4 ms·

Given the recent changes to American policy I know people with American passports who are worried they can't even go back into the United States.

JohnFen 1y ago
I do as well.
guerrilla 1y ago
Ever since 9/11 it's been harder for non-whites. That was long before any of this. I won't even bother now. It's not worth my freedom. I was harassed and detained every single time I went back. Always something different, never anything to actually do with who I actually am or anything I actually did or didn't do.
- carabiner 1y ago
  It's been harder for people of middle eastern descent but that's about it. I'm nonwhite and have flown a lot and never had any issues. My friend is arab, hipster girl born in LA, and she always gets selected for screening.
  - dijit 1y ago
    Ok, so.. I don't know how to say this without sounding insensitive, but I'm a pretty traditional looking (albeit perhaps short) British, blue-eyed, white guy. I have seriously never had a positive interaction with the US border force. Wether it's the TSA or another associated organisation (since I've been pestered by people who are not TSA). I've been detained, questioned, randomly selected, given contradictory rules by different people, had things randomly confiscated and even been insulted. I'm not confrontational, and I don't believe I stand out. I have had exactly ONE positive interaction (in 2011) whereby I had accidentally travelled with a pocket knife in my checked luggage and due to the fact I was not allowed to check my luggage on the return journey (due to the train being delayed going into Newark; seriously, I understand why Americans distrust public transport) - I told the TSA agent about it and he was kind regarding it, offering condolences, but obviously destroying the knife. I'm not sure if I'm on some kind of easing program to disincentivise me in particular from visiting the US, but I could easily see that if I was anything other than what I am in terms of race/religion/looks/citizenship: that I would presume that this was the reason. And, for context, I've been to the US on average twice per year in the last 15 years, so this is my experience from around 30 trips, and 60-ish interactions with the international air apparatus. It's a pretty decent country once I'm in though, though I wouldn't want to live there. EDIT: I'm not sure why the parent is being downvoted, his anecdote is the same as mine.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > I have seriously never had a positive interaction with the US border force. Wether it's the TSA or another associated organisation (since I've been pestered by people who are not TSA) The trick is to pay to not interact. Global Entry, TSA PreCheck with Digital ID, et cetera. And for the record, I'm dark-eyed and brown skinned. There are absolutely racists in the Trump administration. But they don't seem to have co-opted this element yet. Instead, it just presents the classic American preference for wealth. (Note: I'm not endorsing the system. TSA PreCheck makes sense; the fee for it does not. Same for Global Entry.)
      - hopelite 1y ago
        Ah yes, the “give in to the system” strategy to avoid the deliberate conditioning to force everyone into the panopticon. One easy trick to world domination prison planet…
        JumpCrisscross 1y ago
        > the “give in to the system” strategy to avoid the deliberate conditioning to force everyone into the panopticon I'm not sure what I'm giving up by ceding fingerprints and a picture to a government agency that almost certainly already has both.
        hopelite 1y ago
        It’s not the simple act of just “giving them what they likely already have” once that house booked about 20 years ago. And yes, I can sue you the government had way more on me, but I seem to at least realize that that stallion is long gone. You seem to represent a rather is phenomenon in society though. For a lack of a better term at the moment; the shift or maybe even deliberate psychological manipulation of society, civilization, culture towards not only a passive, depressive state, but also a kind of self-harming, self-destructive, nihilistic state of “what does it even matter anymore” and “I probably deserve the abuse of my abusers” type of mentality. A variation of that is “I’m not sure what I’m giving up by ceding…” an odd fatalism.
  - TitaRusell 1y ago
    [flagged]
  - undeveloper 1y ago
    I have had some issues as someone of Indian decent despite having an American accent and native born.
    - nirav72 1y ago
      Whats the most common reason they’ve harnessed you over? Just wondering if they’re going based on prior issue on file? I’m of Indian descent , born and raised in the U.S - I must be the lucky one. Because I’ve never had any issues. Entering back in the country has been trouble free so far. Have you thought about signing up for global entry. Recently signed up for it myself and now I just skip talking to a human (and waiting in line)
  - alephnerd 1y ago
    Weird. I look stereotypical MENA and haven't faced any extra screening, and I travel a lot for work both domestically and abroad, and I'm too lazy to get Global Entry or TSA Pre so I'm dealing with general TSA. Did your friend maybe travel to an Arab country at some point in time that either faced significant instability, a country that borders Syria+Iraq, or to the West Bank via Jordan?
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      Out of curiosity, which airports do you travel through most?
      - alephnerd 1y ago
        Domestically? SFO, SeaTac, JFK, OHare, and ATX, with a decent showing for Logan, DCA, and RTP.
  - tamimio 1y ago
    I know it's normal to criticize the US now being like that, but the reality is, this is a shared vision among the 5-Eyes countries if you dig deeper. It just happens that the US is very outspoken about it. In Canada, for example as I read a couple weeks ago, individuals "having some sort of geopolitical proximity to a concern of Canada" are being put under the microscope and seen as guilty until proven otherwise, primarily from the Middle East (or West Asia if you don't like that terminology), despite the fact that there was no 9/11 or similar event to trigger any reaction, and how’s that a “proximity concern” to Canada. https://halifax.citynews.ca/2025/08/06/immigration-lawyers-say-rising-number-of-csis-security-screenings-causing-delays/ https://halifax.citynews.ca/2025/08/06/immigration-lawyers-s...
- pixelatedindex 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - guerrilla 1y ago
    This kind of response is exactly what keeps racist systems like this going. No, it hasn't been the same for everyone.
    - lolberal 1y ago
      [flagged]
  - jncfhnb 1y ago
    Global Entry disagrees
  - Refreeze5224 1y ago
    > Everyone follows the same rules at the airport. No they don't. Everyone does whatever TSA tells them to do, which absolutely varies by airport, country, and especially physical appearance.
  - Psillisp 1y ago
    I paid to not follow the same rules.
  - techsupporter 1y ago
