4 ms·

Seems like this only aligns the immigration policies to be reciprocal. UK citizens entering the US must pay a fee (ESTA or Visa if ineligible) and provide biome

by bb123 4y ago

Seems like this only aligns the immigration policies to be reciprocal. UK citizens entering the US must pay a fee (ESTA or Visa if ineligible) and provide biometrics at the border (picture, fingerprints).

jrochkind1 4y ago
Indeed. I think it's all so awful. I remember as a child in the USA in the 80s the general feeling that travel would become free-er and free-er as time went on; and that we could take pride in being a democracy who could let citizens of other democracies travel freely back and forth (whether that was really true or not -- and it surely wasn't as much as we thought it was, and how rich or poor the person and country mattered -- the point was that our self-image was that it was and that this was good and something to be proud of -- that democracies could allow free travel between each other. No doubt this was in large part due to the context of the cold war, with the desire to distinguish ourselves from those behind the "iron curtain") It is so sad to me that we're all moving in the opposite direction, to my mind for no good reasons, and not even regretting it. We -- for some inclusion of "we" -- didn't even used to have to show any paperwork to travel from the USA to Canada. Young people now can probably barely believe that is the truth.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > we're all moving in the opposite direction I flew to Britain in 2020 of all times, and got in with a swipe of my passport. That’s easier than it has been for most across history to travel a fraction of that distance.
  - jrochkind1 4y ago
    The flying is easier, in the sense that it takes you long distances quickly and easily and relatively inexpensively, compared to what it took to travel such distances in most of human history. The border controls, I think you are simply incorrect. For most of human history in most places, if someone had the material means to go somewhere, nobody would keep them out, there were no documents, fingerprints, or fees. For most humans across most of human history there weren't even such things as borders. At any rate, the OP is saying that it will soon require more than a swipe of the passport for Americans to get into the UK; and the comment I was responding to that it already does for British to get into USA.
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > if someone had the material means to go somewhere, nobody would keep them out, there were no documents, fingerprints, or fees Well of course. It was touch and feel. Safe passage was negotiated piecemeal. That’s why we created standardise documents, so one village chieftain on your 900-Village journey couldn’t veto your transit.
      - jrochkind1 4y ago
        I don't think it's true that's what travel was like for most humans in most of human history. For most people at most places at most times, they could simply travel wherever they chose, and it was fine. Traditions of hospitality to traveling strangers are very common.
        JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > they could simply travel wherever they chose, and it was fine What are you basing this on? Where do you think the threat of being an outlaw comes from? When justice is customary, one has none away from one’s peers. There is an early modern period of free movement, when Hamilton emigrated and helped found a nation. But to deny the specialness of that era undermines it.
        jltsiren 4y ago
        Customary law does not mean that everything is up to the local authorities to decide. Some customs are assumed to be universal, while others may come from religious or royal authorities far away. People have tried building great empires for millennia, and those empires have always relied on long-distance trade. In order for trade to flourish, long-distance travel has to be safe and predictable, at least relatively speaking. Traders and other travelers typically had to worry more about outlaws than about being outlaws.
        jrochkind1 4y ago
