lol he mentioned "al Qaeda", why didn't he just yell "I'm going to blow this train up"
Europeans are too rational to cope with border patrol/tsa.
Why I Will Never Go Back to the United States
271–280 of 375 posts
Re: Why I Will Never Go Back to the United States
#272I don't think it's ever been easy to get into the US. A tour through Ellis Island will tell you as much. The difference is that, in the past, the US needed its immigrants. They built its cities and its railroads and much of the US's early industry. Later the US's immigrants were its main source of scientific advancements...but the US's relationship with its immigrants has, I think, always been strained. The differenc…
US immigration is broken on so many levels. A lot of our immigration problems stem from a political desire to increase voter rolls for one particular party. The Democrat party benefits greatly from illegal immigration from Mexico, so they refuse to do anything whatsoever to control that flow. That's great for Democrats to win elections and all, but it creates a backlash against immigration in general. Ironically, the…
Except Democrats would benefit much more from relaxing immigration restrictions and allowing illegals to become legal. Then they could vote.
Re: Why I Will Never Go Back to the United States
#273Interestingly, in the developed world it seems to be the Anglophone countries that have the shittiest attitude towards border control these days. The US is notoriously user-hostile at the borders. The UK is doing its best to catch up in a Mini-Me way with the USA's Dr Evil, and is actually on course to become even more hostile than the USA -- the only mitigating factor is that the third degree is reserved for non-cit…
You most probably hold a British passport which is a very valuable document. Let me tell you as a holder of a not as valuable passport, who needed a visa to get anywhere, how I have seen the world.
I now live in the US. Before coming to US I visited many European countries. At the border of all those European countries I was treated as a criminal. I waited very long hours while people in front of me holding same kind of passports as me and then myself were interrogated like in a police interrogation. I missed connections because of those interrogations. In one case when I did make the connection, I heard the pilot of the plane speaking to passengers about how the delay was caused because of waiting for people of my nationality. Even people associated with people of my nationality were considered suspicious. A friend of mine was married to a Canadian man who had the same name as a famous American actor. When they tried to go together to one European country, that man was also interrogated for 2 hours by the border police because they thought his passport was fake. I was once traveling via train from European country A to European country B. I happened to be in a cabin with a man from country B. The border police of country B (this was before Schengen) took him outside the train and interrogated him for 30 minutes because they thought his passport was fake. He had a pocketful of documents, bank cards, credit cards, phone numbers of his family members etc. and the border police still were suspicious. I was so used to the long lines and humiliation that I thought they were normal for any border crossing.
Then I traveled to US. Imagine my surprise when I got off the plane, walked a long corridor, passed by a drug detection dog, got into a huge room with many passport control booths, in 5 minutes found myself in one of them, the immigration officer asked me where I was going and what was the goal of my trip then stamped my passport and I-94 and I was done. Even if I didn't go anywhere from there, the trip was already a success. It made me feel like a human. In the time since then I have seen the checks in many European countries improve and in the meantime US has added the annoying process of fingerprinting, but in my view US border control still offers better human experience compared to European countries. I was once crossing the border from Canada to US and there was this old woman trying to get into US with an expired (like 30 years old) British passport. The border agents still found a way to let her in. Since Schengen she probably would be let into other European countries but I am sure before Schengen she wouldn't be able to go anywhere.
I know that there are people who have negative experiences while trying to get into US as there are negative experiences for people trying to go anywhere, but I think most of the noise associated with them is unjustified and if US border control need improvements other countries need them even more.
Re: Why I Will Never Go Back to the United States
#274I don't think it's ever been easy to get into the US. A tour through Ellis Island will tell you as much. The difference is that, in the past, the US needed its immigrants. They built its cities and its railroads and much of the US's early industry. Later the US's immigrants were its main source of scientific advancements...but the US's relationship with its immigrants has, I think, always been strained. The differenc…
I think its possible the immigration quotas are skewed by how many people are in the country that didn't come through the system today. Prior to the current wave of southern border immigration, almost everyone had to go through the system via a port of entry and they could keep the quotas in check. My family all came via boat, plane etc at a time when the immigration office probably wasn't accounting for undocumented entries.
So whats happened is that immigration now has to account for higher numbers they can't control. The people who actually come through the system are at a disadvantage because their numbers can actually be regulated whereas undocumented migrants can't.
