ever feel like sam lowry ...

Gamasutra is hosting a little feature by Ron Rose about his experiences facilitating the desires of foreign nationals to work for game companies in the US of A (appropriately titled The Immigration Game): The INS has ceased to exist (as of March 1, 2003). Taken over by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) (a present-century candidate for 1984, if there was any, as Ron aptly observes), it has now burgeoned into the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS). Ron Rose also brings up the analogy of Brazil, Terry Gilliam's bleak surrealist Orwellian view of the future, but tags the DHS as the match, rather than the INS. Since I have never experienced the INS as a bureau in person, I can't say much in favour of or against his comparison. But the mention of the movie brought back memories of sequences once outrageously bizarre and entertaining that have now adopted a more sinister tone.