Should you pass a newsstand this past week or chanced upon some solemn-faced anchor with a quiver in their voice, you’d have thought we were shipping students off in cattle cars and replacing them with scarecrows. Such was the hue and cry over the revoked student visas at UNLV, where seven poor souls—no more, no less—found themselves caught in the gears of government bureaucracy.
Then late Monday afternoon, in a move as quiet as a mouse tiptoeing past a sleeping cat, the federal record keepers flipped the switch back to “active.” One might expect a cheer, but the University complains it learned about the good news–not from Homeland Security but “as part of its regular monitoring of the federal SEVIS database.”
That’s a way of saying, “We did our jobs.”
No official word, mind you, from the Department of Homeland Security, whose silence on the matter would shame a tombstone. While their records got resurrected like Lazarus should their visas remain revoked, they’re still out of luck for reentry. Like a man who finds his keys after the house has burned, some might not find it all that comforting.
The students—seven at UNLV, part of a much-touted thousand–got swept up in a visa revocation spree. And with its usual thunder and lightning, the media turned the matter into a four-alarm fire while the rest of us wondered what exactly had burned. Many of these “national security threats,” had little more than a parking ticket’s worth of infractions.
Now, don’t mistake me–I hold no grudge against fair warning, but a feller can only hear “The sky is falling!” so many times before he starts bringing an umbrella to bed.
The press should remember the old fable about the boy and the wolf. Because when there’s real danger—and surely there will be—it’d be nice if folks hadn’t already tuned out.
So here we are–the records are fixed, crisis cooled, and the wolf, as usual, was more shadow than substance. But don’t worry–someone in the newsroom is already warming up for the next cry.
Heaven help us when there’s a real wolf at the door.
The Old Blog in the Desert 