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My only experience with serious US government forms was applying for a tourist visa. This form also has some bonkers checkboxes like "do you plan to commit any

My only experience with serious US government forms was applying for a tourist visa. This form also has some bonkers checkboxes like "do you plan to commit any crimes in the US". Also the entry form they give you on your flight deserves a mention. This one has "did you handle livestock in the last X months" repeated like 3 times in different phrasing. Not as stupid as the first one, but... why? Why is that question that important in the first place? Pest control?

ahoho 4y ago
It’s about disease prevention (mad cow, avian flus, etc)
pedrovhb 4y ago
Ah, the "are you a terrorist" section of the U.S. visa application is hilarious. I was honestly laughing out loud at some of the questions, imagining a sincere terrorist having their plan foiled by their strict moral code which requires them to lay out in detail their plan to topple the government :)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ArnoVW 4y ago
  I've always understood that those questions are just a legal construct to be able to get you out of the country in case of issues. No need to prosecute for expulsion if there were lies on the immigration form; it becomes just an administrative matter.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - dilznoofus 4y ago
    I mean, yeah. It's like gun laws that prohibit having a joint whilst commit armed robbery or whatever - it's not actually trying to stop the behavior, merely empower the prosecutor after the fact. But, hey, there might be a true believer on the T-side! God says you're not supposed to lie, so it's a real Catch-22 - 'Render unto Caesar the evidence he deserves.'
    - notch656c 4y ago
      It's my understanding that same law about the joint still applies just for having an otherwise lawful firearm in the safe doing nothing. Disclaimer: not legal advice, for entertainment value only.
      - int_19h 4y ago
        You're correct. In fact, there doesn't need to be a joint at all - you become a prohibited person by virtue of being "an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance". Note that, since this is a federal law, it doesn't matter if it's legal on state level. There's already precedent that having a state medical marijuana card already makes one ineligible, and using as an ID when trying to purchase a firearm is grounds for automatic denial by the seller. Hawaii, which requires all firearms to be registered, went even further, proactively cross-referencing their gun registry with the medical marijuana one (https://www.leafly.com/news/politics/surrender-your-guns-police-tell-hawaiian-medical-marijuana-patients https://www.leafly.com/news/politics/surrender-your-guns-pol...). It's not really surprising that the law is so broad, given that it was written in 1968 when anti-drug craze was still ramping up. The reason why it doesn't get amended is, I think, because it manages to touch two third rails at once: Republicans don't want to be perceived as "soft on drugs" by their base, while Democrats are afraid of being seeing as not sufficiently aggressive wrt "gun violence". And so, here we are.
        wkat4242 4y ago
        It's strange especially because marihuana makes people very docile and laid back. Probably not a bad state for someone handing a firearm. On the other hand for someone pumped up on coke it would be a big worry. Though I guess if the US had medical coke cards they would be banned as well :)
        notch656c 4y ago
        Cocaine is schedule II. You can get a script for it. So the thing you say not only exists, but such a person could hypothetically legally own guns unlike the pot user.
  - owlbite 4y ago
    My understanding was it also helped firmly establish federal wrongdoing rather than merely state.
- rwky 4y ago
  The UK visa application has the same questions pretty much identical. Also made me laugh!
  - rospaya 4y ago
    The UK also had a question about communist party membership on their visa application. Funny thing is that the UK also has a communist party.
    - rwmj 4y ago
      The funniest thing is people now in government were members: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/01/why-johnsons-tories-fell-for-a-tiny-sect-of-libertarian-provocateurs-rcp https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/01/why-jo...
    - Cyberdog 4y ago
      The US has this question as well, but I've heard that it didn't eliminate people from China who were able to make a "I had to join the party to get a certain job" argument. I presume that as long as you don't voice actual support for the revolutionary aspects of the ideology, the migra won't care.
  - grishka 4y ago
    Hm. I had multiple UK visas (but only visited once lol) and I don't remember that. Granted, all of those visas were applied for with assistance from the job I had at the time. The entry form was also much more boring.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    Kinda makes me wonder what happens if someone checks yes. How do they deal with that?
    - saagarjha 4y ago
      Probably deny you entry?
- apricot 4y ago
  I am reminded of the (probably apocryphal) story about a logician asking for a visa to enter the US for a conference. When he got to the question "Do you plan to overthrow the United States Government by force or violence?" he hesitated and then answered "violence".
