And then there's the story of the British journalist, Elena Lappin, who was detained, cuffed, searched and locked up overnight in L.A. for being . . . a journalist. She was told she needed a special journalist's visa, despite the fact that she'd been coming to the United States for years, has an American husband and a daughter born in New York. She says she was told she was lucky she wasn't being treated as she would be in Iran. Which is ironic, she says, because:
it is only "countries like Iran" (for example, Cuba, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe) that have a visa requirement for journalists. It is unheard of in open societies, and, in spite of now being enforced in the US, is still so obscure that most journalists are not familiar with it. Thirteen foreign journalists were detained and deported from the US last year, 12 of them from LAX.Lappin's piece makes it clear: she believes she was singled out because of her trade.
The American novelist Jonathan Franzen wrote her, "On behalf of the non-thuggish American majority, my sincere apologies." Having recently become a United States citizen, I wish I could say I was more proud to be one right now.
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