You have not been authorized to make puns in the headline. Especially good ones.

That, is the unkindest qat of all. And, as we all know: the first qat is the deepest.

But it is sad to learn that we are against them, apparently for their freedoms.

Even faraway Sweden, we find, is cursed by this plague, a drug whose users "can become talkative, euphoric and emotionally unbalanced

I suppose if there was a drug that made users quiet, anti-social and anal, Yemen would ban that, so fair enough.

Off the top of my head, besides khat use in Yemen , I can't think of any other act which is legal where performed, yet makes the actor ineligible for a U.S. immigrant visa. Somehow I doubt they bother asking immigrant visa applicants in Amsterdam whether they've ever used hash.

Other than membership in certain organizations (eg Hizbullah), anyway.

"I can't think of any other act which is legal where performed, yet makes the actor ineligible for a U.S. immigrant visa. "

To be pedantic, though they may not always be "acts":

An alien who has a communicable disease of public health significance . . . . . . who is a member of or affiliated with the Communist or other totalitarian party . . . who is a member or representative of a terrorist organization as currently designated by the U.S. Secretary of State . . . who, while serving as a foreign government official, was responsible for or directly carried out particularly
severe violations of religious freedom"

Not necessarily ALL of the above.:-)

Matthew - I knew I was forgetting something. Most of those ineligibilities are easily fixable, routinely waived, and/or hardly ever come up. (You forgot Nazi war criminals, BTW - I dunno to what extent discrimination against those persecuted by the Nazis was codified in law; was killing them legalized, or did Hitler neevr bother?)

On the other hand, a huge proportion of Yemenis use khat. Not that I imagine Sana'a is a high-volume immigrant visa processing post, but barring more than half the country from obtaining immigrant visas for doing something which is legal where they live, and which isn't exactly on the level of committing persecution, seems kind of extreme.

There is a large Yemen community here in the DC area. It was well known that Qat is used and available.

Never heard of a "qat bust" until now however.

I'm wondering if all this qat scratch fever might not be related to anger of Yemen's freeing or parolling of alQaeda members, including USS Cole-related culprits, and finding a way to block immigrants as a means of retaliation/prevention.

Matthew - well, IV applicants in much higher-volume places, like Mexico, are getting bounced these days for admitting to smoking pot, even once, so I don't know that Yemen is being singled out for any political reason. (The difference, of course, is that smoking pot is illegal in Mexico.)

However, I poked around, and was quite surprised to find that last year, 2396 people born in Yemen became U.S> permanent residents (see Table 3). Not exactly on the level of Mexico's 148,640, but much more than I would have guessed.

One would hope that if prevention were the issue, Homeland Security would have a better way to keep out bad guys than having a panel physician get them to admit to qat use.

IV applicants in much higher-volume places, like Mexico, are getting bounced these days

And why shouldnt they, being IV drug users?

(Yes, I know what you mean. Not everyone knows that IV actually means FOUR applicants.)

(OK, it doesnt, it means Immigrant Visa, but not all may be aware.)

But targeting qat sounds very ... targetted, as it is in a narrow geography, legal there, and near-universal.

True, I can't figure out why they'd pick qat, of all things. But why just in Yemen? Why not also, say, Somalia? Or is that your whole point?

Lord knows Homeland Security isn't exactly consistent, and I am reluctant to attribute to a political conspiracy what can be just as easily be attributed to bureaucratic cluelessness.

I am anti-conspiracy type but this being done on the State Department side, which suggests a foreign policy impetus and there is a lot of hot blood now about Yemen allowrng al Qaeda people (as noted Cole people) to run free.

It smells not of immigration policy, but foreign policy.

Couldn't it also be that they just don't want a lot of Yemenis coming to the US? With al-Qaida and all sorts of other crises ganging up on the regime and threatening to create a refugee crisis -- and, presumably, pretty low trust in Yemeni authorities to help them with the sorting. ...although I see now that Matthew H. already pointed that out, so nevermind.

Anyway, Yemen is now officially topping my list of what Arab regime will be first to collapse. (Sudan comes second, then at distant third the rest of them pretty much in a heap, with Gulfies at the bottom. Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine don't count.)

Stupid liberals and their "freedoms". These old women who can't control their habits are creating a public health hazard. I don't care if they are "cute" and/or "cuddly"--a dozen strays running around some crazy widow's dilapidated apartment does not constitute an "animal shelter".

It obvious these "qat" things are addictive and dangerous. Worse, there are miniature versions that appeal especially to children... It's all very insidious.

Eerie should change the anti-spam icon to a tiny picture of green leaves, or perhaps a bulging cheek. Hint: 3-letter word. Only certified Orientalists would be able to comment on 'Aqoul.

Heh. I remember researching Qat, and elements of the international trade, a good 13-14 years ago - it was legal in the UK then, and it remains so to this day. Frankly, there's no compelling reason for criminalisation, although it's prohibited in most European countries - which is why the UK is the distribution hub for Europe and the US. I guess it also helps having regular scheduled flights from Addis to London as well.

The DTI had/has a product code for it ( I'd dig it out if my old notes were handy ), and there was no formal legal barrier to bulk importation if anyone had the wherewithal to organise it.

The Home Office drug unit line was that they were aware of the issue, but weren't unduly bothered unless it became a problem in the indigenous UK community. I would guess that nowt's changed since then.

Can't say much about the Yemeni angle, but the bulk of Qat being imported into the UK in the early-mid 1990's ( and a fairly hefty slice was then re-exported into Europe or the US ) was flown from Addis, having been harvested the day before in Harar. The importer/distributor network was a rogue's gallery of Ethiopians, Somalis, Serbs and UK immigration officials ( no, really, I'm NOT joking! ).

Some of the more "enterprising" networks were investigating the possibilities of doing refrigerated container runs to Canada ( where it was also legal ) and then on to the US, as opposed to recruiting couriers in London to carry 20-40kg in suitcases.