No, they are going to say anything like that to you; what they'll do is go to a judge and say we have this evidence that this visa-holder is a terrorist (which evidence doesn't actually relate to any crime prosecutable under US law, because not all terrorism in the world is a US crime) and that they therefore committed the crime of attempting to defraud the government by the way they filled out this form stating that they totally weren't a terrorist, and so we'd like to go arrest them please. And the judge will say, “why, sure". And then what they actually say to you will involve lots of guns carried by high-on-adrenaline counter-terorism agents storming into the place where your family is sleeping in the middle of the night.
It’s also easier to arrest someone on suspicion of falsifying customs forms and hold indefinitely than to do so on “terrorism” charges.
So this does indeed give law enforcement a lot of leeway than not having it is.
So, to answer your question, yes.
Nobody who hasn't already been convicted will fill out those forms, of course, but that's another criminal charge if the DA wants to put you away for even longer.
The purpose of the IRS is to collect tax on income, not to punish people for obtaining that income illegally.
Then a similar question for nazis, intelligence agencies, military and some more.
There is a podcast of a story of an immigrant who was associated with a group as a kid. Decades _after_ him immigrating to the US the US declared the group a terrorist organization. Will post the link if I find it.
I'm still not gonna check that box though
You think the President or Congress can just snap their fingers and say "you no longer are a citizen!"?
You see this pattern in more than just immigration cases.
The FBI and other federal agencies infamously "get" people for making untrue statements to their agents, since that's a federal felony right away, and easier to prove than that the person committed some other, more complex crime.
The other day in a reddit thread I got to bring up a case from New Mexico involving someone who literally fabricated evidence of a child in order to claim support payments. Once it was established the child didn't exist, proving all the various elements (like falsifying birth certificate and paternity test) of the crimes involved in getting to that point was difficult, but it was very easy to prove she'd claimed the nonexistent child as a dependent on her income tax returns, which sent her straight to prison (if you want all the details on that one, Google "Barreras v. Trevino").
A few years ago the US Supreme Court (Abramski v. United States) upheld a conviction of someone who purchased a gun, because at the time of the purchase he filled out a form which said he was purchasing the gun for himself, and not on behalf of or as a stand-in for someone else. Except he lied when he checked that box on the form; he was buying it for his uncle. The Supreme Court ruled that it didn't matter whether his uncle was legally eligible to buy the gun (he was); Congress had made it a federal crime to lie on the form, in order to prevent people from skirting background checks by getting someone else to buy a gun on their behalf, and the guy had unquestionably lied on the form.
It's really fun stuff.
Outside of dictatures, people are born with all the rights, and the law is made to remove them. Those law are generally made to protect the rights of other. The main law that doesn't enter this category is immigration law since changing country doesn't remove any freedom to the citizens of the country of arrival.
In theory, but historically speaking not really: https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?r...
But then again, it doesn't seem to work very well for US citizens these days either.
As a non-citizen, the internal arguments of the US legal system aren't very interesting to me, but the historical record of how the US treats non-citizens is. The US has clearly demonstrated that in practice, non-citizens are not protected by the same rights.
If you are a non-citizen living here, you'll generally enjoy most of the protections of the constitution and laws. If you are sitting there at customs just visiting, there are a lot of those protections that simply don't apply. Of course, some of those protections don't apply to citizens at these places either, though they play out a bit differently.
In general the government has only accepted the idea that refusal to answer questions can't be held against someone in the context of a criminal trial. For example you can certainly take the fifth in a deposition or examination in a civil case, ideally on an attorney's advice, but this decision can be held against you for civil purposes (for instance, the judge can instruct the civil jury that it can consider why the witness didn't want to answer the question). The government's position is most likely that the immigration proceedings have an analogous status where you may be allowed to decline to answer, but an adverse inference can still be drawn from your refusal (like making an assumption that you had something to hide).
The 5th amendment doesn't really apply because entry to the US on a visa isn't a criminal prosecution; no one is compelling you to answer the question, you can choose not to by choosing not to apply for a visa.
a police officer once told me that there are thousands of laws in the vehicle code, and, if the police want to pull someone over legally, all they have to do is follow their car for a few blocks or so. sooner or later, that driver will violate a law.
that's a standard technique available to all types of law enforcement officers in the US.
and, yes, there's a lot of discretion in the hands of the police, just as for prosecutors. this is either a strength or a weakness, depending ...
Making an overly broad questionnair to introduce arbitrariness by enabeling your executive branch to selectively invalidate a specific visa holders questionnaires consistency.