I live in Europe. From my perspective going to US looks like going to some kind totalitarian country. First I have to got visa which is not automatically approved because I'm Polish not British. Then I have to go trough a lot of, mostly pointless, security checks, checking social accounts, interrogations, scans and manual personal revisions. On any stage of that I can be handcuffed and sent back to Europe for almost no reason. It's sad but from where I sits US starts to look like all of those countries they was fighting with "for the freedom".
We had serious plans to go on holiday to the US this year. I have been in the US at least a dozen of times, and absolutely love the desert states, Oregon, and Washington.
Entering the US was already a large hassle, but with Trump's travel bans, rumors of phone, laptop, and social media checks, we have decided to postpone our travel plans until the political/security climate improves.
Semi-related: we were in the market for a new car. One of the factors we decided to go for a European car this time (we had a Ford Focus before) is that we'd like to support Trump America as little as possible.
Before you say that this is overreacting, hear me out: the US belongs to US citizens. If you want this president, fine. But some of his policies, such as denying climate change and undermining journalism is going te have a large influence on the rest of us.
If you have to travel to the US, fly via Shannon Airport in Ireland. A special arrangement with the Irish government allows you to pass through US immigration and customs controls while you're still on Irish soil. When you arrive in the US, you're treated as a domestic passenger. You don't avoid the intrusive interrogations, but they're a lot more polite about it because they can't detain you. If you're refused entry, you can fly home at your own leisure rather than being detained and deported.
GF traveled to the US for work, a conference in Houston. Everyone that looked Arab of Muslim was 'randomly' picked out of line. Some of the employees had to undress and squat in front of the TSA and one had to undergo cavity searches.
These were regular European citizens. Let's just say conferences will be help in Europe or Canada in the future...
Yes, it feels strange but me and my girlfriend have decided it is not worth it to try to go to america on holidaysfor now because of all these difficulties.
Quit believeing everything on the internet. I'm sure those things happen but are so far off the norm.
I've been to Europe twice this past year and I don't think it's any different.
In Italy there was military everywhere in Rome and Florence. At every monument and Big site there were military with guns looking at everyone. Sometimes stopping people.
I've never been patted down and searched as bad as I was in Frankfurt. Security and questioning was on par with US customs.
I agree with your observations, but I wanted to offer a positive viewpoint on them. One thing I learned about the US over the years is that a lot of law enforcement's heavy-handedness is an emergent property of supporting a country with extreme notions of personal liberty, not a reaction against it. The gamut of socially acceptable behavior is much wider in the US.
That's necessarily reflected in how their police function, and shouldn't be to their detriment.
I'm sure I'd be fine: I've been fine a dozen times before. That was before they decided that it was OK to demand passwords and so on. Maybe now it would be worse. Or maybe my skin colour lets me off the hook.
Regardless, I'd rather just not waste jet fuel on flying to a place that treats anyone this way.
Your phone/tablet/laptop is, for better or worse, a gateway to your entire life. It contains your photos, bank account credentials, messages between friends, messages between you and your wife, photos between you and your wife…
Random border thugs absolutely should not have the right to rummage through it in another room.
There are plenty of ways to do meetings remotely. There are plenty of places in the world you can travel to for work meetups that aren't the US.
For me it's less the risk of being search than the massive queues in US airports that turn me off. Feels like queuing for food in Moscow in the Soviet area, just to take a plane.
People who have recently travelled to the US, what's the probability that you will be asked to unlock your stuff and have random employees search through it? Is it something that happens a lot?
Only rational explanation: the current POTUS is a closet ecologist, decided to use scare tactics to reduce needless CO2 waste. (unlikely, but still...)
maybe just stop traveling to US would be easier and cheaper solution, why one need to be physically present anywhere in 2017?
i find it odd, i can understand it for my father that when some of his agricultural company partners has training, people from neighboring countries must travel there for hours to stay there for few hours and go back, but IT company in 2017?
reminds me of Huawei which is still organizing teleconferences (!) for trainings, because why not let people call across half planet in horrible quality instead of providing cheap full HD video stream work live chat, it's not like there are hundreds of us, max 100 people present
Alternative is to use other tokens than passwords for authentication. There is hardware tokens (which should not be taken abroad), or the system can be designed to only permit authentication from on-site.
