tim's experiment

Dear Uncle Sam,
I understand that many of your legislators are upset because young Mr Snowden was not arrested before he left us, even though your government had sent to Hong Kong an application to have him detained and extradited. It seems there was some deficiency in the documentation attached to your application and consequently Mr Snowden was free to leave. Some people in Washington apparently think this is all the result of a devious plot to annoy them, hatched in Hong Kong, Beijing or even Moscow. These speculations are very wide of the mark.

As any resident of Hong Kong could tell you, an attempt to extract from our government anything more complicated than a postage stamp invariably provokes a request for a document which you haven’t got with you and didn’t know you needed. The documents demanded range from obvious items like a photocopy of your ID card, two passport photos and a proof of address, to tricky exotica like your birth certificate, or your wife’s birth certificate, or your mistress’s birth certificate … This is just the way our bureaucrats work. Your documentation was treated the same way as everyone else’s. Of course we all nurture the friendliest feelings towards your country, but procedures are there to be followed and it is in all cases up to the applicant to ensure that he presents the necessary documents in the appropriate order. If he doesn’t then the application fails.

Incidentally I notice that the US government also has an interesting appetite for unnecessary paperwork. Just the other day someone who is applying for a Green Card on the strength of his status as the spouse of an American citizen asked me for a letter to say that I had witnessed his wedding. Apparently the certificate provided as part of the proceedings does not meet your requirements. Maybe your arrest warrants don’t meet ours.