Neil Diamond’s 1980 song about people merrily streaming to America and never looking back was kind of passé long before the recent changes in visa policy (“Keeping Out More than Terrorists,” February 10, 2007), as you seem to believe. After an interview at the Visa Branch of the American Embassy in London in June 1991, which I will never forget, I wrote to George Bush Senior, the then President of the United States: “The treatment I received at the American Embassy and the nature of my interview suggested that I wanted to either be fed in perpetuity by the American government or conspire to destroy that government. Both assumptions are simply speaking ridiculous. Under pressure from the proverbial huddled masses, the American bureaucrats tend to assume that the motives for travel to America are always the same.” I wrapped my letter up without mincing words: “Tired of this kind of bureaucratic abuse, I decided to withdraw my application for American visa, as well as never to set foot on American soil again. Not even your personal apology would change my mind at this point.” Mind you, that was ten years before the Twin Towers. I can only imagine the bureaucratic abuse after the recent changes in visa policy.