Permanent Record

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

These lines from Emma Lazurus' sonnet THE NEW COLOSSUS have graced the base of the Statue of Liberty since 1903. This open-door policy has been short-listed over the years. John Lennon was refused entry for a drug conviction and Cat Stevens aka Yusuf Islam for being granted the 2004 Man for Peace Award. Israel didn't like that, but the Zionist nation had nothing to do with a Melbourne woman earning a visa rejection.

Her crime - stealing a bar towel in Thailand. She claimed it was a joke. The bar owner didn't feel that way and the holiday-maker spent 18 days in Thai custody. Her admission of guilt earned her a six-month suspended sentence and a 2000-baht fine, but also a persona non grata status in the USA, delaying perhaps forever the pilgrimage to DisneyWorld that she had promised her four daughters.

Those new computer systems really keep out trouble-makers, especially from the convict spawn of Australia. No telling what kind of trouble those types can make in Orlando.

Homeland Security Status - Level Yellow.