One thing to know is that apparently the reason for having seemingly idiotic questions on immigration forms ("are you a terrorist?", "are you a nazi war criminal?") is not that the government is stupid but rather that they're there in order to be able to deport someone for answering the question incorrectly in the event that the government wants to deport them but lacks sufficient evidence to pursue a criminal case. There's a blanket "you answer wrong, we deport you" law somewhere on the books.
This is such a stupid explanation. Do people really think the government is going to go "You're a terrorist, but we can't deport you for that. But look here, you checked this form wrong.."
Actually yes. I wasn't making it up. If you Google search on this you'll find lots of supporting evidence. The reason for the stupid questions is to be able to retrospectively take action based on incorrect answers being given.
That still doesn't make sense. To prove they checked the form wrong, you have to prove the actual charge itself (e.g. they are a terrorist, by whatever definition). That itself is enough evidence for deportation.
Except the question is "are you or have you been in the past associated with, do you know of, are you a relative of a know or unknown terrorist or a terrorist organization?" (The real question is longer)
Then a similar question for nazis, intelligence agencies, military and some more.
There is a podcast of a story of an immigrant who was associated with a group as a kid. Decades _after_ him immigrating to the US the US declared the group a terrorist organization. Will post the link if I find it.
You may have misunderstood - I think the parent is saying its the same principle as, say, convicting Al Capone of tax fraud. Create a large number of small, easy-to-accidentally-violate laws (think police stops and traffic laws here), and then selectively enforce them - so if its difficult to prove someone is a terrorist, kick them out of the country for incorrectly filling out their Form WhateverWhatever1300B instead.
They got Al Capone on tax evasion (not fraud) because he evaded taxes, not because of some grand scheme. The IRS is interested in collecting taxes, not policing.
On a related note, the IRS also requires that you report and pay taxes on all the money you made by robbing banks, selling drugs, and embezzling your employer's coffers.
Nobody who hasn't already been convicted will fill out those forms, of course, but that's another criminal charge if the DA wants to put you away for even longer.
> This is such a stupid explanation. Do people really think the government is going to go "You're a terrorist, but we can't deport you for that. But look here, you checked this form wrong.."
No, they are going to say anything like that to you; what they'll do is go to a judge and say we have this evidence that this visa-holder is a terrorist (which evidence doesn't actually relate to any crime prosecutable under US law, because not all terrorism in the world is a US crime) and that they therefore committed the crime of attempting to defraud the government by the way they filled out this form stating that they totally weren't a terrorist, and so we'd like to go arrest them please. And the judge will say, “why, sure". And then what they actually say to you will involve lots of guns carried by high-on-adrenaline counter-terorism agents storming into the place where your family is sleeping in the middle of the night.
No, it's dead on. Once residency and citizenship are granted, it's tough to revoke them, so reserving deception during the application process as a cause makes that easier.
Generally these things are set up so that proving someone lied on the form is easy and straightforward. As someone else pointed out, the actual question isn't going to be "are you a terrorist", it's going to be a question about whether you've ever associated with certain people, or organizations which espoused certain views. And that can be very easy to prove.
You see this pattern in more than just immigration cases.
The FBI and other federal agencies infamously "get" people for making untrue statements to their agents, since that's a federal felony right away, and easier to prove than that the person committed some other, more complex crime.
The other day in a reddit thread I got to bring up a case from New Mexico involving someone who literally fabricated evidence of a child in order to claim support payments. Once it was established the child didn't exist, proving all the various elements (like falsifying birth certificate and paternity test) of the crimes involved in getting to that point was difficult, but it was very easy to prove she'd claimed the nonexistent child as a dependent on her income tax returns, which sent her straight to prison (if you want all the details on that one, Google "Barreras v. Trevino").
