Unfriendly US Immigration
 

Today's Daily Telegraph, a U.K. newspaper with a generally pro-USA attitude, has an article about U.S. immigration officers at http://tinyurl.com/w48gc. What do others think?

I believe this same piece, or at least the same information, recently appeared in the "Washington Post" as well.

The notion was the subject of a recent thread on which i learned that some people here actually feel that rude and arrogant agents are more efficient at keeping out undesirables.

My personal experiences with immigration after 9/11 have all been good. Agents have been both efficient and friendly.
But you always think, what happens if a simple error occurs - with your name, with you fingerprint, your baggage.
A cousin of mine - a blond young lady - was recently very rudely interrogated for two hours at JFK because she had flown to often into the USA. (She has a relationship with a manager at Goldman Sachs who commutes between Frankfurt, London and New York.) Such experiences are everything but nice.
A fellow businessman received a green card for the USA but returned it and did not move to the USA because he learned that he and his wife would make themselves suspicous if they travelled between the USA and Europe too often.
Isn't is ironic that those persons with the strongest personal or familiar ties to the US are repelled most?
I know positivly that a huge number of Europeans abstain from travelling the USA because of immigration procedures.

Having had the pleasure of traveling in many countries, I can't say that any one country is worse then another. Coming back into the US recently, my husband was grilled by a immigration agent. He was born in India and although has been a citizen for 25 years, apparently he looks shady. But I was also questioned by the Italian Immigration police (who really scared me with their dogs and machine guns). So, I'm not really sure if it's just the US people or not.

My wife and I, 2 greyhaired seniors, returned 1 month ago to Philadelphia from a pleasure trip to Ialy. We usually sail through US passport control, but this time the agent asked us many more questions than usual. She asked us twice as to which countries we visited, how long we were away, what was the purpose of our trip, etc.

I could feel that there was a sense she suspected something.

Thinking it over, I felt that she was concerned because our passports, which we have had for 8 years, had added pages. We have travelled <b>a lot</b>, and I think she suspected that we were somehow involved in something.

I appreciated her concern. I did not get angry, feel humiliated, or complain to anyone.

Actually, I feel better that she was doing her job with intelligence and competence. ((*))

Both my planes, Air France, coming and going from Paris were loaded with French people. So, I guess while some Europeans won't travel here, many others are. I can certainly understand that being &quot;grilled&quot; by immigration would not be a pleasant experience.

Yes, in my experiences, US Immigration and Customs are not nice at all.

This has always been the case not just because of September 11th.

But why should they be nice? That is there job to intimidate.

Doubtful our customs and immigration are having at effect on visitors to this country.

Lucky us, we have never had unpleasant immigration officers, anywhere.
We just got back from South America, and when we zipped through customs, the officer looked at our papers and said Welcome Home.
ps.The customs people in Buenos Aires were charming and very nice.

We've had both very pleasant and very unpleasant immigration officers in the United States, as well as Europe, Mexico, South America, etc. It would seem that TSA workers are now added to the mix. Some are very pleasant, others officious and seem to enjoy their position of power to intimidate.

On the other side of the coin, I suppose if you asked these two groups about the passengers they screen, they might have similar experiences to ours.

We try to take it all with a grain of salt. Let's face it, the worst of travel nowadays is getting to our destinations and returning home. In my opinion, there's nothing much pleasant or fun flying any longer--it's just a means to get from Point A to Point B and back.

Several years ago (pre-9/11), I was questioned by the immigration officers at SFO. I was coming back from a business trip to Japan, but they were suspicious of my story. I was 25 years old, but I look younger than my age (when I was younger I hated that, now I think it's great - LOL). I probably looked to them like a high school student so my story about being an engineer coming back from Japan didn't add up. They started asking questions and I figured we could straighten this up really quickly since my boss was in the next line over and could vouch for me - there were 15 of us from my team on that plane, all going through immigration at the same time. Well, my boss was Iranian, so that didn't really help matters - LOL. Now we were both getting questioned.

