Japan's immigration bureacrats are not

necessarily the only ones who sometimes follow a rather seemingly inhuman (subhuman?) technicality over what one would assume would be a common sense solution to a problem. Anyone who has ever dealt with the US INS, knows what an expensive mess it can be. By the way, they are more than happy to screw US citizens too. These bureaucrats serve the citizens? HAHAHA.

Here is an article which describes how the US Immigration Service (I guess it is now called the Citizenship and Immigration Service) treats folks when they get the opportunity. A Japanese woman married an American citizen in 1998. Before the wedding, her and her fiancee were awaiting the fiancee visa which was late in arriving. They asked a US bureaucrat what to do, and was told to go ahead and get married and change the visa status after they got to the US. (BIG MISTAKE. Unless the bureaucrat puts it in writing---which they won't---one should use extreme caution in following any advice. Until the late 90s, for example, if a citizen asked the IRS for tax advice and the agent gave the wrong advice, the taxpayer could still be held legally accountable for following the advice. In that case, even incorrect written advice was little or no defense. (Their website is here.)

Anyway, after fighting a charge of fraud for years, the US government told the Japanese wife that her new status and permanent resident visa was approved, but she had to fly back to Tokyo to get it. Guess what? Uncle Sam's hired flunky lied. What a shock!!! Next thing you'll know, we might find out that Uncle Sam lied about WMD in Iraq too.

When she and her 2 young children got to Tokyo went to the embassy, they were told that there was no visa and that she'd never get one. Neither she, nor her American husband have many rights when dealing with the INS.

I used to think that it was none of the government's business whom I married. That's why I was very much a libertarian politically, and why I never trusted the Democrats. The mistake was, that I trusted Republicans to some degree---which most libertarians know better than to do. It was a choice of the lesser of 2 evils. I no longer view either party as a lessor evil. We American's have a fantasy that citizens really control the government, but we don't. In the end, after the laws are passed, a group of people whose main motivation is job security do. And they get pretty good pay too, compared to most jobs. Is Japan any worse in this area, or any other? I am tempted to say, probably not. So far they have not recently invaded another country and started a four plus year war for a false reason.

If my wife and I return to live in the US, I will hire a good lawyer to get her visa and green card taken care of. I did it myself when we got married and it was a huge hassle. It is no doubt much, much, worse now. Gotta keep out them thar terrorists from Japan who marry US citizens and have kids, I guess.