Scars & Stripes

A Journey through the US Immigration System

Bruce Wm Stewart

• Editorial: Digital On Demand
• Año: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781737785422
• Categoría: Derecho
• Categoría: Derecho migratorio

Some 10 million US visa applications are filed each year. 40 percent will get denied. Only 10 percent will get Permanent resident "Green-cards". Scars & Stripes records the 20-year journey of one family through the Immigration System, defying repeated denials, corrupt and incompetent immigration lawyers, and questionable conduct by the United States Citizenship & Immigration Service and Department of State, to become one of the 10 percent.

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to my wife, Dianne, and to my children, Sarah and Michael, without whose strength, patience, tolerance, understanding and belief in family, the outcome of this journey would have been very different. To my nephew and godson, Sean, who never lost hope, and even in our darkest hours continued to suggest new avenues to explore. To members of the US Marine Corps who provided invaluable support and testimonials about the efficacy and impact of my work in saving lives on the battle-field. To Wilton and Catherine Connor, the backbone of our underground immigration railroad. You have all been incredible travel-companions. To our fathers, Nick Ennis and Bertie Stewart, who never saw us cross the finish-line, and to our mothers, Kay Ennis (87) and Jennifer Stewart (92) who did. To our daughter, Sarah – the real victim of this journey. And of course, to the millions of immigrants who don’t have the advantages we enjoyed – a white skin, a tertiary education, the English language, financial resources, and access to a network of privileged American Citizens.

Bruce Stewart
Charlotte, North Carolina
September 2021

REVIEWS

“A total rollercoaster and a horror story. A jaw-dropper of a book.”

Peter Terry – Actor & Playwright

“A must-read for anyone coming to America.”

Juli Treadway-Lawson – Author : So You’ve Networked – Now What?

“Riveting account of one family’s dramatic quest for the American Dream.”

Peter Hegarty – British American Textile Manufacturing Executive

“A shocking tale of a family trying to navigate the US Immigration System the “right” way, and how that broken system sends them to hell and back.”

Byrn Hinton – Immigrant American Chief Technology Officer

“Brutal and inhumane. At times I felt embarrassed to be an American.”

Anonymous – Senior Officer US Marine Corps

FOREWORD

Charlotte, North Carolina

My name is Bruce Stewart. I’ve enjoyed 33 years of marriage to Dianne, and we have two children – Sarah, a Master’s degree graduate and Michael, a Mechanical Engineering graduate. I spent my childhood in the little seaside village of Hermanus, about 80 miles south-east of Cape Town, South Africa, with my parents Bertie and Jennifer, and my younger siblings, Ian, Fiona and Craig.

My Dad was the local pharmacist and my Mum was privileged to be a stay-at-home mom, house-maker, homework-helper, driver and peace-maker. I attended Rondebosch Boys High School in Cape Town, received a law degree from Stellenbosch University and then moved to Johannesburg to work for the Department of Justice in 1976, the Coca-Cola Company in 1978, Consol Packaging in 1984 and then my own company, Speed Reading International, in 1988 (a company I had started in 1976).

In 1988 I married Dianne and we were blessed with Sarah in 1989 and Michael in 1994.

In 2001 we set out to pursue our dream of living in America.

This is our story.

PROLOGUE – THE IRISH CONNECTION

In 1951, I am born in South Africa. For inexplicable reasons at the time, my father registers my birth as an Irish foreign birth, since my grandfather was born in Ireland. This entitles me to Irish Citizenship and an Irish Passport. Some years later, my wife and children also acquire derivative Irish Citizenship and Irish Passports.

In 1988, after failed talks with Israeli Prime Minister Simon Perez, Hamas, the extremist Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist organization, establishes Unit 101, headed by Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, whose function is to kidnap Israeli soldiers. Unit 101’s operators include Mohammed Youssef al-Sharatha and Muhammad Nazim Nasser.

On February 16, 1989, Sergeant Avi Sasportas of the Israeli Special Forces unit, Maglan, gets into a vehicle carrying two Hamas militants disguised as Israeli Jewish ultra-orthodox men, who kill him shortly thereafter by shooting him in the face. On May 7, 1989, Avi Sasportas’ body is found buried in a field near the site at which he had been abducted.

On May 3, 1989, Corporal Ilan Saadoun is given a leave of absence from the Israeli military. Saadoun makes his way back home, hitch-hiking from Latrun, and arrives at the Masmiya intersection. At 19:30 a white Subaru car with Israeli license plates stops at a hitch-hiking stop. Mahmoud and Muhammad are in the vehicle, disguised as Israeli Jewish ultra-orthodox men, and they invite the soldier to join them. Saadoun gets in the car. During the ride, the kidnappers struggle with Saadoun and shoot him in the head. The attackers bury Saadoun’s body in the Palmachim scrap site.