    > Everyone follows the same rules at the airport. All travelers do but all border inspection people do not. Or if they do, they apply their discretion very unevenly in some Very Interesting Ways. I've watched it happen twice since COVID, both times traveling abroad for work and coming back into the United States with coworkers (different coworkers each trip) who are not nearly as pale as I am. Neither of us had Global Entry or anything like that back then. Both times, I got waved through with barely a glance and my US-passport-holding coworker got grilled. "Where do you live", "why did you go on this trip", "who do you work for", and so on. To reiterate: All of us are citizens, all of us were born here, and we were taking the exact same trips at the exact same times coming back with the usual things you take with you on a business trip. Anecdotes from friends who are darker than a sheet of printer paper tell me this situation has not improved.
- mmmBacon 1y ago
  Do you have any data to back this claim up or are you just stating your opinion? I was routinely detained at passport control because there was a bad guy with my same name. It took some amount of time and being very polite to get me out of that.
  - more_corn 1y ago
    I know a guy who shares a name with a one legged IRA bomber. One would think there would be some effort disambiguate name collisions. In this case a three year old could probably do it. Let’s see. One, two. Not the guy!!!
    - ceejayoz 1y ago
      Ironically, a three year old can be on the list. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List#False_positives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List#False_positives > Numerous children (including many under the age of five, and some under the age of one) have generated false positives. And at least on one occasion, a sitting US Senator: https://www.theregister.com/2004/08/19/senator_on_terror_watch/ https://www.theregister.com/2004/08/19/senator_on_terror_wat...
lolberal 1y ago
[flagged]
joshuaheard 1y ago
Under U.S. law (8 U.S.C. §1185(b)), an American citizen cannot be permanently barred from re-entering the country.
- clipsy 1y ago
  (Unless the supreme court says otherwise)
  - drstewart 1y ago
    (Or you're Australian trying to get back into your country during a pandemic)
- ceejayoz 1y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki would probably beg to differ.
  - huevosabio 1y ago
    Had no b idea about this. Thanks for sharing.
  - hopelite 1y ago
    Thanks for the reminder. I had forgotten all about that. Is yet another point as to why effectively the USA does not even actually exist anymore more is the Constitution valid. Some may be confused by reading that or even scoff at it, but it’s really not any different than any other kind of fraud by deception where, e.g., you think you have a certain amount of assets with Bernie Madoff that make you rich, but in reality it’s all just fake and does not actually exist at all. It’s just that Americans haven’t realized that their country has being defrauded out from under them, much like how the EU just snuck in and went from standardizing trade to co-opting democratic self-determination and just swiping national sovereignty out from under the people of Europe because the ruling class said “no take backs” and that’s just how it’s going to be now.
eddythompson80 1y ago
Hyperbole is a constitutionally protected right for all Americans.
drstewart 1y ago
[flagged]
hopelite 1y ago
You cannot actually deny entry of an American into America, at least not of a true naturally born American to at least one equally naturally born American parent and relatives, probably at least two more generations back. People are not going to like hearing this, but everyone else who were merely made American citizens by process, has a bit of an increasingly minor risk of being denied entry if they or their first generation relative are deemed to have received their citizenship illicitly and or shown or even just accused of foreign ties, let alone any involvement of espionage or terrorism. More likely is that even in cases of espionage and terrorism, the government would simply prefer permitting entry and then simply prosecuting people.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > You cannot actually deny entry of an American into America, at least not of a true naturally born American What counts as natural born is constantly subject to fuckery. (The Citizenshop Clause is all the Constitution has to say on citizenship, and it doesn’t directly address either naturalization or revocation.)It took Congress in 1924 to admit American Indians are born in America [1]. Meanwhile, we've created de facto exemptions on the positive side for e.g. John McCain [2] and Ted Cruz [3]. A future Congress (or potentially just the President, under Trump's precedents) could absolutely vote to strip citizenship from e.g. dual nationals or people who have travelled to this or that country. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Citizenship_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Citizenship_Act [2] https://hls.harvard.edu/bibliography/why-john-mccain-was-a-citizen-at-birth-2/ https://hls.harvard.edu/bibliography/why-john-mccain-was-a-c... [3] https://hls.harvard.edu/bibliography/why-john-mccain-was-a-citizen-at-birth-2/ https://hls.harvard.edu/bibliography/why-john-mccain-was-a-c...
  - hopelite 1y ago
    You clearly have a strong bias, so I’m not sure it makes any sense in even engaging in conversation with you. But to at least offer you some salvation from the memes you hold, as much as I didn’t like him, McCain was clearly a natural citizen as a function of his jus sanguinis birth to a legitimate American father. That is not an exception. Additionally, it was not “admitted that Indians are born in America” as much as Congress did a little bit of magic to sidestep the fact that “Indians” had what up until recently still were effectively sovereign nations, and in some ways they still are, but kind of more like legal black holes and loopholes that supersede American law that everyone else is suppressed to follow, i.e., super-Americans. They weren’t in fact born in America, because the various types of “Indian” territories were effectively not America, regardless of the stunted and dull, rudimentary grasp on history, politics, governance, and reality the average person has. Ironically, objectively speaking, the recent full recognition of Indian theories as American land with full rights while giving up sooner of their freedom and independence is arguably the last act of actual “colonialism” in human history as a function of its connection to the past. But that kind of thing is totally lost to the general public that has the ignorance of a bull in a China shop, and the maladjusted confidence of a redditor.
bruceb 1y ago
Well they should stop worrying. They will be fine. I suggest they don't make MSNBC or similar as their only news outlet. (and yes same for people who only watch Fox news or Newsmax).

