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.
