Thursday 19 March 2020

Pompeo advises all Americans to come home from abroad! How?

Mike Pompeo, US secretary of state, must be living in cloud cuckoo land. He has made an edict that all Americans currently overseas sbould come home immediately. Durrr!! They'd love to but they can't. There are thousands of American citizens and Green Card holders totally stuck in foreign countries because there is absolutely no way of getting home. Airports are closed, borders are closed and in some places such as Latin America everyone, foreign and locals are being ordered to stay at home and not come out. In Lima for example truckloads of armed police are going around with megaphones ordering people to stay indoors. So how, Mr Secretary of State, can your citizens get out of all these countries unless you go and rescue them. But the US administration has made it clear that that is not going to happen. OK they did it for Americans stranded in China but that, they say, was different because that is where it all started and no one then had a clue that the virus (the C virus standing for corona or China depending on your point of view) was going to go worldwide. Now the virus is everywhere on the planet, Americans should not be expected to be picked up by chartered rescue planes, Washington has said. So these people are on their own. It's the same for Brits. If they can't get flights out back to UK then hard cheese. They have to stay where they are until the virus crisis has died down. And when precisely will that be? July, August, December, 18 months? This is a problem which is going to have to be dealt with by governments. If stranded nationals abroad have nowhere to stay except in expensive hotels, a lot of people are going to start freaking out and emptying their bank accounts. I'm sure that if US or British diplomats abroad needed to be returned home for their safety or out of medical necessity, their respective governnments would rustle up chartered planes and bring them back. So that's what both the US and UK governments should do. Persuade the foreign governments to open up airports for emergency flights and bring your people home. It's bad enough being told to stay at home when it's your own home, but being told to stay in Guatemala or Peru or Bolivia or Vietnam or Indonesia until the virus has gone means potentially months away from home and family and job and any sense of security. This is a dilemma which is going to get worse by the day. And it doesn't help to say the least for Pompeo to put out a message to all Americans abroad, "Come home".

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