Foreign Students Deemed “Security Threats” For Attempting To Work Legally

Oh good. Not only are we assholes to the rest of the world’s population because we’re afraid of everything, but we’re being assholes about it.

NYTimes.com reported today that foreign students applying for “a new ID card allowing them to work” have been receiving “blunt” letters from government officials. This in response to their (perfectly legal–in fact, exactly legal) requests to work in our country by telling them they’re now considered “security threats.”

From the article:

…[Student] Wilken-Jon von Appen received…a letter that not only turned him down but added an ominous warning from John M. Busch, a security administration official: “I have determined that you pose a security threat.”

Similar letters have gone to 5,000 applicants across the country who have at least initially been turned down for a Transportation Worker Identification Credential, an ID card meant to guard against acts of terrorism, agency officials said Monday.

The officials also said they were sorry about the language, which they may change in the future, but had no intention of withdrawing letters already sent…

The Transportation Worker Identification Credential requirement is being phased in starting Oct. 15. The cards cost the applicant $132.50 and have been issued to 275,000 people so far of 1.2 million people expected to receive the credential, officials said.

Wilken-Jon von Appen is a oceanographic studet at M.I.T, with a $65,000 per-year grant to study in the U.S., given to him by the National Science Foundation. And now he’s forever a “security threat.”

That’s just like us. Since September 11, 2001, we have made travel to the United States impossible for a significant chunk of the world. And now we’re treating the ones that got in like they’re Osama Bin Laden–who we haven’t even caught yet, by the way…