This sort of thing happened a lot with East Germans in the 90s etc. After unification, we of course all became Western Germans, with the right to travel to the US on the visa waiver program. You just had to fill out the I-90 form (and pay 6$ when crossing a land border). It’s a relatively small form, but it does ask whether you’re criminal, used to be a nazi, terrorist… or member of a communist party. Well, most East Germans had to be member of the party, just in order to participate in society, so of course some would later put a mark there when travelling to the US. Border agents would usually just hand them a new form and tell them „you’re supposed to leave this blank“.
> It’s a relatively small form, but it does ask whether you’re criminal, used to be a nazi, terrorist… or member of a communist party.
Not that different today, includes are you a war criminal or wanted by Nuremberg and are you a islamic terrorist no?
Similarly there's still increased rules if you have been to particular places
> Not that different today, includes are you a war criminal or wanted by Nuremberg and are you a islamic terrorist no? Similarly there's still increased rules if you
have been to particular places
Those are widely different questions. These people were affirmatively not war criminals nor wanted by Nuremberg. And they were not equivalent of islamic terrorists either - the equivalent of that would be membership in stasi or so.
This would be analogical to "was you muslim" or "did you had membership in Mosque".
The earliest i94 I could find is from perhaps 2004 [1], and it doesn’t ask about membership of a communist party. It’s funny, I feel like I remember answering that question, and my first trip was 2002. it’s not an easy thing to search for nowadays when Google doesn’t quite work anymore and the old web is very hidden.
This is not about subjective perception. This is literally about what words mean. You being performatively against communist party does not make "member of a communist party in eastern block" the same situation as "islamic terrorist".
And it does not make them war criminals either, you need to engage in war for that in the first place. It does not make them wanted by Nuremberg either, because Nuremberg never asked for them.
It's also commonly faced by Chinese immigrants to the U.S.
I believe (I could be wrong) certain organizations in China basically only hire members of the communist party, so some people became a member of CCP due to their employment.