JohnFen 1y ago

I do as well.

guerrilla 1y ago

Ever since 9/11 it's been harder for non-whites. That was long before any of this. I won't even bother now. It's not worth my freedom. I was harassed and detained every single time I went back. Always something different, never anything to actually do with who I actually am or anything I actually did or didn't do.

carabiner 1y ago
It's been harder for people of middle eastern descent but that's about it. I'm nonwhite and have flown a lot and never had any issues. My friend is arab, hipster girl born in LA, and she always gets selected for screening.
- dijit 1y ago
  Ok, so.. I don't know how to say this without sounding insensitive, but I'm a pretty traditional looking (albeit perhaps short) British, blue-eyed, white guy. I have seriously never had a positive interaction with the US border force. Wether it's the TSA or another associated organisation (since I've been pestered by people who are not TSA). I've been detained, questioned, randomly selected, given contradictory rules by different people, had things randomly confiscated and even been insulted. I'm not confrontational, and I don't believe I stand out. I have had exactly ONE positive interaction (in 2011) whereby I had accidentally travelled with a pocket knife in my checked luggage and due to the fact I was not allowed to check my luggage on the return journey (due to the train being delayed going into Newark; seriously, I understand why Americans distrust public transport) - I told the TSA agent about it and he was kind regarding it, offering condolences, but obviously destroying the knife. I'm not sure if I'm on some kind of easing program to disincentivise me in particular from visiting the US, but I could easily see that if I was anything other than what I am in terms of race/religion/looks/citizenship: that I would presume that this was the reason. And, for context, I've been to the US on average twice per year in the last 15 years, so this is my experience from around 30 trips, and 60-ish interactions with the international air apparatus. It's a pretty decent country once I'm in though, though I wouldn't want to live there. EDIT: I'm not sure why the parent is being downvoted, his anecdote is the same as mine.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > I have seriously never had a positive interaction with the US border force. Wether it's the TSA or another associated organisation (since I've been pestered by people who are not TSA) The trick is to pay to not interact. Global Entry, TSA PreCheck with Digital ID, et cetera. And for the record, I'm dark-eyed and brown skinned. There are absolutely racists in the Trump administration. But they don't seem to have co-opted this element yet. Instead, it just presents the classic American preference for wealth. (Note: I'm not endorsing the system. TSA PreCheck makes sense; the fee for it does not. Same for Global Entry.)
    - hopelite 1y ago
      Ah yes, the “give in to the system” strategy to avoid the deliberate conditioning to force everyone into the panopticon. One easy trick to world domination prison planet…
      - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
        > the “give in to the system” strategy to avoid the deliberate conditioning to force everyone into the panopticon I'm not sure what I'm giving up by ceding fingerprints and a picture to a government agency that almost certainly already has both.
        hopelite 1y ago
        It’s not the simple act of just “giving them what they likely already have” once that house booked about 20 years ago. And yes, I can sue you the government had way more on me, but I seem to at least realize that that stallion is long gone. You seem to represent a rather is phenomenon in society though. For a lack of a better term at the moment; the shift or maybe even deliberate psychological manipulation of society, civilization, culture towards not only a passive, depressive state, but also a kind of self-harming, self-destructive, nihilistic state of “what does it even matter anymore” and “I probably deserve the abuse of my abusers” type of mentality. A variation of that is “I’m not sure what I’m giving up by ceding…” an odd fatalism.
- TitaRusell 1y ago
  [flagged]
- undeveloper 1y ago
  I have had some issues as someone of Indian decent despite having an American accent and native born.
  - nirav72 1y ago
