12 ms·
I mean, "Swedish" model works pretty well for the majority of travellers, especially since the US and Mexico famously don't succeed in stopping drug trafficking
by notahacker 1y ago
I mean, "Swedish" model works pretty well for the majority of travellers, especially since the US and Mexico famously don't succeed in stopping drug trafficking across their borders anyway. If you want border staff to be more thorough in vetting threats, you hire for competence rather than corruption.
LatAm model where they're too busy robbing people to care about actual threats (who are generally particularly happy to pay them off, including offers of recurring payments) seems like obviously the worst of both worlds. Though frankly my own LatAM border highlights were watching Ecuadorian airport staff meticulously searching the multiple suitcases every local family brought with them from Colombia and then not even bothering with a token gesture at my bag, and having no real issues at land borders despite crossing them with a strikingly different-looking temporary passport. Apparently the Bolivian border guard was enthusiastic enough about his job to give US Americans a lecture on why they had to pay to arrange a visa-on-arrival everyone else got for free