  - turminal 4y ago
    There's a true story about Kurt Gödel's citizenship application: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_Loophole#Background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_Loophole#Backgr...
    - thechao 4y ago
      > Other writers have speculated that Gödel may have had other parts of the Constitution in mind as well, including the possibility that a partisan ratchet effect, via lifetime Supreme Court appointments and selective application of the law, could permanently stack the Supreme Court with Justices of one political persuasion. This is mentioned in the article. It's a pretty standard way to overthrow democracies — it subverts the system, using the system.
      - idontpost 4y ago
        [dead]
  - Jerrrry 4y ago
    That is still the last question asked on the eQuip, and it has been reworded, implying that yes, this likely did happen. And my delayed response likewise agitated the Mr 202 area code spec agent.
- red-iron-pine 4y ago
  It's mostly so that someone can't say "well you never asked!" -- okay fine we'll ask from now on. Additionally it creates a condition of jeopardy, because now you've made an official statement, and if it's false you're now potentially chargeable for perjury or making false official statements. So if you're a super-slick spy type and they can't pin something on you conclusively, but are sure you're up to something (in the same way they could only get Al Capone for tax evasion), then at least it gives them a pretext to take action and charge or deport you.
  - euroderf 4y ago
    Yup. Thus the question about "have you committed war crimes". They added that one after having trouble deporting a one-time concentration camp guard.
- bloak 4y ago
  I heard about a company web site that had a tick box like that on their download page. Unfortunately they got it the wrong way round so you had to claim to be a terrorist (or intending to build a nuclear weapon: I forget exactly what it was) in order to download the software. The story is that the web site was broken like that for about six months but it didn't stop hundreds of thousands of downloads from taking place. I hope no poor bastard in the FBI was tasked with investigating every case.
- vkou 4y ago
  That one's not funny, the really funny one is the "Are you a communist/polyamorous degenerate" section.
n0tth3dro1ds 4y ago
Foot and mouth disease (and others)
deutschepost 4y ago
I heard a pretty good interpretation of why these questions exist. If you say that you don't plan to commit crimes and then commit one, you have essentially lied on the form. In some cases at least it is way easier for the state to deport someone if they lie on their immigration form. But if the question wasn't there you would have to go through the whole legal process. On the other hand, if you answer yes to this question they will probably don't let you into the country... But I can't say for sure.
- jstanley 4y ago
  But you might legitimately not be planning to commit any crimes, but then change your mind once you get there. The fact that you committed a crime after saying you weren't planning to do so does not mean that you were lying.
  - sealeck 4y ago
    Are you a lawyer? :D
    - ipaddr 4y ago
      Ask 5 lawyers and get 5 answers. Either way it doesn't matter unless that person is your lawyer. I would have ask if they were a judge. At least they are tasked with weighing the facts and deciding and not fighting for one point of view
      - TeMPOraL 4y ago
        > I would have ask if they were a judge. At least they are tasked with weighing the facts and deciding and not fighting for one point of view But then in the US it still wouldn't matter unless they are your judge.
  - Spooky23 4y ago
    Cool. Hopefully you have $150k to hire the attorneys to argue that, and deal with the trainload of stuff that will come your way when they do.
rqtwteye 4y ago
In the 90s we had to fill out a form when dealing with Apple to certify that we didn't plan to build nuclear weapons.
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  That’s still a thing. I know I signed pages and pages of stuff like that requesting a sample of 5 ancient TTL chips from Texas Instruments. Part of it is liability (tho I like to think they send the most reliable parts on sample orders), but also ITAR.
vilhelm_s 4y ago
Yes, pest control. E.g. foot-and-mouth disease is eradicated from the U.S. and cattle here are no longer vaccinated, but it's common in Asia and Africa and there are occasional outbreaks in South America. Even a single outbreak imported from abroad could cost billions of dollars, mostly because it would trigger international embargos preventing exports. [https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/45980/12171_err57_1_.pdf https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/45980/12171_er...]
dragonwriter 4y ago
> This form also has some bonkers checkboxes like "do you plan to commit any crimes in the US". The point of this is not to get people to admit their plans. Its to convert having those inchoate plans into a crime (fraud against the government) that can be prosecuted if discovered without any criminal act after entry (and can be used, with a reduced proof threshold compared to prosecuting crime, as a basis to withdraw status and deny any future application.)
kemayo 4y ago