If you need to build in flexibility to work remote, add a one-time password system that has to be manually provide by a on-site staff. That way the decision to be compelled to provide authentication will rest on people not being interrogated in an airport.
Is it indeed the norm now to not cross borders with work data? That seems prudent, but I'm rather out of touch with enterprise reality. Regarding accounts, I'd only heard about social media, not work-related stuff. That would be blatant espionage, no?
So, many comments here target US or Trump in particular. But in fact, as many noted, there is not real connection – it started long time ago. Also, I bet, there are quotas (e.g. number of people) to be detained, so they have to fulfil it.
Also, US is just an example here (because many conferences are held in the US), but also there are stories from the UK, for instance. From my point of view, the problem is that with social networks it is extremely easy to get access to your whole life – it is already pretty easy to identify person on the facebook, for instance (right now there is no way to prove that it is _exactly_ you, but I am pretty sure they will be soon). So, with restrictions on such monopoly media (and I've heard it is already harder to register on the Facebook), it is very easy to end up in a situation where we will get "human score" (similar to credit score, but in the digital world), which will be used in such situation.
And even the bigger problem is that it might be needed for a work, for a loan application, etc, so you wouldn't be able to do all this without it (or even "to apply for a visa your score should be higher than 3.0". My predictions are that governments will try to work more closely with popular platforms trying to emerge such (there were few stories than people were detained because of tweets) metrics, and to broad access not only from your phone, but from their device, just your user profile.
The UK border is far worse. Surprisingly, the easiest border I've ever crossed on an American passport was Russia's. No questions, not hassles, neither in nor out.
I've traveled from Zürich to Los Angeles on Good Friday (April 14, 2017) for leisure - my first visit since February 2016 and thus my first trip to Trump's 'murrica.
I was joined with my dad who recently retired and never has left the continent - his first long haul flight and first time to the US.
I feared and prepared for the worst and I even was debating about leaving my iPhone, iPad and MacBook Air at home to avoid any searches.
It turned out to become the smoothest immigration ever: We stood at the curb waiting for the car rental bus within 45 minutes after we stepped out of the plane.
Short lines, smoothly working self-service kiosks, a friendly immigration officer, not one single intimidating or aggressive question.
The kiosks made immigration a lot easier. Also for the work of the officers who can now focus on details instead of always asking the same standard questions. Have noticed that they seem to be in a better mood, I guess it improved their job and therefore their mood.
I went through LAX for the first time in December 2016. The immigration line was long and took about an hour to get through but other than that it was pretty painless.
I'm a British Muslim who flew to the US on Sunday. Honestly I had assumed it would be hell. In actual fact it was only a little more painful than before.
I'm used to being randomly selected for an additional search every time in the UK premiere flight. My colleague (another British Muslim) was also selected which we found quite amusing.
On the other side it wasn't bad, just answered truthfully, only snag was my colleague who accidentally had both a 10 year business visa and an ESTA at the same time who then had to go down to immigration to have it removed.
After immigration I was asked to speak to a customs officer and that was it, I continued on my journey.
Little more painful but not overly.
Personally I think this guide is a little extreme and I'm sure in the worst case it probably does apply.
This is more to deal with the business risk rather than a personal risk.
The US targeting companies with large amounts of data, obtaining passwords to access all of Basecamp's data, either for industrial espionage or counter-terrorism.
your are not selected randomly, they use profiling and they search Muslims because majority of terrorists are Muslims, i can't comprehend why even smart people always come with this random check nonsense, do they really claim it's random and try to hide it instead of telling truth?
Kind of disheartening to read that (most) of the comments here diverted away from the topic of Basecamp's travel guide, which shows a lot of character from this company.
A company composed of a lot of remote workers outside US that definitely goes out of their way to have their employees come into the US for their business meetings is a keeper.
On a side note, I am a bit confused on a questionnaire asked at the Customs:
Here to do work? Nope! Here on business, meeting with Basecamp.
Wouldn't this be under the discretion of the customs officer to determine whether business meeting qualifies as work? I suppose that being on a business meeting with your company still predisposes the fact that you are technically still paid on those days that you are meeting with your company?
