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A fairly common usage of archipelago is to point to a series of similar things. Once upon a time Alexander Solzhenitsyn documented the brutality of Soviet Union prisons as the "Gulag Archipelago". We don't live under the same brutality as the poor Russians who suffered under Stalin et al. The USA archipelago is more subtle, civilized and psychic in nature. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
An example...
A multi-lingual intelligent, hard-working and attractive young woman applied to attend a Denver-based university. She was accepted based on her academic accomplishments, and her ability to speak and read English, French and Spanish. She then applied for a student visa from US Immigration to attend university here. She was denied the visa because of our arrogant immigration policies under the arrogant man I never elected. Why would she return home when she finished school, if she finished, they reasoned.
Undaunted, the young woman applied to attend school in Vancouver, Canada. She enrolled in a two-year hospitality management curriculum where she is about to complete her first term. She paid the $160 application fee to visit her mother in the USA. Once again she was denied. The logic, if any was used? Why would she return to Canada once she was with her mother in the USA? The answer which I'm sure no one paused to think about is she had already paid tuition for a 2 year program at a school that will help her gain Canadian employment and Canadian residence.
The question USCIS failed to ask or answer is why does anyone, myself included, want to live in a country where the leader acts in the way depicted in the cartoon above. My answer to the question is I'm too tired to leave a place I've begun to think of as my own psychic gulag archipelago.
Published by Bill Snyder
4 years ago 