After some more questioning, we did get it straightened out - fortunately we didn't get moved to the detention and interogation rooms or anything, but it did take awhile. When we got through, the rest of our team was waiting for us with our luggage wondering what the heck took us so long - LOL.

I also have never had the bad experiences some posters have described, especially in earlier threads. All of the border control folks I have encountered, both in the US and in other countries, have been polite and effecient. At worst, a few have been only civil, but mostly they have been friendly while asking the questions they are paid to ask.

Interesting article. I've heard all these same complaints from visitors to the USA, especially in the last two years.

On a positive note, US immigration officers treat US citizens pretty well.

Seemed like a good bit of the complaining in the article was about the difficulty of obtaining visas. I'm sure that is problematic for people from some countries. We still have a problem with illegal immigrants, including those coming over on valid visas.

The BP&amp;C people should not be arrogant or rude with anyone but they also definitely do not need to be cheerful and friendly and chirpy and chatty.

SO, there you are in your flat in London and you'd like to see the Grand Canyon, try your luck in Vegas, drive across the Golden Gate Bridge, see the Statue of Liberty, Niagara Falls, Hollywood, Miami, Yellowstone, Yosemite. But, you figure, it might take an hour or maybe even two to get thru immigration and unsmiling government employees might ask you lots of questions. So you decide to go, yet again, to lie on the beach at Torremolinos or Mykonos.

Another piece on the same subject from the same newspaper. http://tinyurl.com/y82y3p Maybe it is the contrast between the generally friendly attitude of Americans towards visitors, and the curtness and bureaucratic approach of the U.S. immigration officials. After all, most of us are innocent travellers.

I was a bit &quot;put out&quot; this summer when returning through Miami when I tried to step up to the booth with my partner who has Alzheimer's, and I told the officer that, but he barked &quot;just one at a time&quot;, so I stepped back and waited while he tried to ask questions of poor Lee who was baffled and unable to tell where we had been or anything else. This went on for a while before the officer finally looked at me and gestured for me to join them. What part of &quot;he has Alzheimer's&quot; did he not understand?

NeoPatrick - first, this is not in any way a reflection on your honesty or integrity. However, the border official, or any other law enforcement officer, has to evaluate for themselves. You would be amazed how many people, of all kinds and appearances, will lie to an officer, even when it is in their best interest to tell the truth. Part of the officer's training and experience is to observe the person they are talking to and determine if there may be something suspicious in their manner that needs further checking.

When you approach the checkpoint or are stopped by an officer, you know who you are and whether you are hiding anything or are a risk. He/She does not and it is his/her job to find out.

It's nothing personal on the officer's part - he/she is just doing the job.

Visiting the US this year for the first time since 1996, I was bracing myself for an unpleasant experience. From what I'd been reading, I feared that we'd be given the third degree by large, baton-wielding ladies and possibly strip-searched (and no, I'm not given to S-M fantasies).

However, we found the officials at SFO, while not positively friendly, polite and matter-of-fact. Even the fingerprinting and photography was handled well - or as well as one can handle such things.

It was the same on the way out - even when I stupidly forgot to take a bottle of liqueur out of my carry-on bag, the TSA people took it in their stride and, had time permitted, would have let me return to the Qantas counter to have it checked as hold baggage.

No complaints from this end, but it does sound as though many other experiences haven't been as positive. The worst I heard was the case of three young men, one of them the son of my wife's workmate, who were handcuffed, detained in a cell for hours and interrogated without explanation at Newark NJ. All Australian-born, they're now convinced that having white skins would have made a big difference (their parents, also Australian citizens, were born in Sri Lanka).

Of course their treatment was very much the exception, but it does suggest the need to be on guard against officials who may feel that the &quot;war on terror&quot; has given them carte blanche to behave badly. While official rudeness is completely at odds with Americans' customary politeness and friendliness, I'm sure first impressions can indeed be lasting.

A lot of dark-skinned people arrive in Newark. They are not all detained. Is there something that else that happened? ((*))

Jed, your point is very valid - but as far as anyone could establish (and the case was widely canvassed in the media here) their travel docs, behaviour etc. were all in order. Maybe it was just a case of a rogue official throwing his weight around, can't say.