Posted on 08/10/2006 7:25:32 AM PDT by Pokey78
Right. That’s it. Entre nous c’est terminé. After 42 happy years I am getting a divorce from America. From the very emerging of my childhood consciousness I have been aware that in the eyes of billions of people around the world I have won first prize in the lottery of life. I possess it, the thing competed for by everyone from Rupert Murdoch to the most desperate Mexican wetback, and I have it by simple dint of my nativity, on the Puerto Rican Health Scheme, in New York General Hospital, NY, NY.
I am entitled to an American passport. I must confess that this knowledge used vaguely to tinge my sense of identity. My brothers and sisters are British, and so are my parents, and I would like you to know that I am a loyal subject of Her Majesty, speak in an English accent, and for years I have travelled exclusively on a British passport. But my first passport was green, and when we landed at Dover or Heathrow I felt secretly cool to be the one to present his document to be stamped.
Mine were the credentials furnished by the most powerful nation on earth, and signed by former secretary of state Dean Rusk; and when the going has got tough in England it has sometimes crossed my mind that I could yet activate the Schwarzenegger option and flee to the land of opportunity, perhaps beginning as a short-order chef in Miami before winding up as Colorado senator and, inevitably, president.
Always glowing at the back of my mind has been the light from that unused escape hatch. Let’s face it, folks, we manage to endure so many of our earthly captivities by fantasising that we have somewhere a half-open door to another job, another career, another life, or indeed, if we are religious, a life of the world to come. The mere thought of that door is a consolation, even if, as things turn out, we never actually go through it.
Well, as of this week I slam that door shut, and in some indignation. It is not just that I no longer want an American passport. In fact, what I want is the right not to have an American passport, and it is that right, astoundingly, that the Americans are reluctant to give me.
Last Sunday lunchtime we were boarding a flight to Mexico, via Houston, Texas, and we presented six valid British passports. As soon as the Continental Airlines security guy saw my passport, he shook his head. ‘Were you born in New York?’ he asked. ‘Have you ever carried an American passport?’
Yes, I said, but it had long since expired. ‘I am afraid we have a problem,’ he said. ‘The US Immigration say you have to travel on an American passport if you want to enter the United States.’ B-but I’m British, I said, and my children chorused their agreement. Had the guy stuck around a moment longer, I would have told him how jolly British I was — but luckily for him he’d gone off in search of reinforcements.
When the ranking officer arrived, the story was the same. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said, ‘but you’ll have to go to the US Embassy tomorrow morning and get a new American passport.’ But I don’t want an American passport, I said, inspiration striking me. I tell you what: I renounce my American citizenship. I disclaim it. I discard it.
‘That’s not good enough, sir,’ he said. ‘I need some official document saying that you are no longer American,’ and that, of course, is the point of this piece.
I make this formal, public, and, I hope, legally valid renunciation, because as a result of this moronic rule I had to ask my wife (who bore this latest cock-up with amazing good humour) to take the children on her own to Houston, and I then had to spend a stonking sum on another ticket. Because the Americans insisted I was American, and that it was only as an American that I could travel to America, America was the one country that I had to avoid.
So I circumnavigated America. I flew via Madrid, managing to beat the rest of my family to Mexico by 45 minutes; and yet I still seethe. It’s not just the stupidity of the rule that gets me. It’s the arrogance. What other country insists that because you can be one of its nationals, then you must be one of its nationals? Imagine if we told all British-born Americans that they could not arrive in this country except by use of a British passport. I haven’t seen anything so insanely possessive since the negotiations on the Common Fisheries Policy, when the Irish used to claim that the cod stocks of the Atlantic were still Irish in their fishy souls, even though they had long since emigrated to Portuguese waters.
As far as I can interpret the psychology of the rule, which has only been applied since 9/11, it is part of America’s new them-and-us mentality, the Manichaean division of the world into Americans and non-Americans, obliterating any category in between. Listen, buddy, the Americans seem to be saying. You got a right to be American? Then you do us the courtesy of travelling on the world’s number one passport when you come here. What you got to be ashamed of, boy?