A few years ago the US Supreme Court (Abramski v. United States) upheld a conviction of someone who purchased a gun, because at the time of the purchase he filled out a form which said he was purchasing the gun for himself, and not on behalf of or as a stand-in for someone else. Except he lied when he checked that box on the form; he was buying it for his uncle. The Supreme Court ruled that it didn't matter whether his uncle was legally eligible to buy the gun (he was); Congress had made it a federal crime to lie on the form, in order to prevent people from skirting background checks by getting someone else to buy a gun on their behalf, and the guy had unquestionably lied on the form.
Not sure you're thinking nefariously enough. More likely it could be "you're saying things we don't like" or "your religion is icky", things that they otherwise aren't allowed to take action on.
I think the government's position may be that travelers do have a right under the fifth amendment to decline to answer these questions if they believe that answering could create a risk of criminal prosecution, but that the government can still use that refusal to answer against the traveler (for example, denying a visa or denying entry to the country), because the government contends that immigration procedures are "administrative" and not "criminal", and being denied entry is merely an administrative decision and not imposition of a criminal punishment.
In general the government has only accepted the idea that refusal to answer questions can't be held against someone in the context of a criminal trial. For example you can certainly take the fifth in a deposition or examination in a civil case, ideally on an attorney's advice, but this decision can be held against you for civil purposes (for instance, the judge can instruct the civil jury that it can consider why the witness didn't want to answer the question). The government's position is most likely that the immigration proceedings have an analogous status where you may be allowed to decline to answer, but an adverse inference can still be drawn from your refusal (like making an assumption that you had something to hide).
If you refuse to answer, they just don't let you in. Someone who doesn't already have some kind of legal status in the US has no right to enter, so they can turn you away for any reason at all.
Actually, they naturally do, but there is a specific law to prevent entering unless some specific criterions are met.
Outside of dictatures, people are born with all the rights, and the law is made to remove them. Those law are generally made to protect the rights of other. The main law that doesn't enter this category is immigration law since changing country doesn't remove any freedom to the citizens of the country of arrival.
5th amendment only applies in criminal cases: "nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself". Doesn't cover border crossings or visa applications.
Right, and the areas around the border have been called by the ACLU "Constitution-free zones". Basically the government says if you're within 100 miles of the border and have crossed or are likely to cross, your Constitutional rights no longer exist.
> Doesn't the 5th amendment make those questions impossible to answer?
The 5th amendment doesn't really apply because entry to the US on a visa isn't a criminal prosecution; no one is compelling you to answer the question, you can choose not to by choosing not to apply for a visa.
Yes. Some things (like voting) are rights of citizens, but the 1st and 5th Amendments (for example) guarantee rights to "persons" which includes non citizens who are in the US.
For clarity: the doc you cite says what I said (at least that's my interpretation) -- that non citizens have much the same constitutional rights as citizens. But they have to be living in the country (so-called US Persons). Hence it doesn't do you much good in the context of getting into the country. Source: I was a US Person for a while.
The legal argument is "yes they do", but the first few pages of the document are "but we understand why US citizens might assume the opposite because here's a laundry list of all the times we ignored that in the past".
As a non-citizen, the internal arguments of the US legal system aren't very interesting to me, but the historical record of how the US treats non-citizens is. The US has clearly demonstrated that in practice, non-citizens are not protected by the same rights.
If you are a non-citizen living here, you'll generally enjoy most of the protections of the constitution and laws. If you are sitting there at customs just visiting, there are a lot of those protections that simply don't apply. Of course, some of those protections don't apply to citizens at these places either, though they play out a bit differently.
a police officer once told me that there are thousands of laws in the vehicle code, and, if the police want to pull someone over legally, all they have to do is follow their car for a few blocks or so. sooner or later, that driver will violate a law.
that's a standard technique available to all types of law enforcement officers in the US.
and, yes, there's a lot of discretion in the hands of the police, just as for prosecutors. this is either a strength or a weakness, depending ...
Making an overly broad questionnair to introduce arbitrariness by enabeling your executive branch to selectively invalidate a specific visa holders questionnaires consistency.