    Whats the most common reason they’ve harnessed you over? Just wondering if they’re going based on prior issue on file? I’m of Indian descent , born and raised in the U.S - I must be the lucky one. Because I’ve never had any issues. Entering back in the country has been trouble free so far. Have you thought about signing up for global entry. Recently signed up for it myself and now I just skip talking to a human (and waiting in line)
- alephnerd 1y ago
  Weird. I look stereotypical MENA and haven't faced any extra screening, and I travel a lot for work both domestically and abroad, and I'm too lazy to get Global Entry or TSA Pre so I'm dealing with general TSA. Did your friend maybe travel to an Arab country at some point in time that either faced significant instability, a country that borders Syria+Iraq, or to the West Bank via Jordan?
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    Out of curiosity, which airports do you travel through most?
    - alephnerd 1y ago
      Domestically? SFO, SeaTac, JFK, OHare, and ATX, with a decent showing for Logan, DCA, and RTP.
- tamimio 1y ago
  I know it's normal to criticize the US now being like that, but the reality is, this is a shared vision among the 5-Eyes countries if you dig deeper. It just happens that the US is very outspoken about it. In Canada, for example as I read a couple weeks ago, individuals "having some sort of geopolitical proximity to a concern of Canada" are being put under the microscope and seen as guilty until proven otherwise, primarily from the Middle East (or West Asia if you don't like that terminology), despite the fact that there was no 9/11 or similar event to trigger any reaction, and how’s that a “proximity concern” to Canada. https://halifax.citynews.ca/2025/08/06/immigration-lawyers-say-rising-number-of-csis-security-screenings-causing-delays/ https://halifax.citynews.ca/2025/08/06/immigration-lawyers-s...
pixelatedindex 1y ago
[flagged]
- guerrilla 1y ago
  This kind of response is exactly what keeps racist systems like this going. No, it hasn't been the same for everyone.
  - lolberal 1y ago
    [flagged]
- jncfhnb 1y ago
  Global Entry disagrees
- Refreeze5224 1y ago
  > Everyone follows the same rules at the airport. No they don't. Everyone does whatever TSA tells them to do, which absolutely varies by airport, country, and especially physical appearance.
- Psillisp 1y ago
  I paid to not follow the same rules.
- techsupporter 1y ago
  > Everyone follows the same rules at the airport. All travelers do but all border inspection people do not. Or if they do, they apply their discretion very unevenly in some Very Interesting Ways. I've watched it happen twice since COVID, both times traveling abroad for work and coming back into the United States with coworkers (different coworkers each trip) who are not nearly as pale as I am. Neither of us had Global Entry or anything like that back then. Both times, I got waved through with barely a glance and my US-passport-holding coworker got grilled. "Where do you live", "why did you go on this trip", "who do you work for", and so on. To reiterate: All of us are citizens, all of us were born here, and we were taking the exact same trips at the exact same times coming back with the usual things you take with you on a business trip. Anecdotes from friends who are darker than a sheet of printer paper tell me this situation has not improved.
mmmBacon 1y ago
Do you have any data to back this claim up or are you just stating your opinion? I was routinely detained at passport control because there was a bad guy with my same name. It took some amount of time and being very polite to get me out of that.
- more_corn 1y ago
  I know a guy who shares a name with a one legged IRA bomber. One would think there would be some effort disambiguate name collisions. In this case a three year old could probably do it. Let’s see. One, two. Not the guy!!!
  - ceejayoz 1y ago
    Ironically, a three year old can be on the list. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List#False_positives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List#False_positives > Numerous children (including many under the age of five, and some under the age of one) have generated false positives. And at least on one occasion, a sitting US Senator: https://www.theregister.com/2004/08/19/senator_on_terror_watch/ https://www.theregister.com/2004/08/19/senator_on_terror_wat...