I got an immigration official very worried when I was asked whether I'd ever been convicted of any "crimes of moral turpitude" and asked whether they could tell me what that meant before I answered. They had to go print out a dictionary definition. (I had never been convicted of any crimes, so admittedly I could have just said "no" without causing a scene.)
dbspin 4y ago
The livestock question might have been added during the Foot and Mouth epidemic, which could be spread on footwear and necessitated the destruction of livestock in the millions in Ireland and the UK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_United_Kingdom_foot-and-mouth_outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_United_Kingdom_foot-and-m...
- archon1410 4y ago
  > destruction of livestock Such a tragic, disgusting euphemism for the murder of millions, without them getting to devour their corpses.
  - dbspin 4y ago
    Please don't equate the death of people with the death of non human animals. It's not useful and it's needlessly inflammatory. Murder is defined as the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another. The term doesn't apply to deaths in battle, through negligence, or by execution, however distasteful we might find those things. It also doesn't apply to the killing of animals - whatever ones moral perspective on the matter. Just rhetorically, using inflammatory terminology isn't going to convert anyone to vegetarianism / veganism. For those of us who've lost friends and relatives to murder (including myself unfortunately), it's profoundly distasteful.
    - archon1410 4y ago
      > Murder is defined as the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another. Surely this is not as easy as just pointing out the 'correct' definition of words. The difference between "execution", various other forms of killing you mention, and murder can't be so clear that you can easily say "it doesn't apply in this case". > not useful More than rhetoric and saying what is useful, sometimes I just feel like I should be saying what I find to be true. After billions and trillions of 'killings', with people saying 'useful', definitinly correct things in response, I just want to be more honest, sometimes—instead of pretending I don't find certain things disgusting, distasteful, vile etc for the sake of garnering 'converts'. I am not running an evangelism program—I'll leave that to the experts. They will perform like the they do regardless of what I say. Maybe honesty is the more useful policy in the long term.
rjsw 4y ago
It also used to have a question "Are you a gunrunner", any computer person had to lie and answer "NO" to it. At the time, strong cryptographic algorithms on your laptop counted as a munition.
adbachman 4y ago
I can say confidently that asking potential refugees--who were born and have lived in a refugee camp for their entire lives--if they intend to pirate software when they are in the US is hilarious to refugee officers, too. In some languages it takes a lot of explanation to even get to a yes or no. It's exclusively asked as a, "turns out you lied, that's perjury" question to make deportation easier in criminal cases.
floren 4y ago
The federal and state departments of agriculture go to great efforts to control agricultural diseases. Others have mentioned foot and mouth, but there are lots of other things. For instance, half of Washington State is declared an "Apple Maggot Quarantine Area" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Maggot_Quarantine_Area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Maggot_Quarantine_Area) where it's illegal to bring in homegrown / wild-picked fruit lest you infect Eastern Washington's massive apple orchards. A couple years back the Governor very publicly violated that long-standing order: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2020/sep/16/inslee-brings-infected-apples-on-visits-to-fire-da/ https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2020/sep/16/inslee-brings-...
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  > half of Washington State is declared an "Apple Maggot Quarantine Area" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Maggot_Quarantine_Area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Maggot_Quarantine_Area) where it's illegal to bring in homegrown / wild-picked fruit lest you infect Eastern Washington's massive apple orchards. The article you link suggests that the quarantine area is the region from which it's illegal to bring fruit out. The wikipedia article also does something interesting where it describes a mature fly as being an "apple maggot". I would have thought that the term "maggot" referred exclusively to the larval form.
  - TeMPOraL 4y ago
    Isn't a mature fly just a maggot delivery vehicle?
  - floren 4y ago
    I guess technically the state of Washington has declared western WA and pretty much every other state in the continental US to be "quarantined" because those other areas have apple maggots. It's a lot easier to talk about eastern WA as the "quarantine area" though. It is illegal to bring homegrown fruit into eastern Washington, regardless of terminology.
Vrondi 4y ago
Diseases. The livestock thing is related to diseases. Are you carrying the new strain of swine flu inside your body?
NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
My father got caught at an agricultural inspection entering the U.S. with an apple he’d picked up in a business class lounge and forgotten about. He got special treatment every time he entered the U.S. for about the next five years.

