Ebola Yes, Bagpipes No

by Mark Steyn Steyn on America (full article here)

October 4, 2014 US Customs & Border Protection agents prepare to pat down a Canadian tourist discovered with a chocolate egg in his pocket 

In Texas the now deceased Thomas Eric Duncan has the distinction of being America's Patient Zero - the first but not the last person to develop Ebola symptoms in the United States. 

Is he a US citizen? No, he's Liberian. Is he a resident of the United States? No, he landed at Washington's Dulles Airport on September 20th, in order to visit his sister and having quit his job in Monrovia a few weeks earlier. 

So he's a single unemployed man with relatives in the US and no compelling reason to return to his native land. That alone is supposed to be cause for immigration scrutiny. In addition, visitors from Liberia have the fifth highest "visa overstay rate" in the United States. That's to say, they understand very clearly that all that matters is getting in. 

Once you're in, they'll never get you out. And, of course, Liberia is one of the hottest spots of Ebola's West African "hot zone". It's been all over the front pages, except apparently in The US Customs & Border Protection Staff Newsletter, where it rated a solitary "News In Brief" item at the foot of page 37. 

Just to give you an example of how hard-assed the boneheads of America's immigration bureaucracy can be when they want to: The legendary Gord Sinclair, longtime news director of CJAD in Montreal, had a ski place near Jay in northern Vermont, and he invited his engineer on the show to come down and visit him. 

"What's the purpose of your visit?" asked the agent at the small rural border post. "Oh, just a relaxing weekend at my boss' place," said Gord's colleague affably, and then chortled, "although I don't know if it'll be that relaxing. He'll probably have me out in the yard chopping wood all day." So the immigration agent refused him entry on the grounds that he would be working illegally in the United States.

(Read the full article here.)