Well, I love America. But I don’t like being pushed around and kicked off flights to what, after all, they claim is my home country. Condi, Mr Ambassador, whoever is in charge — I hereby renounce my birthright. Strike me off the list.
Consider me, as you put it, an ‘alien’. Even as I write these words I am conscious of the huge potential benefits my children will now never have. Of course, it is true that it is not all jam, carrying an American passport. You tend to be first overboard when your ship is hijacked by Arabs; but then these days the Brits walk the plank pretty soon, too; and think of the advantages, that priceless sense of civis Americanus sum; that the sanctity of your life is guaranteed by the hyperpower.
Compare America’s tigerish love of her children with the pitiless indifference we show to British passport-holders from Zimbabwe. The Americans would never allow me to be tried by an international court. The Americans would never let me be extradited to face trial in the UK, even if — particularly if — I was involved in IRA atrocities, while we supinely offer up our subjects without demanding any evidence whatsoever.
These blessings must now remain untested by me and my descendants, and I tender my resignation from the United States, with sadness, but in the knowledge that she is probably big enough to rub along without me. Goodbye and God bless, America.
Hey! Boris (sort of) rhymes with "divorce us"....
Fifty Ways to Leave This Country
Tune: Fifty Ways to Leave your Lover
"The problem is all inside his head", I say to thee
The answer is easy if you take it logically
There’s no need to “interpret the psychology”
I want to help him in his struggle to be free
There must be fifty ways to leave this country
I say, he’s really a rather laughable old dude.
Furthermore, I hope my meaning won't be lost or misconstrued
But I'll repeat myself at the risk of being rude
There must be fifty ways to leave this country
Fifty ways to leave this country
You just slam the door shut, mutt
Go live in Iran, man.
You don't need to be coy, boy
Just listen to me
Hop to it, Boris
Go ahead and divorce us
You want to resign? Fine!
C’est terminé? Nein!
Get to the Departm’nt of State, mate
Or go to a court, sport
You don't need to be coy, boy
Just listen to me
Hop to it, Boris
Go ahead and divorce us
Just drop off the key, see
And get yourself free
Huh. The author never provides a punchline.
Had he never used an American passport he would not have had this problem. The question raised is why are you not using that passport now? Has it been revoked or confiscated for cause? No switcheroos allowed.
hehe....while state is ok with this....the IRS is not so forgiving....I think they wait a minimum of 10 years before they take you off their books when you leave the country. In some instances never.
Where are those Egyptians?
He uses his British passport. Because he is British. Why would he use an American passport when he is a British citizen? He is not culturally nor emotionally American, nor is he bound in honour to America. He is a British man, and in fact is a member of Parliament. He has a tick against his name because of where he was born and this tick is stopping him from being British - in the eyes of American passport authorities. This is the point of his essay.
How will we ever recover from the loss?
You tell me. Why did he use it in the past?
Ahhhh, sorry, I'd didn't take it that way. I took him at his word on what he writes. If he don't like it, fine.
>Johnson cultivates an image as an eccentric, self deprecating, straw-haired fop<
Say it isn't so!!!
My guess. His parents lived in America and he travelled with them on an American passport. The word "cool" in his essay seems to indicate he did this as a teenager, but I may be reading that in. Then he/his parents moved to Britain and he naturalised. Not terribly sinister, if so.
There are almost certainly excellent biographical notes about Mr Johnson on the Internet - for anyone who wants to explore this storm-in-a-teacup further
The sorting out isn't the problem. The whinging about it in the press is. If a Tory can't see the need for examining passport oddities with stringent rules in a post 9/11 world, who can?
Shut up and soldier, Boris. If the worst inconvenience an international WOT causes you is vacation travel hitches, think about what Brits had to endure in 1940, then count yourself blessed beyond reason.
Farewell, d!ckhe@d.
or how about... Don't let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya.
The left's overblown sense of importance is amazing!
They love to hear themselves talk, esp. this guy. What a windbag!
It's like they somehow expect millions of letters to the editor begging them to stay.
"The left's overblown sense of importance is amazing!"
Who on earth mentioned 'the left'?
The only way I would even read the entire tome of $hit he wrote would be if he'd written it from wherever the hell he came from (as in, not from America).
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