U.S. Citizens Will Soon Require Clearance by Department of Homeland Security to Return to Their Own Country
February 6th, 2008I wonder if the Department of Homeland Security can guess which finger I’m holding up right now?
Via: Practical Nomad:
Under new regulations and procedures announced to take effect over the next month, citizens of the USA will, for the first time, be required to obtain USA government permission in order to return home to their own country from abroad — from anywhere else in the world, by air or sea or land.
On no other aspect of the right to travel is international law more clear than on the right of return to the country of one’s own citizenship: “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country.” The new regulations are a flagrant violation of the obligations of the USA as a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and other international human rights treaties, as well as a violation of the Constitutional duty of the USA government to treat such treaties as the highest law of the land.
It’s to be hoped that some civil liberties or human rights organization or individual will go to court before the end of this month to enjoin the government from putting these rules and procedures into effect, and that citizens will assert their rights by attempting to cross borders without papers, and suing those goons from the USA Department of Homeland Security who try to stop them. But if that doesn’t happen, here’s what the DHS has promulgated as “final rules” and “procedures”:
As I’ve noted previously, the so-called International APIS final rules effective 19 February 2008 will require all travellers to, from, or via the USA by air to obtain two forms of government permission to travel: (1) a passport, and (2) a “cleared” message from the DHS authorizing the airline to allow the specific person to board the specific flight or ship.
