Your reaction is extreme. Working professionals from rich countries that come to the US on short term Visas are not subjected to intense scrutiny. No one is prosecuted for the name on their Facebook account.
You need to be a bit more careful with sweeping generalizations like "no one." Here are two cases just off the top of my head that almost perfectly contradict what you wrote.
While those incidents are obviously outrageous, refusal at the border isn't the same as prosecution and certainly nobody was sentenced to life imprisonment.
I grant part of that. But now _you_ have to tell me: How do you claim to know that no one was arrested and suffered life imprisonment? The point you seem to be missing is that you have no way of knowing!
This is the "wonderful" thing about the Patriot Act: Even as an American citizen, you could be disappeared and shipped to a foreign country for torturing... and there's a good chance no one would find out, for years, maybe forever. I don't think you have an idea of how significant this is. America does not operate under the rule of law.
>The border guard then escorted him to his car and made sure he did a U-turn and went back to Canada.
>To their surprise, however, when they arrived at L.A. International, they were not only detained and questioned at length by U.S. authorities, but were swiftly -- after a night in the cells, naturally -- plonked back on a plane back to England, and barred from entering the United States again.
I'm not sure what you mean. They were each returned to their respective countries.