Re: Why I Will Never Go Back to the United States
#275Sounds like the U.S. doesn't want him back. I've traveled to over 30 countries and the U.S. does not have a monopoly on rude bureaucratic custom officials. My worst story is probably in Germany where the border officer would not let me take the used car I had purchased in Germany across the border because the chain of title in my registration was out of order. He ended up calling all the previous owners in the title…
Is that your worst story? I read it like this: Border officer didn't want you to take a car with a wrong/likely-illegal registration across the border - instead took some time and effort to clarify the details and then allowed you to continue. In my mind that officer was doing their job well, and acted rather generously in your favour.
The registration and title were in my name because title had cleared the German DMV. He basically didn't believe his own DMV and started calling previous owners in the middle of the night.
Re: Why I Will Never Go Back to the United States
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, they can't spot lies, they can only spot things they are not expecting. Tell them a short boring story if the truth is unusual.
Then they'll ask you to expand on arbitrary details of your short boring story, and unless you're a very good liar you'll be in trouble. People are always reporting odd conversations with border agents. When those conversations result in further scrutiny or being denied admittance, they can appear sinister or arbitrary in retrospect. But it's a basic behavioral profiling technique: Take a random walk down a conversat…
A TSA employee gave me a series of rapid fire questions about a pizza place in Boston after he physically removed me (via a firm grab on my arm) from a line of passengers about to board a plane (ie, well after the normal security checks).
Something along the lines of:
"Where have you been today?"
"Santarpios."
"Never heard of it. What's that?"
"Really? It's right next to the turn off to get to the airport."
"Never heard of it."
"It's a pizza place."
"What sort of pizza did you have?"
etc. A whole bunch of quite specific questions at a rapid pace about a famous restaurant right next to the airport that carried on until his colleague had finished rummaging through my laptop bag.
Re: Why I Will Never Go Back to the United States
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your Australia-related articles were posted in July. Tony Abbott didn't become Prime Minister until September.
Yep. Although, if you're an Australian like I am, you must know that this is all going to get worse. I'm sick of our Government (no matter who seems to be in power at the time) taking every single page out of the American playbook. I like our country, why do we have to try and be them? :(
Fucking seriously? I know it's popular to hate "America" lately -- since it makes a nice big clean target and it gives you a nice fuzzy "edgy" feeling to do so -- but it seems more like Australia's leading the pack when it comes to overreaching soft-authoritarian policy.
Re: Why I Will Never Go Back to the United States
#278What is immigration control doing these days when very few people actually get stamps in passports? And if I have stamps from Somalia and Libya in my passport, why would I go to the US wihtout first getting a new blank passport? Are stamps in passport really that useful?
You may afford to get a new passport first, but the author said that he was traveling continuously and just wanted a last segment before reaching his home. There was therefore no preparation in advance that could include getting a new passport, and also there were no bad expectations.
Re: Why I Will Never Go Back to the United States
#279U.S. Immigration agents are trained to look for certain traits in visitors: nervousness, unusual or inconsistent answers to questions, history of visiting certain countries. Any of these characteristics trigger an automatic escalation in the interrogation process. This individual, albeit sounding perfectly innocent, unfortunately triggered several hot buttons and the hapless agents were too unimaginative, uninformed,…
You said "identical behavior by Canadian agents" and then you said they let you pass. That is obviously not identical and is in fact contrary to a major point of OP's story.
Just asking you to consider your adjectives more thoroughly before writing them.
Re: Why I Will Never Go Back to the United States
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is that different from mainstream news outlets publishing articles sourced from Reuters or AP?
Reuters and AP are reputable and have reporters on the ground. AP has won 50+ Pulitzer prizes. See http://www.ap.org/company/pulitzers .
That doesn't address the point - many mainstream 'news' outlets work by rewriting stories syndicated from Reuters and AP - not by having their own reporters.
The comment I was responding to was attacking the wsws for not being 'news' because it doesn't have it's own reporters.
It's perfectly reasonable to criticize it for having a political stance that you don't credit, but I don't see a case for somehow categorizing it as 'not news' when its practices are the same as many traditional news outlets, just with a less mainstream perspective.
Note: I'm not supporting whatever wsws's stance might be - I'm just pointing out that much of mainstream news is similar in how it operates.