Man who did acid in the 60s denied entrance to U.S.
hippiemom
Posts: 3,326
Wow. Anyone who thinks they might ever want to visit the states had better clean up their MySpace!
The Nation’s Borders, Now Guarded by the Net
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: May 14, 2007
The New York Times
Andrew Feldmar, a Vancouver psychotherapist, was on his way to pick up a friend at the Seattle airport last summer when he ran into a little trouble at the border.
A guard typed Mr. Feldmar’s name into an Internet search engine, which revealed that he had written about using LSD in the 1960s in an interdisciplinary journal. Mr. Feldmar was turned back and is no longer welcome in the United States, where he has been active professionally and where both of his children live.
Mr. Feldmar, 66, has a distinguished résumé, no criminal record and a candid manner. Though he has not used illegal drugs since 1974, he says he has no regrets.
“It was an absolutely fascinating and life-altering experience for me,” he said last week of his experimentation with LSD and other psychedelic drugs. “The insights it provided have lasted for a lifetime. It allowed me to feel what it would be like to live without habits.”
Mr. Feldmar said he had been in the United States more than 100 times and always without incident since he last took an illegal drug. But that changed in August, thanks to the happenstance of an Internet search, conducted for unexplained reasons, at the Peace Arch border station in Blaine, Wash.
The search turned up an article in a 2001 issue of the journal Janus Head devoted to the legacy of R. D. Laing, with whom Mr. Feldmar had studied in London about 30 years before.
“I traveled to many regions many times with the help of many different substances,” Mr. Feldmar wrote of his experiences with Dr. Laing and other psychiatrists and therapists. “I took peyote, psilocybin mushrooms, cannabis” and other drugs, he added, “but I kept coming back to LSD.”
He was asked by a border guard whether he was the author of the article and whether it was true. Yes, he replied. And yes.
Mr. Feldmar was held for four hours, fingerprinted and, after signing a statement conceding the long-ago drug use, sent home.
Mike Milne, a spokesman for the Customs and Border Protection agency in Seattle, said he could not discuss individual cases for reasons of privacy. But the law is clear, Mr. Milne said. People who have used drugs are not welcome here.
“If you are or have been a drug user,” he said, “that’s one of the many things that can make you inadmissible to the United States.”
He added that the government was constantly on the hunt for new sources of information. “Any new technology that we have available to us, we use to do searches on,” Mr. Milne said.
Mr. Feldmar has been told by the American consul general in Vancouver that he may now enter the United States only if he obtains a formal waiver.
“Both our countries have very similar regulations regarding issuance of visas for citizens who have violated the law,” the consul, Lewis A. Lukens, wrote to Mr. Feldmar in September. “The issue here is not the writing of an article, but the taking of controlled substances. I hear from American citizens all the time with decades-old D.U.I. convictions who are barred from entry into Canada and who must apply for waivers. Same thing here.”
The waiver process would require a lawyer, several thousand dollars and dishonesty, Mr. Feldmar said. He would have to say he has been rehabilitated.
“Rehabilitated from what?” Mr. Feldmar asked. “It’s degrading, literally degrading.”
Ethan Nadelmann, the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which works to ease drug penalties, said Mr. Feldmar’s case proves how arbitrary American drug policy can be.
“Roughly a majority of the population of the United States between the ages of 18 and 58 has violated a drug law at least once,” Mr. Nadelmann said, and there is no reason to think that Canadians and other foreigners of a certain age have experimented much less.
It has been a long, strange trip from the Summer of Love to the Age of Terror, from excluding people based on actual criminal convictions to turning them away based on a border guard’s Internet search. The first approach is rooted in due process and enhances the nation’s security. The second is profoundly arbitrary and effectively punishes not past drug use but honest discourse about it.
“I should warn people that the electronic footprint you leave on the Net will be used against you,” Mr. Feldmar said. “It cannot be erased.”
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/05/14/us/14bar.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=login
The Nation’s Borders, Now Guarded by the Net
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: May 14, 2007
The New York Times
Andrew Feldmar, a Vancouver psychotherapist, was on his way to pick up a friend at the Seattle airport last summer when he ran into a little trouble at the border.
A guard typed Mr. Feldmar’s name into an Internet search engine, which revealed that he had written about using LSD in the 1960s in an interdisciplinary journal. Mr. Feldmar was turned back and is no longer welcome in the United States, where he has been active professionally and where both of his children live.
Mr. Feldmar, 66, has a distinguished résumé, no criminal record and a candid manner. Though he has not used illegal drugs since 1974, he says he has no regrets.
“It was an absolutely fascinating and life-altering experience for me,” he said last week of his experimentation with LSD and other psychedelic drugs. “The insights it provided have lasted for a lifetime. It allowed me to feel what it would be like to live without habits.”
Mr. Feldmar said he had been in the United States more than 100 times and always without incident since he last took an illegal drug. But that changed in August, thanks to the happenstance of an Internet search, conducted for unexplained reasons, at the Peace Arch border station in Blaine, Wash.
The search turned up an article in a 2001 issue of the journal Janus Head devoted to the legacy of R. D. Laing, with whom Mr. Feldmar had studied in London about 30 years before.
“I traveled to many regions many times with the help of many different substances,” Mr. Feldmar wrote of his experiences with Dr. Laing and other psychiatrists and therapists. “I took peyote, psilocybin mushrooms, cannabis” and other drugs, he added, “but I kept coming back to LSD.”
He was asked by a border guard whether he was the author of the article and whether it was true. Yes, he replied. And yes.
