Danny O'Brien — a Brit in the process of a "simple" immigration to the US — ruminates on the mass-arrest of Iranians and others who presented themselves to the INS for additional paperwork and found themselves arrested. Pictured here is the paperwork necessary for the first step of his application.
I can honestly say it's been the most inpenetrably complex bureacratic procedure I have been involved with in my life. If my livelihood and my residency in this country depended on it, I'd be terrified…
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…
Anyway, I'm buying myself a Christmas present. I'm joining the ACLU. It only costs $20, which is certainly less than the $600 or so my immigration application costs. There's only one form to fill in – and I can do it online. And nobody is going to round me up and throw me in jail because I decided to come forward and hand in this paperwork. Or at least, that's the general idea.