As seen on MegNut...Danny O'Brien on immigration paperwork.

Danny O'Brien has some interesting points about the difficulties in acquiring permanent resident status in the US...

O'Brien says, among other things:

But most of all, right now, I'm lucky because I'm not from an Arab country. Because the simple form-filling errors that I've made in the past - me, English-speaking, college-educated, was-studying-to-be-a-lawyer-at-school - would have got me handcuffed, arrested and thrown in jail this week.

His post includes pictures detailing phase one of the process for becoming a permanent resident in the United States. I am posting this in response to the stuff I have seen out there saying that anyone who does not have all of their paperwork in pristine order must be a terrorist--obviously, that isn't true, and it appears that the INS is making that claim about certain people based (in this case) on their country of origin. These are individuals who want to make America their home. How does this sort of action reflect on the ideals and principles of the country they want to be able to call their own?

It would be cool if I could find the permalink to a post from my local machine, something similar to what I can do on the "Stories" page in the Radio application. That way, when I have a thought and want to link to something I've written previously, I wouldn't need to go out to my website to find the permalink.

Now, this may be possible and just unknown to me. In fact, that is quite likely. Does anyone know how to do this?

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In other news...Trent Lott just stepped down as Majority Leader.

You know, yesterday I had a sense of being particularly proud of being American, of living in a country where cities are openly opposing the bigoted, racist, and patently un-American features of the "patriot" act. Then I refreshed my aggregator one more time, and saw the thread of stories on the "round ups" performed by the US Government yesterday. It made me so sick I had to wait until today to write anything, for fear that I would end up rounded up myself.

To be clear, I am hugely proud of most American policies and what could be called the "American" way of life.  But I am concerned and frightened by any policy that applies only to people from certain countries or to people with certain skin colors or religious beliefs. 

Talk Left had this coverage of the implementation of the plan. Hit and Run's Sara Rimensnyder posted this, which included a link to this article in The Independent. Also from Hit & Run, Mike Alissi had Busting Immigrants (But they need to explain how rounding up peaceful, hardworking immigrants protects us from terrorism). He included a link to the Post 911 Backlash Backgrounder.

This was on the Reuters wire this week.  The Washington Post has this today, which tries to write the sweep off as "an attempt to know who is in the country, legally and illegally, or is applying for residency status, and possibly to ferret out those who might know of terrorist activities or pose a threat to U.S. interests."  Yeah.  Because only people from those countries might pose a threat to "U.S. interests."   And because terrorists and terrorist-sympathizers are particularly likely to register with the INS.  Yeah.   Right.