Mr. Feldmar was held for four hours, fingerprinted and, after signing a statement conceding the long-ago drug use, sent home.
Mike Milne, a spokesman for the Customs and Border Protection agency in Seattle, said he could not discuss individual cases for reasons of privacy. But the law is clear, Mr. Milne said. People who have used drugs are not welcome here.
“If you are or have been a drug user,” he said, “that’s one of the many things that can make you inadmissible to the United States.”
He added that the government was constantly on the hunt for new sources of information. “Any new technology that we have available to us, we use to do searches on,” Mr. Milne said.
Mr. Feldmar has been told by the American consul general in Vancouver that he may now enter the United States only if he obtains a formal waiver.
“Both our countries have very similar regulations regarding issuance of visas for citizens who have violated the law,” the consul, Lewis A. Lukens, wrote to Mr. Feldmar in September. “The issue here is not the writing of an article, but the taking of controlled substances. I hear from American citizens all the time with decades-old D.U.I. convictions who are barred from entry into Canada and who must apply for waivers. Same thing here.”
The waiver process would require a lawyer, several thousand dollars and dishonesty, Mr. Feldmar said. He would have to say he has been rehabilitated.
“Rehabilitated from what?” Mr. Feldmar asked. “It’s degrading, literally degrading.”
Ethan Nadelmann, the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which works to ease drug penalties, said Mr. Feldmar’s case proves how arbitrary American drug policy can be.
“Roughly a majority of the population of the United States between the ages of 18 and 58 has violated a drug law at least once,” Mr. Nadelmann said, and there is no reason to think that Canadians and other foreigners of a certain age have experimented much less.
It has been a long, strange trip from the Summer of Love to the Age of Terror, from excluding people based on actual criminal convictions to turning them away based on a border guard’s Internet search. The first approach is rooted in due process and enhances the nation’s security. The second is profoundly arbitrary and effectively punishes not past drug use but honest discourse about it.
“I should warn people that the electronic footprint you leave on the Net will be used against you,” Mr. Feldmar said. “It cannot be erased.”
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/05/14/us/14bar.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=login
"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." ~ MLK, 1963
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i am fucked
My american visa request has been rejected twice already, apparently because there are not enough proofs I'd come back to my home town after some work conferences in Boston.
Mexico City - July 18th 2003
Mexico City - July 19th 2003
Monterrey - December 7th 2005
Mexico City - December 9th 2005
Mexico City - December 10th 2005
Mexico City - November 24th 2011
Anybody dare me?
all posts by ©gue_barium are protected under US copyright law and are not to be reproduced, exchanged or sold
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all posts by ©gue_barium are protected under US copyright law and are not to be reproduced, exchanged or sold
except by express written permission of ©gue_barium, the author.
the Canadian guards are sweetie pies in comparison to the US guards....I've never once been searched or given any shit by a Canadian guard. I can't say the same thing for the US guards....I've had them go through all my stuff, take my children aside and ask them "is that really your Mother?"
it's been my experiance the the US guards take extra asshole lessons that the Canadian guards don't
like that article says no one that i know would be able to cross the border based on if it were known that they ever took an illegal substance. this is complete bullshit that they're puttting this man through....though it doesn't surprise me :mad:
angels share laughter
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Oh my, they dropped the leash.
Morgan Freeman/Clint Eastwood 08' for President!
"Make our day"
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Dare you?..hell...I'll join you...
I think United States officials must have an ongoing "hey let's be even more fucking retarded than yesterday" competition... I dare say it's become quite contagious...
The DEA must hand out those shiny little star stickers or something...
.
and reveling in it's loyalty. It's made by forming coalitions
over specific principles, goals, and policies.
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Well said.
Wow, that rules out a whole lot of Canadians going into the USA. I don't really think this is a Canadian/USA border guard issue as much as it is example of the madness of the current regime. I have crossed a bunch of times and sometimes you get a guard that breezes you through and other times not.. regardless of which way you are crossing. I think this is just an example of how insane some of the USA's policies are. That said Canada has a law that if you are convicted of DUI in another country you need special permission to enter Canada... I think they should have enforced that when Bush came here. So I guess policies can be stupid and misapplied.
I know for certain the that the border guards would NOT have gotten my fingerprints.
more fucking retarted than yesterday
I didn't choose the right job I think.
It's quite a crazy story. Chances are, the gard himself did some drugs when he was younger.
So basically, to get somewhere in the us, it's better to lie?
By the way... everything I said here about my drug usage was a total lie! I never did any drugs ever!
I want to visit the States again some day.
naděje umírá poslední
Yes! That is the most prevalent truism of living in America and getting ahead.
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Yeah I find it the opposite...I'm Canadian and get more grief and searched by them going back home from the US..The American ones are usually mellow...my experiences anyway
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKULTRA
"Life Is What Happens To You When Your Busy Making Other Plans" John Lennon
My experience was the exact opposite. I am no longer allowed into Canada due to a "case" pending against me back in the U.S. What's the case you ask? Beats the shit out of me, they didn't know what it was either. The Canadian's detained me for over three hours before letting me in for a maximum of two weeks. I was told if I ever wanted to return I would have to rectify the situation. On the way back into the states, I answered the fruit question and was on my way.
"The leads are weak? Fuckin' leads are weak? You're Weak! I've Been in this business 15 years"
"What's your name?"
"FUCK YOU! THAT"S MY NAME!"
Thank you man, i laughed for the first time today. But seriously, you have to wonder huh?
The Bible is full of lies - Stone is the leader of us all!