Passenger 13

An interesting series of events, otherwise known as drama, revolved around my flight this morning from San Francisco to DC. A passenger was walking through the concourse in handcuffs being led by an Asian man with a black windbreaker that had on the rear, “POLICE, Federal Agent’. He had his full equipment belt on which included all the usual mace, gun, taser, and baton. As he lead this African American male through the concourse he of course received a fair amount of side glances and full on stares. Sure enough he comes right over to our gate and talks to the gate agents. It becomes abundantly clear that he is getting on our flight, but what is also abundantly clear is there is concern from the United employees. Two managers are called over to talk to the federal agent, all of which we do not hear of course. I figured this had probably something to do with this man being some major criminal lord and they felt uncomfortable about this.

Well after a few delays we board and not much to my surprise the fore mentioned individual does board the plane. Much to all of our surprise in the front of the plane the passenger boards without his handcuffs and without his escort. I thought this maybe temporary as perhaps the agent is speaking to the captain or some other official duty. Nope, the door closes and we are off minus one agent and a set of handcuffs. We query the stewardess to find out that this was not some major crime figure or even a minor criminal awaiting trial, rather he is just an individual who arrived in the US without a Visa seeking asylum. This type of passenger is called a TWAV (pronounced similar to twaddle), traveling without a visa. So I decide to look into this a bit more for the sake of this entry.

In 2004 the number of people seeking asylum in the US has dropped to 52,400 individuals the lowest amount since 1987. Although still the second highest country to accept asylum seekers (second to France which accepted 61,600) it is far below what we used to see in the 70s and 80s. What strikes me as unbelievable with all the turmoil and problems in the world, there is a dramatic decrease in the number of individuals seeking to move to safer or new locations. But one may question the numbers (as we should always do) as that this is the number that accepted, we don’t know how many apply and get rejected. Actually those numbers are reported as well but by the number of people from a country seeking to leave. Afghanistan which used to be number one, dropped to 13^th place with a reduction in applications by 81%, Russian Federation, Serbia and China form the top three, but even those three have seen reductions. What is this attributed to? Is it improved conditions in the country? Well one would hope that maybe the UN and a whole series of other NGO (non-governmental organizations) have made a difference, I for one would like to believe this is the case.

So getting back to the original premise, to be honest a number of the passengers were quite concerned about this apparent prisoner getting on the plane, most especially without an agent and not restrained. In fact we find out the cabin crew voted 9-1 against even allowing him on and were ready to not fly at all, if the captain had not overruled them. Turns out probably just someone seeking a better place to live.

So as we complain about all host of things in the US, about the taxes, the government, the wars, and even HMOs, we need to take a second and be thankful for what we do have. We have a place where there is freedom, granted it is challenged a couple of times due to recent events, but we enjoy a much better type of living that a good percentage of the world. Let us say thank you, and thank you to the men and women of the armed forces that fight for us.

Time for me to catch up on email, just thought I would share this with all of you.