6 ms·

> Good travel advice to follow in a later post… Do not travel to the US until they treat non-citizens as people.

refurb 10y ago
Do not travel to the US until they treat non-citizens as people. The US isn't the only country that does this.[1] Maybe instead of avoiding the US, don't leave your home country at all? [1]http://globalnews.ca/news/3268531/cellphone-search-at-the-border-cbsa/ http://globalnews.ca/news/3268531/cellphone-search-at-the-bo...
- castillar76 10y ago
  This is the thing that gets lost in some of these discussions. US citizens tend to shrug at this stuff and say, "Well, I'm a citizen, it doesn't affect me." But it WILL affect you, because once the US starts putting this stuff in place, everyone else will too. Intrusive border searches, electronic snooping and information gathering, insistence on decrypting devices and permitting searches of social media accounts, gathering biometric data...all these things that the US is busy imposing on immigrants and visitors, other countries will in turn happily impose on US citizens entering /their/ borders.
  - lb1lf 10y ago
    I remember back in 2004 or so, going to Brazil. At the airport in Fortaleza I saw a couple of Americans lined up to have their fingerprints taken as a reciprocity measure after the US required it of Brazilian citizens entering the US. The prints were taken in the old-school way using ink and file cards - after which the cards were unceremoniously dumped in a bin. Apparently, it is possible to be a d--k with some class when working border patrol duty. :-)
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
briandear 10y ago
Good grief -- do you know how many non-citizens easily enter the US every day? Thousands. The vast majority have zero issues at all. The reason that these occasional issues even make the news is because it's outside the ordinary; the media cherry picks some sympathetic character, "He's a respected Holocaust historian!" and they turn it into a representative data point that the immigration enforcement system is off the rails. Combining that with an anti-Trump narrative, they get more page views and another news cycle to lament the failure of US policy. 75 MILLION non-citizens visit the United States each year and 41% of those entered via New York, Miami or Los Angeles. On a typical day, less than 1000 people are refused entry. Some of the reasons for refused entry include not having sufficient funds to support themselves for the duration of the trip, suspicion of being an intended immigrant without a visa for that purpose, ties to criminal organizations, having overstated a previous visa, having a dangerous infectious disease, having been found guilty of crimes of moral turpitude (rape, fraud, child mokestation,) having been found guilty of a major crime, a lack of proof (in the case of tourists) of continuing ties to their origin country. This hyperbole about non-citizens not being treated as people is just nonsense. In Schengen (and many other countries, such as Korea), you can get randomly stopped for visa and passport checks, especially in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. If you overstay a Schengen visa for even a few days, you can sometimes expect to endure a more inconvinient immigration experience when attempting to leave the area (especially in Germany.) You have U.K. immigration working on Eurostars leaving from Brussels South and also allows them to actually work in the station. You have Belgium-UK information sharing and coordination on that route. There have been instances of U.K. Immigration denying entry to an American woman carrying a cello because she was to play in a free concert at a university in Leeds. They deemed that unpaid activity "work," detained her for 8 hours and deported her back to Chicago. Other academic performers have been denied entry when carrying large instruments as well. My point: immigration everywhere has seemingly arbitrary, ridiculous incidents. Should we just stop traveling anywhere?
- TheArcane 10y ago
  > not having sufficient funds to support themselves for the duration of the trip How do they know? Do they check/request bank account details at the airport?
Lunatic666 10y ago
I also don't understand why people complain and still go to the US. I'd never ever go to a country, which is that intrusive to my privacy. In my company, people have a choice where they're sent, so if you like being stripped naked by the border monkeys, go but don't complain later.

Do not travel to the US until they treat non-citizens as people. The US isn't the only country that does this.[1] Maybe instead of avoiding the US, don't leave your home country at all? [1]http://globalnews.ca/news/3268531/cellphone-search-at-the-border-cbsa/ http://globalnews.ca/news/3268531/cellphone-search-at-the-bo...

castillar76 10y ago
This is the thing that gets lost in some of these discussions. US citizens tend to shrug at this stuff and say, "Well, I'm a citizen, it doesn't affect me." But it WILL affect you, because once the US starts putting this stuff in place, everyone else will too. Intrusive border searches, electronic snooping and information gathering, insistence on decrypting devices and permitting searches of social media accounts, gathering biometric data...all these things that the US is busy imposing on immigrants and visitors, other countries will in turn happily impose on US citizens entering /their/ borders.
- lb1lf 10y ago
  I remember back in 2004 or so, going to Brazil. At the airport in Fortaleza I saw a couple of Americans lined up to have their fingerprints taken as a reciprocity measure after the US required it of Brazilian citizens entering the US. The prints were taken in the old-school way using ink and file cards - after which the cards were unceremoniously dumped in a bin. Apparently, it is possible to be a d--k with some class when working border patrol duty. :-)
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

briandear 10y ago

Good grief -- do you know how many non-citizens easily enter the US every day? Thousands. The vast majority have zero issues at all. The reason that these occasional issues even make the news is because it's outside the ordinary; the media cherry picks some sympathetic character, "He's a respected Holocaust historian!" and they turn it into a representative data point that the immigration enforcement system is off the rails. Combining that with an anti-Trump narrative, they get more page views and another news cycle to lament the failure of US policy. 75 MILLION non-citizens visit the United States each year and 41% of those entered via New York, Miami or Los Angeles. On a typical day, less than 1000 people are refused entry. Some of the reasons for refused entry include not having sufficient funds to support themselves for the duration of the trip, suspicion of being an intended immigrant without a visa for that purpose, ties to criminal organizations, having overstated a previous visa, having a dangerous infectious disease, having been found guilty of crimes of moral turpitude (rape, fraud, child mokestation,) having been found guilty of a major crime, a lack of proof (in the case of tourists) of continuing ties to their origin country. This hyperbole about non-citizens not being treated as people is just nonsense. In Schengen (and many other countries, such as Korea), you can get randomly stopped for visa and passport checks, especially in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. If you overstay a Schengen visa for even a few days, you can sometimes expect to endure a more inconvinient immigration experience when attempting to leave the area (especially in Germany.) You have U.K. immigration working on Eurostars leaving from Brussels South and also allows them to actually work in the station. You have Belgium-UK information sharing and coordination on that route. There have been instances of U.K. Immigration denying entry to an American woman carrying a cello because she was to play in a free concert at a university in Leeds. They deemed that unpaid activity "work," detained her for 8 hours and deported her back to Chicago. Other academic performers have been denied entry when carrying large instruments as well. My point: immigration everywhere has seemingly arbitrary, ridiculous incidents. Should we just stop traveling anywhere?

TheArcane 10y ago
> not having sufficient funds to support themselves for the duration of the trip How do they know? Do they check/request bank account details at the airport?

Lunatic666 10y ago

I also don't understand why people complain and still go to the US. I'd never ever go to a country, which is that intrusive to my privacy. In my company, people have a choice where they're sent, so if you like being stripped naked by the border monkeys, go but don't complain later.