Calif., unless she left on a flight to London that night.<\/p>\n

Outside, Mr. Flight made frantic calls for help. He said the British Consulate tried to get through to the immigration officials in charge, to no avail. And Ms. Ghuman said her demands to speak to the British consul were rebuffed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey told me I was nobody, I was nowhere and I had no rights,\u201d she said. \u201cFor the first time, I understood what the deprivation of liberty means.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Who is the International Woman of Mystery?  A Welsh-born musicologist who’s been teaching at Mills College in Oakland, and who’d been working in the US for a decade.  Oh, and she’s an expert in Elbert (“Pomp & Circumstance”) Elgar, and an Oxford graduate, with a doctorate from UC Berkeley … ah, that must be it … terroristic Berserkeleyite, man …<\/em><\/p>\n

And after 13+ months <\/em>trying to find out more, trying to reapply for a visa, getting folks from Parliament and Congress and the American Musicological Society to write in on her behalf … nada<\/em>.  No explanations, no justifications, no accusations that can be addressed or rebutted.  No response as to whether her visa reapplication’s been blackballed, etc.<\/p>\n

\n

Kelly Klundt, a spokeswoman for Customs and Border Protection in the Department of Homeland Security, said officers at San Francisco International Airport had no choice but to bar Ms. Ghuman because the State Department, at its discretion, had revoked her visa. The State Department would not discuss the case, citing the confidentiality of individual visa records.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

How conveniently “confidential.”<\/p>\n

I’d note that the picture of her in the NY Times article looks a lot like my mother in younger days … but who knows what might happen to my Mom if I did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Because, you know, they’re probably terrorists.  Or, perhaps, bit players in a story by Kafka: Ms. Ghuman\u2019s descent into the bureaucratic netherworld began on Aug. 8, 2006, when she and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-homeland-security"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8349,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/12\/07\/judicial_test.html","url_meta":{"origin":11297,"position":0},"title":"Judicial test","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 7-Dec-05 1:55pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The Bar Exam should be tough. Still, this sort of thing makes you wonder: Kathleen Sullivan is a noted constitutional scholar who has argued cases before the Supreme Court. Until...","rel":"","context":"In "School Daze"","block_context":{"text":"School Daze","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/school-daze"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13650,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/10\/31\/out_of_office_signage.html","url_meta":{"origin":11297,"position":1},"title":"Out of Office Signage","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 31-Oct-08 2:26pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Call this the governmental version of Anglos who get Japanese or Chinese symbols as tattoos without really knowing what they mean. Or Japanese who wear oddly phrased English t-shirts...","rel":"","context":"In "Writing and Language"","block_context":{"text":"Writing and Language","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/writing-and-language"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/images\/welsh-sign.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9004,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/03\/07\/oops_i_mean_eur.html","url_meta":{"origin":11297,"position":2},"title":"Oops! I mean, Eureka!","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 7-Mar-06 9:20am","format":false,"excerpt":"The Ten Best Accidental Discoveries. Includes something related to my favorite (well, favorite-named) Welsh burg, Merthyr Tydfil. (via GeekPress)...","rel":"","context":"In "Science & Nature"","block_context":{"text":"Science & Nature","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/science"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11353,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/09\/14\/jesus_who.html","url_meta":{"origin":11297,"position":3},"title":"Jesus Who?","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 14-Sep-07 6:51am","format":false,"excerpt":"A Welsh church that as featured in a Series 1 Doctor Who episode (it doesn't say, but presumably the time travel one) is planning a special Doctor Who-themed youth...","rel":"","context":"In "Doctor Who"","block_context":{"text":"Doctor Who","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/franchises\/media-tv-doctor-who"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/images\/tardis.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8852,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/04\/05\/posturing_2.html","url_meta":{"origin":11297,"position":4},"title":"Posturing","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 5-Apr-06 7:57am","format":false,"excerpt":"A pity that the Dems, who were having such a nice week with Tom DeLay's resignation, now have to be distracted by their resident House whacko, Cynthia McKinney (D-GA). As...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":33802,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/15\/the-ineffable-weirdness-of-categories.html","url_meta":{"origin":11297,"position":5},"title":"The\u00a0ineffable\u00a0weirdness of categories","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 15-May-13 7:21am","format":false,"excerpt":"Humans like to categorize things, to know what boxes and pigeonholes and file folders they should go into. Things they can't easily categorize, or whose categories change, make them nervous.The increasing acceptance of gender reassignment -- a fundamental change in categories for a person -- will mean amusing\u00a0occurrences\u00a0like this will\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}