        My readings about history in various times/places, and the sense that it creates. Same as you, I suppose? Neither of us are citing our sources or writing a historical monograph here. One recent read was Graeber and Wengrow's _Dawn of Everything_, which suggested there was evidence of a culture of travel networks throughout much of North America during a significant (pre-Columbian) period, based on a sort of "clan" system calling for hospitality across geographic/culture/language-groups. And similar systems in other places. I just found an ebook copy public online, so could search to find this quote: > In earlier centuries, forms of regional organization might extend thousands of miles. Aboriginal Australians, for instance, could travel halfway across the continent, moving among people who spoke entirely different languages, and still find camps divided into the same kinds of totemic moieties that existed at home. What this means is that half the residents owed them hospitality, but had to be treated as ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ (so sexual relations were strictly prohibited); while another half were both potential enemies and marriage partners. Similarly, a North American 500 years ago could travel from the shores of the Great Lakes to the Louisiana bayous and still find settlements – speaking languages entirely unrelated to their own – with members of their own Bear, Elk or Beaver clans who were obliged to host and feed them. > It’s difficult enough to reconstruct how these forms of long-distance organization operated just a few centuries ago, before they were destroyed by the coming of European settlers. So we can really only guess how analogous systems might have worked some 40,000 years ago. But the striking material uniformities observed by archaeologists across very long distances attest to the existence of such systems. ‘Society’, insofar as we can comprehend it at that time, spanned continents. Hm, there's no page numbers on this PDF, but it's PDF page 132. (it has it's own footnote citations) https://docdrop.org/download_annotation_doc/The-Dawn-of-Everything-by-David-Graeber-David-Wengrow-z-lib.-zmbbo.pdf https://docdrop.org/download_annotation_doc/The-Dawn-of-Ever... Here's another passage: > Perhaps the most insightful contribution came from Marcel Mauss, who tackled the notion of ‘culture areas’ in a series of essays on nationalism and civilization written between 1910 and 1930.10 Mauss thought the idea of cultural ‘diffusion’ was mostly nonsense; not for the reasons most anthropologists do now (that it’s pointless and uninteresting),11 but because he felt it was based on a false assumption: that the movement of people, technologies and ideas was somehow unusual. > The exact opposite was true, Mauss argued. People in past times, he wrote, appear to have travelled a great deal – more than they do today – and it’s simply impossible to imagine that anyone back then would have been unaware of the existence of basketry, feather pillows, or the wheel if such objects were regularly employed a month or two’s journey away; the same could presumably be said of ancestor cults or syncopated drum rhythms. Mauss went further. He was convinced the entire Pacific Rim had once been a single realm of cultural exchange, with voyagers criss-crossing it at regular intervals. He too was interested in the distribution of games across the entire region… This just being a book I read recently so is in my mind, which touches on relevant things. Since you asked, I thought to look for passages from it, it's not alone supposed to answer all questions, and is not the only source on which i've based my view. What do you base your conclusions about most people throughout most of human history on?
  - Mandatum 4y ago
    And a face scan when you're going through the gates, which is better than fingerprints and iris scans these days, given the improvements made in LIDAR.
  - notch656a 4y ago
    And I walked into the US in 2022 after presenting valid US passport and following all border related law, was strip searched, was x-rayed (or some weird x-ray looking machine, idk what it was to be honest), was placed into detention for 16 hours (as in tossed in a cell), was shackled, was cuffed, taken to two hospitals against my will while CBP officers told insane lies to doctors suggesting there were drugs up my ass, was forced to perform bodily functions in front of officers (repeatedly), and at the end I was left in medical debt when CBP put the bills in my name. For the record, I denied consent to everything including medical care. I am still in debt to this day for this incident. In the end I was dumped at the border, along with an ex-post-facto warrant of complete fabrications used to get a judge to sign off AFTER THE FACT AND AFTER EXECUTION of the 'medical' searches they initiated. No evidence of a crime was ever found, no truthful probable cause or even articulable suspicion ever existed. I found out later this was part of a systematic pattern of abuse by CBP [0]. [0] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.azd.985537/gov.uscourts.azd.985537.1.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.azd.985...
  - thallium205 4y ago
    Passports didn’t even exist before WWI what are you talking about?
- nradov 4y ago
  Even passports were supposed to be a "temporary" security measure introduced during WW1. https://fee.org/articles/passports-were-a-temporary-war-measure/ https://fee.org/articles/passports-were-a-temporary-war-meas...

