I was quite relieved when my US Visa was recently renewed for another ten years. Not because I thought there was any reason why the US authorities would refuse my application but simply because I had managed to negotiate my way through the minefield of bureaucracy.

Such applications have to be carefully vetted, particularly in these dangerous days, and officials need to be both thorough and meticulous to ensure that no undesirable aliens gain entry to their country. Bureaucrats the world over have a tendency to be rather serious and cheerless, in my experience, and so it was a pleasant surprise to be treated with politeness, courtesy and not a little humour when I visited the US embassy in London for my interview.

Mind you, to get to the interview stage applicants have to first complete an exhaustive online application and answer a huge and diverse array of questions some of which are predictable and others not so.

Among the questions were the following, which I quote verbatim –

“Are you coming to the US to engage in prostitution……………………………………….…?”

“Do you seek to engage in espionage, sabotage…….…or any other illegal activity in the US?”

“Do you seek to engage in terrorist activities while in the US……………………………..?”

“Have you ever ordered, incited, committed, assisted or otherwise participated in genocide?”

What an ingenious deterrent! Just think of the thousands of undesirables whose plans to enter the USA have been thwarted by those cunning questions!

Fortunately I was able to answer them all in the negative and so the good people of America can rest easy in their beds at night, safe in the knowledge that this alien, at least, is going to cause them no trouble at all!