I'm from Eastern Europe and I (literally) just flew back from a 2 week work trip from the US (California):
- Getting a visa was a painless process. I just applied and I got a business visa.
- Entering the States required me to show my passport. Nothing else. Nobody asked me why I was going there, nobody asked me to show my phone or laptop (I had both). There was no separation, pat downs etc.
I really can't believe all the negativity here towards traveling to the US. You're taking a few admittedly awful anecdotes, and turning them into giant statistics about the country.
You know that thought experiment where you have scientists debating global warming, but to make it clear just how much consensus there is, instead of having 1 scientist against and 1 pro, you have 1 against and a whole crowd pro?
I run this thought experiment every time I enter the states. I can usually see around me many thousands of people in the airport, getting along just fine. I can imagine the many tens of thousands who go through those airports every day, and the probably millions all across the country who go through the airports without trouble.
These millions are what you should be stacking up against the dozens of anecdotes you get on the web.
(For what it's worth, I have had very easy experiences with immigration, with mostly people being very nice to me, but a few times someone was rude/mean to me. Nothing more than that.)
So what happens when they ask for my Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat logins and I do not have accounts with these companies? If a simple "I don't have social media accounts" is acceptable then I'm not sure why they even ask for passwords. Proving a negative is very hard.
I recently visited the US and I thought the process was going to be hell after reading a lot of these threads on HN. Turns out it was pretty chill, got some questions before boarding and was selected for extra security check. Then upon landing I got like 3 questions from the officer, how long I would stay, where my friends were and what the purpose of my trip was.
Sure they didn't seem very friendly but it wasn't a big of a hassle. I didn't bring my laptop though because I don't want it searched.
It seems like you run on luck mostly. You only need to give up passwords and such if you are unlucky.
Why would I value my personal data any less than my work data?
So what this rally means is: "Don't Travel With Any Data".
And knowing that they only need to plug an infected USB device into your PC/phone/tablet to infect the latter irrevocably, the situation can now be summed up as:
"Don't Travel With Any Data Or Any Hardware".
Now what does that say about the sate of a country?
Woah... this definitely seems over the board! If all of this is required, it's a recent thing, I guess.
I have been to the US multiple times with a B1-Business Visa and didn't do any of this stuff. I just showed up and the customs officer asked a bunch of questions about my purpose of visit and that's about it. I didn't need any invitation letter or hotel bookings, etc.
Hotel bookings and a LOT of other documentation is required when applying for a tourist / business visa for Europe or UK, but traveling to the US has always been fairly straightforward (except that you need to make two visits the US embassy or consulate twice for the visa formalities).
At all times, I had my company laptop with all the data + source code.
This is just ugly. We have become a mirror image of what we claim to be against. No one in human history has woken up one day suddenly to totalitarianism but the process in undeniably well under way here.
The posturing and denial may continue for now but it is only a matter of time before the edifice of pretension falls on the weight of its own contradictions.
The soft power and moral credibility is gone. No one can take any US position on human rights seriously. What's left is force and brazen hypocrisy as we become more brazen building totalitarian infrastructure, go about destroying entire countries and putting millions of lives in disarray to pursue 'strategic objectives' or to put it simply make more money.
Internally it seems citizens don't care about privacy, spying, human rights or the destruction of other countries as long as the money is flowing. It keeps on becoming more and more egregious as more boundaries are crossed yet there is no citizen response. If there is a value system its certainly not visible. The government can do whatever it wants.
In the end we seem to have succeeded in building a commercial hub, not a country. Humanity and all that makes it wonderful beyond the practicality of making money will rest elsewhere.
I know we would only have anecdotal evidence here, but I'd like to hear from other HackerNews readers. My guess is that based on where you're from and how you look, your experience with the CBP can vary wildly.
Most of the posts on here are ridiculous.
People saying they are not going on holiday to the USA because it's too much of a pain.
Seriously.
We applied online for the visa thing. It took under 5 minutes. Then at the airport we queued up at immigration for around 10 minutes. We showed our passport and answered one question about purpose of visit, and they waved us though.
This is the experience of 99.9% of those who visit.
What country are you from? That is not the experience for people from my country (Uruguay, Latin America), nor for any of the high population countries, and it is highlighted in this article.