by bb123 4y ago

jrochkind1 4y ago

Indeed. I think it's all so awful. I remember as a child in the USA in the 80s the general feeling that travel would become free-er and free-er as time went on; and that we could take pride in being a democracy who could let citizens of other democracies travel freely back and forth (whether that was really true or not -- and it surely wasn't as much as we thought it was, and how rich or poor the person and country mattered -- the point was that our self-image was that it was and that this was good and something to be proud of -- that democracies could allow free travel between each other. No doubt this was in large part due to the context of the cold war, with the desire to distinguish ourselves from those behind the "iron curtain") It is so sad to me that we're all moving in the opposite direction, to my mind for no good reasons, and not even regretting it. We -- for some inclusion of "we" -- didn't even used to have to show any paperwork to travel from the USA to Canada. Young people now can probably barely believe that is the truth.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> we're all moving in the opposite direction I flew to Britain in 2020 of all times, and got in with a swipe of my passport. That’s easier than it has been for most across history to travel a fraction of that distance.
- jrochkind1 4y ago
  The flying is easier, in the sense that it takes you long distances quickly and easily and relatively inexpensively, compared to what it took to travel such distances in most of human history. The border controls, I think you are simply incorrect. For most of human history in most places, if someone had the material means to go somewhere, nobody would keep them out, there were no documents, fingerprints, or fees. For most humans across most of human history there weren't even such things as borders. At any rate, the OP is saying that it will soon require more than a swipe of the passport for Americans to get into the UK; and the comment I was responding to that it already does for British to get into USA.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > if someone had the material means to go somewhere, nobody would keep them out, there were no documents, fingerprints, or fees Well of course. It was touch and feel. Safe passage was negotiated piecemeal. That’s why we created standardise documents, so one village chieftain on your 900-Village journey couldn’t veto your transit.
    - jrochkind1 4y ago
      I don't think it's true that's what travel was like for most humans in most of human history. For most people at most places at most times, they could simply travel wherever they chose, and it was fine. Traditions of hospitality to traveling strangers are very common.
      - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > they could simply travel wherever they chose, and it was fine What are you basing this on? Where do you think the threat of being an outlaw comes from? When justice is customary, one has none away from one’s peers. There is an early modern period of free movement, when Hamilton emigrated and helped found a nation. But to deny the specialness of that era undermines it.
        jltsiren 4y ago
        Customary law does not mean that everything is up to the local authorities to decide. Some customs are assumed to be universal, while others may come from religious or royal authorities far away. People have tried building great empires for millennia, and those empires have always relied on long-distance trade. In order for trade to flourish, long-distance travel has to be safe and predictable, at least relatively speaking. Traders and other travelers typically had to worry more about outlaws than about being outlaws.
        jrochkind1 4y ago
        My readings about history in various times/places, and the sense that it creates. Same as you, I suppose? Neither of us are citing our sources or writing a historical monograph here. One recent read was Graeber and Wengrow's _Dawn of Everything_, which suggested there was evidence of a culture of travel networks throughout much of North America during a significant (pre-Columbian) period, based on a sort of "clan" system calling for hospitality across geographic/culture/language-groups. And similar systems in other places. I just found an ebook copy public online, so could search to find this quote: > In earlier centuries, forms of regional organization might extend thousands of miles. Aboriginal Australians, for instance, could travel halfway across the continent, moving among people who spoke entirely different languages, and still find camps divided into the same kinds of totemic moieties that existed at home. What this means is that half the residents owed them hospitality, but had to be treated as ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ (so sexual relations were strictly prohibited); while another half were both potential enemies and marriage partners. Similarly, a North American 500 years ago could travel from the shores of the Great Lakes to the Louisiana bayous and still find settlements – speaking languages entirely unrelated to their own – with members of their own Bear, Elk or Beaver clans who were obliged to host and feed them. > It’s difficult enough to reconstruct how these forms of long-distance organization operated just a few centuries ago, before they were destroyed by the coming of European settlers. So we can really only guess how analogous systems might have worked some 40,000 years ago. But the striking material uniformities observed by archaeologists across very long distances attest to the existence of such systems. ‘Society’, insofar as we can comprehend it at that time, spanned continents. Hm, there's no page numbers on this PDF, but it's PDF page 132. (it has it's own footnote citations) https://docdrop.org/download_annotation_doc/The-Dawn-of-Everything-by-David-Graeber-David-Wengrow-z-lib.-zmbbo.pdf https://docdrop.org/download_annotation_doc/The-Dawn-of-Ever... Here's another passage: > Perhaps the most insightful contribution came from Marcel Mauss, who tackled the notion of ‘culture areas’ in a series of essays on nationalism and civilization written between 1910 and 1930.10 Mauss thought the idea of cultural ‘diffusion’ was mostly nonsense; not for the reasons most anthropologists do now (that it’s pointless and uninteresting),11 but because he felt it was based on a false assumption: that the movement of people, technologies and ideas was somehow unusual. > The exact opposite was true, Mauss argued. People in past times, he wrote, appear to have travelled a great deal – more than they do today – and it’s simply impossible to imagine that anyone back then would have been unaware of the existence of basketry, feather pillows, or the wheel if such objects were regularly employed a month or two’s journey away; the same could presumably be said of ancestor cults or syncopated drum rhythms. Mauss went further. He was convinced the entire Pacific Rim had once been a single realm of cultural exchange, with voyagers criss-crossing it at regular intervals. He too was interested in the distribution of games across the entire region… This just being a book I read recently so is in my mind, which touches on relevant things. Since you asked, I thought to look for passages from it, it's not alone supposed to answer all questions, and is not the only source on which i've based my view. What do you base your conclusions about most people throughout most of human history on?
- Mandatum 4y ago
  And a face scan when you're going through the gates, which is better than fingerprints and iris scans these days, given the improvements made in LIDAR.
- notch656a 4y ago
  And I walked into the US in 2022 after presenting valid US passport and following all border related law, was strip searched, was x-rayed (or some weird x-ray looking machine, idk what it was to be honest), was placed into detention for 16 hours (as in tossed in a cell), was shackled, was cuffed, taken to two hospitals against my will while CBP officers told insane lies to doctors suggesting there were drugs up my ass, was forced to perform bodily functions in front of officers (repeatedly), and at the end I was left in medical debt when CBP put the bills in my name. For the record, I denied consent to everything including medical care. I am still in debt to this day for this incident. In the end I was dumped at the border, along with an ex-post-facto warrant of complete fabrications used to get a judge to sign off AFTER THE FACT AND AFTER EXECUTION of the 'medical' searches they initiated. No evidence of a crime was ever found, no truthful probable cause or even articulable suspicion ever existed. I found out later this was part of a systematic pattern of abuse by CBP [0]. [0] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.azd.985537/gov.uscourts.azd.985537.1.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.azd.985...
- thallium205 4y ago
  Passports didn’t even exist before WWI what are you talking about?
nradov 4y ago
Even passports were supposed to be a "temporary" security measure introduced during WW1. https://fee.org/articles/passports-were-a-temporary-war-measure/ https://fee.org/articles/passports-were-a-temporary-war-meas...