ahoho 4y ago

It’s about disease prevention (mad cow, avian flus, etc)

pedrovhb 4y ago

Ah, the "are you a terrorist" section of the U.S. visa application is hilarious. I was honestly laughing out loud at some of the questions, imagining a sincere terrorist having their plan foiled by their strict moral code which requires them to lay out in detail their plan to topple the government :)

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ArnoVW 4y ago
I've always understood that those questions are just a legal construct to be able to get you out of the country in case of issues. No need to prosecute for expulsion if there were lies on the immigration form; it becomes just an administrative matter.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dilznoofus 4y ago
  I mean, yeah. It's like gun laws that prohibit having a joint whilst commit armed robbery or whatever - it's not actually trying to stop the behavior, merely empower the prosecutor after the fact. But, hey, there might be a true believer on the T-side! God says you're not supposed to lie, so it's a real Catch-22 - 'Render unto Caesar the evidence he deserves.'
  - notch656c 4y ago
    It's my understanding that same law about the joint still applies just for having an otherwise lawful firearm in the safe doing nothing. Disclaimer: not legal advice, for entertainment value only.
    - int_19h 4y ago
      You're correct. In fact, there doesn't need to be a joint at all - you become a prohibited person by virtue of being "an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance". Note that, since this is a federal law, it doesn't matter if it's legal on state level. There's already precedent that having a state medical marijuana card already makes one ineligible, and using as an ID when trying to purchase a firearm is grounds for automatic denial by the seller. Hawaii, which requires all firearms to be registered, went even further, proactively cross-referencing their gun registry with the medical marijuana one (https://www.leafly.com/news/politics/surrender-your-guns-police-tell-hawaiian-medical-marijuana-patients https://www.leafly.com/news/politics/surrender-your-guns-pol...). It's not really surprising that the law is so broad, given that it was written in 1968 when anti-drug craze was still ramping up. The reason why it doesn't get amended is, I think, because it manages to touch two third rails at once: Republicans don't want to be perceived as "soft on drugs" by their base, while Democrats are afraid of being seeing as not sufficiently aggressive wrt "gun violence". And so, here we are.
      - wkat4242 4y ago
        It's strange especially because marihuana makes people very docile and laid back. Probably not a bad state for someone handing a firearm. On the other hand for someone pumped up on coke it would be a big worry. Though I guess if the US had medical coke cards they would be banned as well :)
        notch656c 4y ago
        Cocaine is schedule II. You can get a script for it. So the thing you say not only exists, but such a person could hypothetically legally own guns unlike the pot user.
- owlbite 4y ago
  My understanding was it also helped firmly establish federal wrongdoing rather than merely state.
rwky 4y ago
The UK visa application has the same questions pretty much identical. Also made me laugh!
- rospaya 4y ago
  The UK also had a question about communist party membership on their visa application. Funny thing is that the UK also has a communist party.
  - rwmj 4y ago
    The funniest thing is people now in government were members: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/01/why-johnsons-tories-fell-for-a-tiny-sect-of-libertarian-provocateurs-rcp https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/01/why-jo...
  - Cyberdog 4y ago
    The US has this question as well, but I've heard that it didn't eliminate people from China who were able to make a "I had to join the party to get a certain job" argument. I presume that as long as you don't voice actual support for the revolutionary aspects of the ideology, the migra won't care.
- grishka 4y ago
  Hm. I had multiple UK visas (but only visited once lol) and I don't remember that. Granted, all of those visas were applied for with assistance from the job I had at the time. The entry form was also much more boring.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  Kinda makes me wonder what happens if someone checks yes. How do they deal with that?
  - saagarjha 4y ago
    Probably deny you entry?
apricot 4y ago
I am reminded of the (probably apocryphal) story about a logician asking for a visa to enter the US for a conference. When he got to the question "Do you plan to overthrow the United States Government by force or violence?" he hesitated and then answered "violence".
- turminal 4y ago
  There's a true story about Kurt Gödel's citizenship application: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_Loophole#Background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_Loophole#Backgr...
  - thechao 4y ago
    > Other writers have speculated that Gödel may have had other parts of the Constitution in mind as well, including the possibility that a partisan ratchet effect, via lifetime Supreme Court appointments and selective application of the law, could permanently stack the Supreme Court with Justices of one political persuasion. This is mentioned in the article. It's a pretty standard way to overthrow democracies — it subverts the system, using the system.
    - idontpost 4y ago
      [dead]
- Jerrrry 4y ago
  That is still the last question asked on the eQuip, and it has been reworded, implying that yes, this likely did happen. And my delayed response likewise agitated the Mr 202 area code spec agent.
red-iron-pine 4y ago
It's mostly so that someone can't say "well you never asked!" -- okay fine we'll ask from now on. Additionally it creates a condition of jeopardy, because now you've made an official statement, and if it's false you're now potentially chargeable for perjury or making false official statements. So if you're a super-slick spy type and they can't pin something on you conclusively, but are sure you're up to something (in the same way they could only get Al Capone for tax evasion), then at least it gives them a pretext to take action and charge or deport you.
- euroderf 4y ago
  Yup. Thus the question about "have you committed war crimes". They added that one after having trouble deporting a one-time concentration camp guard.
bloak 4y ago
I heard about a company web site that had a tick box like that on their download page. Unfortunately they got it the wrong way round so you had to claim to be a terrorist (or intending to build a nuclear weapon: I forget exactly what it was) in order to download the software. The story is that the web site was broken like that for about six months but it didn't stop hundreds of thousands of downloads from taking place. I hope no poor bastard in the FBI was tasked with investigating every case.
vkou 4y ago
That one's not funny, the really funny one is the "Are you a communist/polyamorous degenerate" section.

