Terminal Case

There was that Steven Spielberg movie where that cute Tom Hanks adopted a funny accent and got himself stuck in an airport because he can't get into the United States, and he can't go back to his country because of a military coup. I know. It sounds crazy, doesn't it? A passport that doesn't work anymore? How could that be? Well, that movie was based on the eighteen year odyssey of Mehran Karimi Nasseri who lived in the departure lounge of Terminal One in France's Charles de Gaulle Airport from 1988 to 2006. He was bounced back to Paris after he attempted to fly to London where he claimed to have family. The British wouldn't take him, and after he was arrested upon his return to France, the French police had to let him go because his entry into their country was legal, but he still didn't have a place to go since he had been expelled from Iran.
Wackiness ensued for Monsieur Nasseri. But that was Europe. That kind of junk doesn't happen here, unless it's from the mind of the guy who brought us E.T. and Close Encounters. And that Forrest Gump fellow. He's so funny and patriotic. This could never happen in real life. In America?
Oops. Sorry. I forgot to mention that in this particular scenario the most recent election turned out in such a way as to facilitate such chicanery. What if you woke up one morning and somebody had changed the rules about who could come into our country and when? With one stroke of his specially formed for tiny hands pen, "President" Trump stranded hundreds of travelers in airports across our country. Suddenly it was illegal for anyone from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen to try and test that whole huddled mass thing you've probably heard about. News Flash: The Statue of Liberty has become more like the Statue of Irony.
And if you take into account that that particular lady was a gift from France, it becomes just a little more annoying. Half a million people who are legally entitled to come back to their homes in the United States were barred from doing just that by an executive order scribbled on by a scary man who used to be on TV.
And now he's brought his peculiar version of reality to have his way with ours. Tom Hanks will not be appearing in this version. Just a whole bunch of very unhappy folks who believed that myth of America. Make it stop. Now.