Until now this would have been a stupid question - this is my home. But we’re in a strange timeline. My background is I was born in the UK, met first husband, married, got green card, that went tits up, divorced, met husband 2, found forever love, married, naturalized in 2021. Have my passport and everything.
It’s my dad’s birthday, and he lives in the UK. I want to go back and celebrate, but I’m nervous about reentry into the US. I naturalized during the Biden presidency, and I am a Democrat, I feel nervous that I have a target on my back. I have a home and pets here. Am I ridiculous for worrying or should I be cautious about leaving right now?
Why would you come back?
I think it really depends on how white you are. I’m 192cm tall, born in California, white as fuck with blue eyes, so I think that I’m pretty safe. However, I’ve cautioned my sister who was born on Java that she really has to take precautions. She’s lived here and been naturalized since she was 1 years old, but even so, she’s got brown skin, so she’s a target for this RACIST AS FUCK government.
Oh don’t worry. They’ll come for you soon.
They’ve already gotten away with kicking people out to a south american torture prison.
And they are actively and openly working on how to strip citizenship from people, so they can disappear anyone to the south american torture prison.
So you are not safe. You just have lots of brown and hispanic people infront of you to take the initial bullets.
Which is why we all need to be stopping this shit now, because we all know how the poem ends.
They’re arresting white people too.
But less often.
That’s a valid point.
As a PRC-Born, Naturalized* US Citizen, I do not feel safe entering/exiting the US borders right now. I told my PRC-Citizen father and grandmother (who lives with us) to not do any border crossings.
*technically it’s Derivative Citizenship, Green Card holders under the age of 18 automatically become a citizen if one of the parents become a citizen
If I were a cis-gender white person born in the US, I would probably feel okay crossing borders if I don’t have tattos and don’t have a high-profile anti-trump publicity. I would still wipe any phone before border crossings, load it up photos of my cat, and random nature photos I’ve taken. Zero political content on the device.
You said you naturalized during Biden’s presidency, which means you’ve been citizen for less than 5 years. During this time period, if the government believes you are a terrorist, or a member of a “communist” or “totalitarian” party, they could revoke your citizenship. So maybe wait till 5 years + 1 day after your naturalization just to be safe.
But consider permanent emigration to UK, in case things get worse in the US (I’m not saying to do it now, but keep in mind the possibility).
Edit: So if you natualize in January 1, 2021, I’d wait till January 3, 2026, to be extra safe.
But remember, this administration is gonna try to find every legal justification they can if they really want to get you.
At the moment they’re only going after overt political dissidents and brown immigrants. As long as you haven’t penned an oped criticizing Trump you should be fine. Though, I would advise buying a burner phone for the trip. Set up a new account and put a bunch of games on it so it doesn’t look suspicious.
That depends what colour your skin is or if you wear any non christian headgear, symbols, etc.
I’d imagine it was like 0% risky.
There’s A big difference between legal immigrants and actual us citizens.
But id probably rather live in the UK if that’s an option
You’ve still got a British passport? Consider staying out of trouble, I.e. the US.
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Why would you want to come back? Place is a 2nd world shit hole.
Very. We have a Mad King ruling.
People are being deported to foreign gulags without Due Process: which means, without a trial.
Stay away.
As a citizen you should be safe. Are you white? That makes it a little safer. Probably wouldn’t hurt if you’re attractive and female…
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fuck I hate this timeline
I wanna be mad at these comments but they’re so true. I’m white and female, so maybe I’ll be fine. But it’s so fucking sad that this is the case. I’m not just worried for me, but for all the people who made this place home. A lot of minorities in that group.
That Canadian actress was white and attractive. The German held for several days without sleep was also white and attractive (also a man in a relationship with a man, but I don’t know how likely it is that CBP could have known that).
It’s probably protective, but it’s not sufficient
You are now an American citizen, so you should have the rights the rest of us have. You should be fine. They haven’t gotten around to threatening to denaturalize people yet. When they do, they will concentrate first on people from countries they don’t like, that used old policies they have since rescinded. And they will have to use more due process than they are using on these non-citizens.
The one thing I would be cautious of, though, is the state of your cell phone. They are very thin-skinned when it comes to criticism lately, and may decide to look through your phone’s social media to decide if you are insufficiently loyal. They have broad powers to do that when you re-enter the country. As a US citizen they cannot deny you entry, but they can still make your life difficult on entry. And this group doesn’t exactly pay attention to laws, do they?
At minimum, you might want to shut down your cell phone before getting off the plane. Explain it by saying it is a long flight, and you wanted to save your battery for arrival. If they confiscate a phone and try to dump all its data, they are more limited if the phone has just rebooted. They would basically need the PIN to do anything. If you want to go further, you can also log out of all of your social media accounts and remove their apps before the flight, so they even if they force you to divulge the PIN they won’t find your social media history.
That may all be too paranoid, but we live in stupid times.
As a US citizen they cannot deny you entry, but they can still make your life difficult on entry.
Just to add, even if they obey every law, they can still mess with you a lot.
They can:
- Hold you for 48 Hours withiut any charges
- Confiscate all your belongings (and probably they will try to crack any encryption on devices)
- Put you on a no-fly list
- Conduct targeted surveillance on you
- Send Pegasus malware to your new phone
- Use cell tower triangulation, doesn’t matter if its Graphene OS, it still needs to connect to cell towers if you wanna make calls or use data.
- Randomly send agents to tail you make you feel scared, park in front of your house and constantly monitor your activity.
- In certain scenarios, use thermal imaging to see inside your house (even though some courts have ruled against it), and it would be difficult to even prove they were illegally using thermal imaging, since its passive.
These are all legal and previous administrations could technically already do that, it’s just that they usually weren’t this crazy.
It honestly seems very unpredictable. Anecdotally the worst behaviour seems to have been at the most republican states but not exclusively.
For example the Australian who had a work visa and lived in the US for years flew in to Texas where it was arbitrarily nullified. There are plenty of stories of people crossing southern and northern borders and being detained by ICE. Thats included British, German, Australian and French cirizens that ive seen in the UK press coverage anyway.
As a US citizen you shouldnt have an issue but I’d probably travel through a major hub like JFK in New York to be safer. I wouldn’t re-enter through Republican states like Florida, Texas, nor probably Washington DCs airports. Obviously travel on your US passport.
You should he OK as a US citizen but it does look like there is a breakdown in the rule of law in the US. People imagine that means riots and the police not able to keep control, but in this case its the government and government agencies doing whatever they want and the legal system unable to stop them.
I’m a UK citizen and am not intending to travel to the US - I often cone for a major conference but having seen what happened to the French scientist who had his phone searched and then was denied entry for criticising Trump I won’t be risking it. I’m sure a lot of other UK and Europeans feel the same way.
Sadly the only 100% safe option for you is to not leave the country. Its madness as youre a US citizen but at this point things are still going through the courts and its not clear where this will stop.
FWIW, I have multiple things I should go to in the USA coming up, and neither I nor my family are willing to risk it. My two (young adult) children and I have dual USA - EU country citizenship. My wife had a green card when she lived with me in NYC for over a decade, but turned it in when we moved back long ago. These facts (let alone what my posting history is like) are just too much for us. We won’t risk it.
It’s kind of like a plane crash: very unlikely to happen but you are equally unlikely to walk away unhurt.
If you’re not brown, then you’ll be fine.
should be fine
