4 ms·

Is a new thing? Is everyone trying to enter the country now suddenly getting all their electronic profiles and devices searched? I don't remember this being a p

• OliverJones 10y ago
  No, it is not a new thing. The US immigration police have behaved like this for decades now. My dad was a US Foreign Service officer. I remember, vaguely, waiting for over an hour in 1962 at Idlewild Airport (now called JFK) in New York while the passport control people questioned him about our passports. They were slightly different from ordinary passports because they said "US diplomatic passport" in the usual gold leaf on the cover, and they were a different color. The staff there, I suppose, didn't recognize them and thought they were fake. They held us until some supervisor told them to let us go. Is the ignorance and arrogance of US passport control staff worse now? Probably. Are other countries getting worse? Yes. That's a standard diplomatic technique, dating from the cold war, called "tit-for-tat." If country A gives country B's nationals a hard time, country B does the same to country A. I don't have twitter, FB, or linkedIn accounts. But I suppose they'll find me here on HN.