The news today that a female Indian consular official in New York has been strip-searched and jailed with hardened criminals for alleged visa fraud and for paying less than the minimum wage for a worker brought from India (truly!) further discredits the Department of Homeland Security. This department was cobbled together in a panic after 9/11 by Bush and a terrified Congress. It was composed of a lot of disparate smaller departments and never worked properly. Nothing has improved, as anyone traveling in the US and faced with TSA staff can attest. The Department says that officials were following “standard procedures”.

These people have no concept of the damage incidents like this do to the reputation of the United States of America around the world. The “standard procedures” are no doubt designed to take discretion away from shop floor operatives, which might well be wise given the apparent calibre of staff. It might well be that this woman is as free of corruption as the feast of the political establishment in India (joke), but this is no way to treat people.

Epicurus would summarily fire the bosses who designed the “standard procedures” and get some people with common sense and a home grown understanding of diplomacy.