Update on this is the US border agency claimed it was actually because of his past drug use, but they also claimed it was because he had a Spanish passport, that he had a bong with him, that he came as an immigrant, and that he has US family, and none of those things appear to be true. Clown country
The end result being Vance Effect now replaces Streisand Effect, correct @mmasnick.bsky.social ? bsky.app/profile/stei...
Surprised they aren't claiming he also had a satanic pentagram and past affiliation with communists.
This 21 year old kid is from the Arctic Norwegian university town Tromsø. He had planned in detail a two month US tourist visit. The new ostensible reason for denying him entry to the US is that he admitted to smoking pot. Twice. Both times in places and at times where smoking pot is legal. Absurd
That Australian journalist smoked weed legally in New York, and they yanked his visa over it. Though, given that was pretty transparently a post hoc justification to get rid of someone who was critical of the regime (they didn't know when they picked him up), it actually supports the meme thing
Past drug use? Like they were worried the devil weed was still in his system, compelling him to make Vance Egg?
It's surprising to me that having smoked weed in your life is such a big issue to travel to the US which is probably by far the biggest weed consuming country in the world
one of those rule for the purpose of selective abuse situations, hardly anyone cares otherwise but the state can do this to foreigners at the border or disqualify ppl from security clearance, also businesses can punish employees if they want to
Still a federal crime. 🤷🏻♂️🤷🏻♂️🤷🏻♂️
I believe that in the places where he admitted to having smoked weed, it was legal.
There's a good chance he did it it in Norway where it's not legal but it's still crazy to make it an issue. This is just some guy. A regular tourist. Should never have been interrogated in the first place
We don’t have any crime for “has done an illicit drug at some time in the past.” Our drug crimes are for possession.
Which is to say, selectively enforced because our country hates humans.
It's the same deal in Australia, which only doesn't hold that crown due to there being so comparatively few Australians. I swear they have draconian weed laws just to give their rural police something to do.
Musk takes so much K that he can’t control when he pisses: Let him run the government Random tourist smokes some weed: BARRED!
Having US family is now a no-no? The fuck?
I think the suggestion is he came to stay with them indefinitely, but he doesn't even have US family
I mean… pretty much every norwegian has at least one cousin in Minnesota, but I couldn’t name a single one of my like 30 US cousins if you held a gun to my head. Still means I technically have family in the US. Wich wasn’t an issue the 5 times I visited the US when they had semi-normal politics.
It wasn’t mentioned a single time actually, in any of the forms I filled out or during passport checks. So strange.
I definitely have 'family' in the US from a wave of Polish immigration that was much more recent than the major Norwegian wave... Obviously I was never asked about it when I went either!
I've seen several stories where people are denied entry because of that. Being married or engaged to a US citizen seems to be the most risky. The implication is that you have a reason to try to live in the US. But ALL Europeans have relatives in the US, it's just most of us have never met them
Which was the case for my friend, who was contacted by relatives she didn't know of from the US. They came to see Norway, met up with her here, and now she's going to New York to visit them this fall. So cool, right? But I've been worried about her. It just seems really risky to take that trip now.