For the next 20 years, Israel plans revenge for the murders, and issues a “Red Page” order - Mossad’s code name for an order to kill someone - to “Caesarea”, the elite unit of the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency assigned to the riskiest missions and to do work involving sabotage, espionage and assassinations. Each of these orders is jointly authorized by the Israeli prime minister and defense minister. “Red Pages” do not have to be executed right away. In fact, they have no expiration date and the orders remain valid until they are expressly cancelled.

Unlike other intelligence agencies, the Mossad cannot provide its agents with real passports corresponding to a false identity. Instead, the Mossad usually uses the passports of Israelis with dual citizenship or forged passports from other countries.

On January 20, 2010, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, code-named “Plasma Screen”, is drugged, electrocuted and suffocated in his hotel room, room 230 at the Al Bustan hotel in Dubai, U.A.E. According to a Hamas statement, Al-Mabhouh had been involved in the 1989 abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers, Avi Sasportas and Ilan Saadoun, whose murders he celebrated by standing on one of the corpses. In a videotaped admission, two weeks before his death, and broadcast on Al-Jazeera in early February 2010, Al-Mabhouh admitted his involvement, saying he had disguised himself as an Orthodox Jew.

Investigations into the assassination of Al-Mabhouh reveal that eight Irish passports are used in the assassination, and all are forgeries, but based on information from valid passports. Irish citizens whose information had been used for the forged passports are issued with new passports. Dubai Police have Interpol issue red notices (arrest warrants) for Gael Folliard, Kevin Daveron, Ivy Brinton, Evan Dennings and Anna Shauna Clasby, all of whom allegedly entered Dubai on forged Irish passports.

The United States declines a request from the United Arab Emirates to assist in an investigation into the assassination of Al-Mabhouh, the Hamas commander. The US denies reports that it had received a request for assistance from Dubai, but a WikiLeaks cable proves otherwise - a cable sent from the embassy in Dubai, less than a month after the assassination, reveals that senior UAE officials asked the American ambassador and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to urgently probe “cardholder details and related information for credit cards reportedly issued by a US bank to several suspects” in the murder.

The WikiLeaks cable not only proves that the request was indeed made, but that it was recorded in a secret State Department cable. By not accepting the request, the Obama administration harms the Dubai investigation efforts, and assists Israel instead.

Unfortunately, we know nothing of this…...

In 2002, American citizen Bradley Gifford Wilde joins the US State Department and is posted to the US Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Born in San Francisco, California, Wilde lived in Guam and the Panama Canal Zone before returning to the USA to earn a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science from Stanford University, a Juris Doctor from Cornell School of Law and an MBA from UCLA. After some years in the private sector, Wilde joins the State Department and takes a posting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In March 2003 he attends a meeting of the secretariat of the ASEAN Regional Forum Inter-Sessional Meeting on Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime in Sabah, Malaysia. This is understood to be pursuant to Wilde’s unofficial role with Diplomatic Security Services, a recently created “spook” service.

Wilde’s next posting is as American Consul in the US Embassy, Budapest, Hungary, and in 2007 Wilde becomes Deputy Chief of American Citizen Services of the US Embassy in Manilla, Philippines.

By 2010, Bradley Wilde, the apparent “spook” from Diplomatic Security Services, and believed by some to be a staunch hibernophobe, has become head of the Visa Section in the US Embassy in Ballsbridge, Dublin, Ireland.

The first breezes of the impending storm have arrived. The Stewarts have Irish passports. Israel needs access to Irish passports for its Caesarean assassins. And alleged hibernophobe, Bradley Wilde, becomes head of the visa section of the US Embassy in Ireland, now effectively in control of every Irish Passport passing through the embassy in Ballsbridge, Ireland.

Of course, we know nothing of this either. In later years, with my training courses to the US military and US intelligence agencies, I will emphasize that it’s not so much a matter of knowing what you know, or even knowing what you don’t know, but rather the invariably far-reaching consequences of not knowing what you don’t know.

CONTENTS

DEDICATION

REVIEWS

FOREWORD

PROLOGUE – THE IRISH CONNECTION

PART 1 : AMERICAN DREAM

PART 2 : THE STORM

PART 3 : RECONSTRUCTION

PART 4 : WHERE IS SARAH STEWART?

PART 5 : POST SCRIPT

PART 6 : THE ROAD AHEAD

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

PART 1 : AMERICAN DREAM

Monday July 9, 2001

We have landed. It is 10pm and we have spent our first day in the USA as immigrants to this country.

Getting here was a long journey - more than six months of planning and research before we submitted our application for the coveted L-1 Intra-company transfer visa and another six months of planning and tying up the pieces in South Africa. We’d set up a branch of Speed Reading International in the USA some time previously and needed to spend time here in building this business. We successfully ...