> and it's hard to feel sympathy for people who take the privilege of international travel too lightly by not researching the relevant visa regulations Really?

> and it's hard to feel sympathy for people who take the privilege of international travel too lightly by not researching the relevant visa regulations Really? I travel internationally quite often. I'd never dream of "researching the relevant visa regulations". For example, my wife and I have twice booked river cruises through Europe, entering half a dozen countries each time. We did book through a travel agent, and I just assumed we would be fine. And we were. In my experience going from one first world country to another tends to be very low friction. The USA is becoming an increasingly huge outlier. I haven't been there for a while but actually I probably would do some visa research before going these days. Although having said that if I'd obtained an online visa waiver I'd consider that to count as sufficient research.