Eideard

Welcome to Disney World – unless you’re a 9-yr-old Brit with the wrong passport

A nine-year-old boy’s dream trip to Disney World was ruined when US immigration officials ruled he was a threat.

Civil servants Kathy and Edward Francis planned to surprise their grandson Micah Strachan with the holiday of a lifetime to Florida in February. They were only going to tell Micah about it when they took him to the airport on February 19 for the flight to the US.

They had already spent more than £1,500 on plane tickets and had been organising the trip for months.

But this week US Embassy officials denied the schoolboy a visa to enter the US.

They said there was a risk he would not leave the US at the end of his holiday and refused his application under Section 214 (b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act…

He holds a South African passport because his grandparents Kathy and Edward, who have lived and worked in Britain since 1990, only got him a South African passport. They are originally from South Africa…

But the US Embassy’s rejection letter to Micah said: “Because you either did not demonstrate strong ties outside the United States or were not able to demonstrate that your intended activities in the US would be consistent with the visa status, you are ineligible.”

Given this kind of elitist behavior, the supremo attitude of some government flunky, I wonder why anyone would wish to visit the United States on holiday? I’d understand the kid wanting to stay at Disney World. He’s 9 years old, fer cripes sake.

Given the risk of senseless and arbitrary decisions by immigration robots, why even consider offering your child up to the caprices of a government obviously run by idiots?

Nick Clegg has surged into contention as a potential prime minister, according to a Guardian/ICM poll carried out following last night’s TV leaders’ debate. A quarter of voters who watched the three leaders on the ITV programme say they will switch their vote, with most changing to the Liberal Democrats.

Clegg emerges from the telephone poll as the overwhelming winner, with 51% who watched saying he came out on top. David Cameron and Gordon Brown trail in far behind: 20% say Cameron won and 19% Brown…

The Guardian poll coincides with a survey of voting intentions carried out by ComRes for ITV…Among those voters who had watched the debate, the surge in Lib Dem support was more dramatic: up 14 points to 35%, only a shade behind the Conservatives on 36%, who were down three. Labour languished in third place, at 24%, also down three.

Overdue.

Labour and the Conservatives vied with one another to claim the other had been the bigger loser from the unprecedented debate, watched by 9.9 million viewers at its peak, as Labour’s election co-ordinator, Douglas Alexander, admitted: “It is now impossible to predict the course of the next three weeks.”

David Cameron conceded that Clegg had performed strongly, as his aides reviewed how they could puncture the Liberal Democrat leader’s image as the anti-establishment outsider. Tory sources, ruing Cameron’s personal decision to grant Clegg equal status in the three debates, started to point to his past as a full-time European commission bureaucrat, as well as his firm Europhile views…

Labour, happy to see a Liberal Democrat wave so long as it does not convert into a tsunami, continued to emphasise the similarities between Lib Dem and Labour policies. Lord Adonis, the transport secretary and a former Lib Dem, took hints of postelection co-operation a stage further by saying he would not tell voters whether to back Labour in Lib Dem-Tory marginals.

The stodgy incompetents are falling over each other trying to blame the old rival as having lost the most. They both deserve to lose.

A hell of an object lesson on why the TweedleDeeDum parties in the US fear a solid 3rd Party movement more than anything else.

Don’t be put off by the middle. Let it play through to the end – it’s worth it.

Thanks, Jägermeister