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Countries you shouldn't visit if you want to travel to the US

travel.stackexchange.com

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Re: Countries you shouldn't visit if you want to travel to the US

#51

Post by 616c »

Mvandenbergh wrote: post #42
616c wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not mention this ever on forums. You could at most have two passports at the same time from the US for reasons you describe, and the paperwork is very specific about surrendering the second the moment you are done with it. So it is quite likely you were bending the rules, and I would not go around mentioning that. I mean you are talking about identity fraud at the fed level. The paperwork would have reminded…

I'm not an American and all my passports were legally issued by my government after following the (extremely hassle free and reasonable) application process. The additional passports were valid for two or three years (don't remember exactly), I certainly didn't need to surrender them and in any case I was using them constantly. All I had to do was pay the processing fee and document why I needed them. Admittedly, the…

Sorry, I am an idiot. I thought in context you were indicating you did so with US passports.

Ignore my know-it-all attitude.

Re: Countries you shouldn't visit if you want to travel to the US

#52

Post by FireBeyond »

This was (thankfully) pre 9/11 (though my story is somewhat tangential) - I can’t imagine what might have happened if it had happened after:

At the time, I was in the US as an Australian citizen traveling on a Visa Waiver. Your passport gets stamped and the Visa Waiver document is stapled into your passport with the instruction that it should be removed upon leaving the country (and normally done by airline or immigration staff upon passport check).

I flew from St Louis to Paris, and didn’t notice / didn’t think about this. Flew into Paris, and if you’re familiar with Europe, especially at the time, passport management was “lax”. I didn’t receive a stamp in my passport - and they certainly had no interest in the US Visa Waiver.

Traveled into Spain, same thing. Back to Paris, same thing. Flew into New York JFK, and got pulled to the side, interrogated, detained.

“So, according to your passport, you never left the country by any licit means. You have no stamps in your passport from any country in the meantime. And yet here you are, arriving back in the US on an international flight. Let’s come back here and talk."

Re: Countries you shouldn't visit if you want to travel to the US

#53

Post by hadoukenio »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #18
tzs wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bloods and Crips? How are the Bloods and Crips a reason to avoid travel to the US?

Ignorance. Ignorance of how they work and how unlikely they are to affect your life. (I'm sure many Americans are similarly ignorant about some "dangerous" group in another geographic location which is in fact dangerous but unlikely to be encountered.)

I was mainly talking about gang violence and the US' extremely high shooting rate. It was only last year that an Australian was shot while he was jogging by a group of 15 year old boys for no reason except that they were bored:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-05/teenages-accused-in-de...

Re: Countries you shouldn't visit if you want to travel to the US

#54

Post by [deleted] »

hadoukenio wrote: post #3

It's getting more and more common these days that whenever I talk to people about travel, the US is completely off their list. The TSA, NSA, NYPD, Bloods and Crips, the reasons go on. It used to be that Disney Land was one of the reasons to go to America. More and more people I speak to who would have gone now say "meh" to the idea.

[deleted]

Re: Countries you shouldn't visit if you want to travel to the US

#55

Post by tptacek »

mindslight wrote: post #34
tzs wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bloods and Crips? How are the Bloods and Crips a reason to avoid travel to the US?

I figured OP just got carried away listing lawless gangs of thugs. Or it could have been a reference to republicans and democrats - fighting each other for business turf, and hurting everyone else in the process.

That is perhaps the lamest attempt at segueing a thread to partisan politics that I've ever read here. But it's true, I'm always warning my foreign visitors to stay out of the crossfire of warring Democrats and Republicans; they can be lethal.

Re: Countries you shouldn't visit if you want to travel to the US

#56

Post by fennecfoxen »

hadoukenio wrote: post #53
fennecfoxen wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignorance. Ignorance of how they work and how unlikely they are to affect your life. (I'm sure many Americans are similarly ignorant about some "dangerous" group in another geographic location which is in fact dangerous but unlikely to be encountered.)

I was mainly talking about gang violence and the US' extremely high shooting rate. It was only last year that an Australian was shot while he was jogging by a group of 15 year old boys for no reason except that they were bored: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-05/teenages-accused-in-de...

Maybe, but look at risk in a little more detached of a manner: essentially no one is going to come to the US and get shot. They're going to come to the US and die in a car crash.
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