341–350 of 613 posts
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Know of any good programs that countries are offering to accelerate this?
I’ve been getting ads from NZ and the UK.
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Detention is already bad enough, but then reading something like this: https://bleedingcool.com/comics/british-comic-creator-r-e-bu... "While every item in her bag was swabbed and dismantled, she was subjected to a full body search. "I was in this very loud, weird, industrial space with pipes and conveyor belts and lights and sirens, being told to open my legs. I was silently crying, watching all my stuff being torn…
That story starts with her being refused entry to Canada. So, there's more than just "US border guards mean" going on here. Then it turns out that she was using Workaway, which is like AirBnB or Uber but for foreign labor on tourist visas. They don't tell you that you need a work visa to work in another country [1], but you almost certainly do anywhere you go, not just the US. The woman in the story was working in ex…
I see all these articles about Canadian and European hate for the US, and anti-US sentiment in general. They all sadden me. The US is made up of 350 million people. Only one of them is Donald Trump. Most of the country didn’t vote for him. We still value our friends and allies, even if the stooge Putin got elected does not.
Trump won the popular vote unfortunately. Most of the country couldn't vote at all because they are immigrants (not citizens) or because of any of the structural reasons why they couldn't take time off to vote or they were intimated at the ballot box. Voting day still isn't a federal holiday.
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/elections/2024
Trump/Vance got 49.1% of the popular vote, and Kamala/Walz got 48.3% of the popular vote. None of those clowns even cracked 50%.
The candidates were so bad, that you could win without getting a majority of the popular vote.
So, yeah, just a wholesale failure by both sides to inspire the vast majority of Americans. I guess right now, we're kind of seeing why no one was enthused about these guys being in power.
Americans do not understand how much press there is outside the US about tourists from Ireland / Germany / Canada getting locked up in ICE jails for weeks on end. It's one thing to refuse entry to someone who doesn't have the right documents. The fear goes to a completely different level once people see tourists getting locked up. As someone who lived in the US for 22 years legally and most of my social and business…
This is the nature of social media. If you see 10 examples of something happening in another country there is a good chance you will alter your behavior. The reverse scenario is happening too. There are americans that refuse to go to europe because of the examples they seen of immigrants committing crimes and ruining neighborhoods. As someone who spends a lot of time on both locations, I know that both scenarios are…
That's actually the nature of bayesian probability: if something is happening a higher proportion of the time vs. before, it's more likely to happen now vs. before. If that something is bad, that means higher risk. It's expected that a rational actor would act to minimize risk to them.
> As someone who spends a lot of time on both locations, I know that both scenarios are rare
Precisely how rare is it, over the last couple months, for US immigration officials to detain someone (perhaps "for further questioning", perhaps to a prison) who hasn't violated any laws? Claiming "it's rare" isn't very useful. Remember, the expected probability is ~0.
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Trump won the popular vote unfortunately. Most of the country couldn't vote at all because they are immigrants (not citizens) or because of any of the structural reasons why they couldn't take time off to vote or they were intimated at the ballot box. Voting day still isn't a federal holiday.
The bad news is that 2024 was one of those elections where both candidates were so bad, that the winner didn't even manage to get 50% of the cast votes. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/elections/2024 Trump/Vance got 49.1% of the popular vote, and Kamala/Walz got 48.3% of the popular vote. None of those clowns even cracked 50%. The candidates were so bad, that you could win without getting a majority of the…
Americans do not understand how much press there is outside the US about tourists from Ireland / Germany / Canada getting locked up in ICE jails for weeks on end. It's one thing to refuse entry to someone who doesn't have the right documents. The fear goes to a completely different level once people see tourists getting locked up. As someone who lived in the US for 22 years legally and most of my social and business…
I think the news feeds within the US may be approximately equal in their delivery of "this is good change" versus "this is catastrophic change", whilst internationally it's almost entirely "this is catastrophic change" with minor pockets of intolerance apologia. I'd be interested in alternate viewpoints since I may be in a bleeding-heart, empathetic, progressive, consequence-considering news bubble. My reasoning is t…
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^ this. Once (oh, actually twice!) while travelling, I have had entirely benign trouble with paperwork (things like not filling a form correctly on the first attempt). Explaining the circumstances to someone who has to figure out if you're scatter-brained, unlucky, or an actual criminal, isn't particularly fun, but it's been entirely professional and civilised. We resolved it all in about half an hour. Didn't even mi…
So you genuinely think that if you go to the US you have a high risk of being imprisoned without due process even if you you don't break any US law?
I would certainly no longer do US travel for a conference on a tourist visa in case that's deemed "work". (pop quiz to Americans: what visa do I need for that situation, and how difficult is it to get?)
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No, they said it is "ridiculously overpriced for what you get as a tourist". Which now includes a possibility of getting detained while trying to enter.
Do you think they were talking about ICE because they mentioned the cost of tourism? I don't think they were referring to risk of detainment with that comment.
The border crossing is the first experience that you get from a country. It has definitely gone worse. And it was not great to begin with.
In the past, I had the ... pleasure ... of being put in the "back room" for 3 hours after a long transatlantic flight at SFO. I was not afraid then, just annoyed and tired. I would be afraid now and I would rather avoid it. There's many other places I can choose to visit.
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The comment I replied to is about US tourism. What are you referring to?
The quote But yes, there is also the political climate coupled with the article & what's generally going on in the world.
I did not think their comments implied a connection between the value of being a tourist in the US and a their concerns over politics. Maybe if it were much cheaper they wouldn't care about the politics, but that doesn't seem likely to me.
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Detention is already bad enough, but then reading something like this: https://bleedingcool.com/comics/british-comic-creator-r-e-bu... "While every item in her bag was swabbed and dismantled, she was subjected to a full body search. "I was in this very loud, weird, industrial space with pipes and conveyor belts and lights and sirens, being told to open my legs. I was silently crying, watching all my stuff being torn…
That story starts with her being refused entry to Canada. So, there's more than just "US border guards mean" going on here. Then it turns out that she was using Workaway, which is like AirBnB or Uber but for foreign labor on tourist visas. They don't tell you that you need a work visa to work in another country [1], but you almost certainly do anywhere you go, not just the US. The woman in the story was working in ex…
What does NOT usually happen in these cases is 1) having a full body cavity search 2) being shackled in the back of a van 3) having your phone confiscated 4) being forbidden from contacting any family or legal representation 5) having your clothing cut apart 6) being transported to a different city without being informed of what is happening 7) being cut off from access to your foreign funds 8) being detained for 19 days.
The notable thing isn't that she broke the law. The notable thing is the cruel and unusual severity of the punishment for a relatively minor visa violation. Typically, when countries punish tourists so severely for what should be a slap on the wrist, tourists stop wanting to go there.