Dear Diary,
As part of Operation 'Get Frenchy', Under Secretary for Border & Transportation Security Asa Hutchinson has deployed a regulation that should be protested and withdrawn.
All Air France crew (French citizens, btw) who happen to have been born in any Arab country or in Indonesia, whether as children of French diplomats, oil company employees, business people, academics, doctors, journalists, researchers or foreign nationals, must be subjected to at least a 3-hour interrogation in the presence of a TSA investigator any time they are assigned to a flight to the USA. They are forbidden to join other crewmembers in the crew minibus or van to their hotels. These crewmembers, who number about 300, already hold a US Type B Professional visa which requires a background investigation and have been flying to the USA for years.
If the airport does not have interrogation rooms ready and a staff of TSA inspectors, the crewmembers concerned are bussed to an airport that does. Cincinnati Airport recently bussed Air France employees to Atlanta for this purpose.
This is the most sickening example of racism and xenophobia we have seen since Jim Crow. I hope Air France will find an appropriate reaction since we the people have no power over the racist bigots and gangsters in own government.
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3222,36-349013,0.html