lolberal 1y ago

[flagged]

joshuaheard 1y ago

Under U.S. law (8 U.S.C. §1185(b)), an American citizen cannot be permanently barred from re-entering the country.

clipsy 1y ago
(Unless the supreme court says otherwise)
- drstewart 1y ago
  (Or you're Australian trying to get back into your country during a pandemic)
ceejayoz 1y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki would probably beg to differ.
- huevosabio 1y ago
  Had no b idea about this. Thanks for sharing.
- hopelite 1y ago
  Thanks for the reminder. I had forgotten all about that. Is yet another point as to why effectively the USA does not even actually exist anymore more is the Constitution valid. Some may be confused by reading that or even scoff at it, but it’s really not any different than any other kind of fraud by deception where, e.g., you think you have a certain amount of assets with Bernie Madoff that make you rich, but in reality it’s all just fake and does not actually exist at all. It’s just that Americans haven’t realized that their country has being defrauded out from under them, much like how the EU just snuck in and went from standardizing trade to co-opting democratic self-determination and just swiping national sovereignty out from under the people of Europe because the ruling class said “no take backs” and that’s just how it’s going to be now.

eddythompson80 1y ago

Hyperbole is a constitutionally protected right for all Americans.

drstewart 1y ago

[flagged]

hopelite 1y ago

You cannot actually deny entry of an American into America, at least not of a true naturally born American to at least one equally naturally born American parent and relatives, probably at least two more generations back. People are not going to like hearing this, but everyone else who were merely made American citizens by process, has a bit of an increasingly minor risk of being denied entry if they or their first generation relative are deemed to have received their citizenship illicitly and or shown or even just accused of foreign ties, let alone any involvement of espionage or terrorism. More likely is that even in cases of espionage and terrorism, the government would simply prefer permitting entry and then simply prosecuting people.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> You cannot actually deny entry of an American into America, at least not of a true naturally born American What counts as natural born is constantly subject to fuckery. (The Citizenshop Clause is all the Constitution has to say on citizenship, and it doesn’t directly address either naturalization or revocation.)It took Congress in 1924 to admit American Indians are born in America [1]. Meanwhile, we've created de facto exemptions on the positive side for e.g. John McCain [2] and Ted Cruz [3]. A future Congress (or potentially just the President, under Trump's precedents) could absolutely vote to strip citizenship from e.g. dual nationals or people who have travelled to this or that country. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Citizenship_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Citizenship_Act [2] https://hls.harvard.edu/bibliography/why-john-mccain-was-a-citizen-at-birth-2/ https://hls.harvard.edu/bibliography/why-john-mccain-was-a-c... [3] https://hls.harvard.edu/bibliography/why-john-mccain-was-a-citizen-at-birth-2/ https://hls.harvard.edu/bibliography/why-john-mccain-was-a-c...
- hopelite 1y ago
  You clearly have a strong bias, so I’m not sure it makes any sense in even engaging in conversation with you. But to at least offer you some salvation from the memes you hold, as much as I didn’t like him, McCain was clearly a natural citizen as a function of his jus sanguinis birth to a legitimate American father. That is not an exception. Additionally, it was not “admitted that Indians are born in America” as much as Congress did a little bit of magic to sidestep the fact that “Indians” had what up until recently still were effectively sovereign nations, and in some ways they still are, but kind of more like legal black holes and loopholes that supersede American law that everyone else is suppressed to follow, i.e., super-Americans. They weren’t in fact born in America, because the various types of “Indian” territories were effectively not America, regardless of the stunted and dull, rudimentary grasp on history, politics, governance, and reality the average person has. Ironically, objectively speaking, the recent full recognition of Indian theories as American land with full rights while giving up sooner of their freedom and independence is arguably the last act of actual “colonialism” in human history as a function of its connection to the past. But that kind of thing is totally lost to the general public that has the ignorance of a bull in a China shop, and the maladjusted confidence of a redditor.

bruceb 1y ago

Well they should stop worrying. They will be fine. I suggest they don't make MSNBC or similar as their only news outlet. (and yes same for people who only watch Fox news or Newsmax).