n0tth3dro1ds 4y ago

Foot and mouth disease (and others)

deutschepost 4y ago

I heard a pretty good interpretation of why these questions exist. If you say that you don't plan to commit crimes and then commit one, you have essentially lied on the form. In some cases at least it is way easier for the state to deport someone if they lie on their immigration form. But if the question wasn't there you would have to go through the whole legal process. On the other hand, if you answer yes to this question they will probably don't let you into the country... But I can't say for sure.

jstanley 4y ago
But you might legitimately not be planning to commit any crimes, but then change your mind once you get there. The fact that you committed a crime after saying you weren't planning to do so does not mean that you were lying.
- sealeck 4y ago
  Are you a lawyer? :D
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    Ask 5 lawyers and get 5 answers. Either way it doesn't matter unless that person is your lawyer. I would have ask if they were a judge. At least they are tasked with weighing the facts and deciding and not fighting for one point of view
    - TeMPOraL 4y ago
      > I would have ask if they were a judge. At least they are tasked with weighing the facts and deciding and not fighting for one point of view But then in the US it still wouldn't matter unless they are your judge.
- Spooky23 4y ago
  Cool. Hopefully you have $150k to hire the attorneys to argue that, and deal with the trainload of stuff that will come your way when they do.

rqtwteye 4y ago

In the 90s we had to fill out a form when dealing with Apple to certify that we didn't plan to build nuclear weapons.

Scoundreller 4y ago
That’s still a thing. I know I signed pages and pages of stuff like that requesting a sample of 5 ancient TTL chips from Texas Instruments. Part of it is liability (tho I like to think they send the most reliable parts on sample orders), but also ITAR.

vilhelm_s 4y ago

Yes, pest control. E.g. foot-and-mouth disease is eradicated from the U.S. and cattle here are no longer vaccinated, but it's common in Asia and Africa and there are occasional outbreaks in South America. Even a single outbreak imported from abroad could cost billions of dollars, mostly because it would trigger international embargos preventing exports. [https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/45980/12171_err57_1_.pdf https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/45980/12171_er...]

dragonwriter 4y ago

> This form also has some bonkers checkboxes like "do you plan to commit any crimes in the US". The point of this is not to get people to admit their plans. Its to convert having those inchoate plans into a crime (fraud against the government) that can be prosecuted if discovered without any criminal act after entry (and can be used, with a reduced proof threshold compared to prosecuting crime, as a basis to withdraw status and deny any future application.)

kemayo 4y ago

I got an immigration official very worried when I was asked whether I'd ever been convicted of any "crimes of moral turpitude" and asked whether they could tell me what that meant before I answered. They had to go print out a dictionary definition. (I had never been convicted of any crimes, so admittedly I could have just said "no" without causing a scene.)

dbspin 4y ago

The livestock question might have been added during the Foot and Mouth epidemic, which could be spread on footwear and necessitated the destruction of livestock in the millions in Ireland and the UK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_United_Kingdom_foot-and-mouth_outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_United_Kingdom_foot-and-m...

archon1410 4y ago
> destruction of livestock Such a tragic, disgusting euphemism for the murder of millions, without them getting to devour their corpses.
- dbspin 4y ago
  Please don't equate the death of people with the death of non human animals. It's not useful and it's needlessly inflammatory. Murder is defined as the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another. The term doesn't apply to deaths in battle, through negligence, or by execution, however distasteful we might find those things. It also doesn't apply to the killing of animals - whatever ones moral perspective on the matter. Just rhetorically, using inflammatory terminology isn't going to convert anyone to vegetarianism / veganism. For those of us who've lost friends and relatives to murder (including myself unfortunately), it's profoundly distasteful.
  - archon1410 4y ago
    > Murder is defined as the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another. Surely this is not as easy as just pointing out the 'correct' definition of words. The difference between "execution", various other forms of killing you mention, and murder can't be so clear that you can easily say "it doesn't apply in this case". > not useful More than rhetoric and saying what is useful, sometimes I just feel like I should be saying what I find to be true. After billions and trillions of 'killings', with people saying 'useful', definitinly correct things in response, I just want to be more honest, sometimes—instead of pretending I don't find certain things disgusting, distasteful, vile etc for the sake of garnering 'converts'. I am not running an evangelism program—I'll leave that to the experts. They will perform like the they do regardless of what I say. Maybe honesty is the more useful policy in the long term.

rjsw 4y ago

It also used to have a question "Are you a gunrunner", any computer person had to lie and answer "NO" to it. At the time, strong cryptographic algorithms on your laptop counted as a munition.

adbachman 4y ago

I can say confidently that asking potential refugees--who were born and have lived in a refugee camp for their entire lives--if they intend to pirate software when they are in the US is hilarious to refugee officers, too. In some languages it takes a lot of explanation to even get to a yes or no. It's exclusively asked as a, "turns out you lied, that's perjury" question to make deportation easier in criminal cases.

floren 4y ago

The federal and state departments of agriculture go to great efforts to control agricultural diseases. Others have mentioned foot and mouth, but there are lots of other things. For instance, half of Washington State is declared an "Apple Maggot Quarantine Area" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Maggot_Quarantine_Area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Maggot_Quarantine_Area) where it's illegal to bring in homegrown / wild-picked fruit lest you infect Eastern Washington's massive apple orchards. A couple years back the Governor very publicly violated that long-standing order: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2020/sep/16/inslee-brings-infected-apples-on-visits-to-fire-da/ https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2020/sep/16/inslee-brings-...

thaumasiotes 4y ago
> half of Washington State is declared an "Apple Maggot Quarantine Area" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Maggot_Quarantine_Area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Maggot_Quarantine_Area) where it's illegal to bring in homegrown / wild-picked fruit lest you infect Eastern Washington's massive apple orchards. The article you link suggests that the quarantine area is the region from which it's illegal to bring fruit out. The wikipedia article also does something interesting where it describes a mature fly as being an "apple maggot". I would have thought that the term "maggot" referred exclusively to the larval form.
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  Isn't a mature fly just a maggot delivery vehicle?
- floren 4y ago
  I guess technically the state of Washington has declared western WA and pretty much every other state in the continental US to be "quarantined" because those other areas have apple maggots. It's a lot easier to talk about eastern WA as the "quarantine area" though. It is illegal to bring homegrown fruit into eastern Washington, regardless of terminology.

Vrondi 4y ago

Diseases. The livestock thing is related to diseases. Are you carrying the new strain of swine flu inside your body?

NovemberWhiskey 4y ago

My father got caught at an agricultural inspection entering the U.S. with an apple he’d picked up in a business class lounge and forgotten about. He got special treatment every time he entered the U.S. for about the next five years.