I applied for (and was granted) an U.S. visitor (B-1) visa last month, it was very expensive, I had to fill out a form that took significantly more than 5 minutes (several hours because I had to contact family members for details), and I had to schedule an in-person interview where they (very politely) cross checked most of what I wrote in the visa form, and were very detailed in the questions.
That's why the article says "If your country does not participate in the Visa Waiver Program or you are not eligible for an ESTA, you'll need to apply for a B-1 business visitor visa… the long way."
"We'll work with you through this process. Start early, as soon as we have dates for a meetup or conference. Visa appointments and processing can take weeks to months."
That directly contradicts your claim (and matches my experience).
I still haven't flown to the U.S., but those in my family who have, experienced multi-hour delays (my mother lost her flight in Boston only last month due to 2 hours in the immigration queue), most of my family members have been set aside for in-depth questioning at least once, etc.
I do know some Europeans have a very different experience (those under ESTA), but I'm not certain your saying "the experience of 99.9% of those who visit" is correct.
You might notice that none of the highly populated countries (China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Russia and Mexico) are in this list:
I feel like posting something positive here - I travelled to the US last week for tourist-y purposes and the border control was fast, efficient, nobody looked at my devices (even though I had 3 phones with me), and the only gripe was with tourists of certain nations constantly trying to jump the queues.
[+] [-] 8draco8|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] microtonal|8 years ago|reply
Entering the US was already a large hassle, but with Trump's travel bans, rumors of phone, laptop, and social media checks, we have decided to postpone our travel plans until the political/security climate improves.
Semi-related: we were in the market for a new car. One of the factors we decided to go for a European car this time (we had a Ford Focus before) is that we'd like to support Trump America as little as possible.
Before you say that this is overreacting, hear me out: the US belongs to US citizens. If you want this president, fine. But some of his policies, such as denying climate change and undermining journalism is going te have a large influence on the rest of us.
[+] [-] jdietrich|8 years ago|reply
http://www.shannonairport.ie/gns/passengers/prepare/us-precl...
[+] [-] apexalpha|8 years ago|reply
These were regular European citizens. Let's just say conferences will be help in Europe or Canada in the future...
[+] [-] louhike|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wil421|8 years ago|reply
I've been to Europe twice this past year and I don't think it's any different.
In Italy there was military everywhere in Rome and Florence. At every monument and Big site there were military with guns looking at everyone. Sometimes stopping people.
I've never been patted down and searched as bad as I was in Frankfurt. Security and questioning was on par with US customs.
Don't even get me started on Serbia.
[+] [-] collyw|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] falcodream|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] openplatypus|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omk|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtempm|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kyrre|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] SCdF|8 years ago|reply
I'm sure I'd be fine: I've been fine a dozen times before. That was before they decided that it was OK to demand passwords and so on. Maybe now it would be worse. Or maybe my skin colour lets me off the hook.
Regardless, I'd rather just not waste jet fuel on flying to a place that treats anyone this way.
Your phone/tablet/laptop is, for better or worse, a gateway to your entire life. It contains your photos, bank account credentials, messages between friends, messages between you and your wife, photos between you and your wife…
Random border thugs absolutely should not have the right to rummage through it in another room.
There are plenty of ways to do meetings remotely. There are plenty of places in the world you can travel to for work meetups that aren't the US.
Just don't travel there.
[+] [-] cm2187|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] StavrosK|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zeveb|8 years ago|reply
I understand that it was not decided, that it's just a proposal (a terrible, stupid, terrible proposal — but just a proposal).
[+] [-] polotics|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tremon|8 years ago|reply
[ask] for someone to remove you from the Basecamp team for 1Password so you no longer have access to Basecamp logins and passwords.
Maybe we should temporarily suspend our employee's accounts too when they travel to the US.
[+] [-] Markoff|8 years ago|reply
i find it odd, i can understand it for my father that when some of his agricultural company partners has training, people from neighboring countries must travel there for hours to stay there for few hours and go back, but IT company in 2017?
reminds me of Huawei which is still organizing teleconferences (!) for trainings, because why not let people call across half planet in horrible quality instead of providing cheap full HD video stream work live chat, it's not like there are hundreds of us, max 100 people present
[+] [-] belorn|8 years ago|reply
If you need to build in flexibility to work remote, add a one-time password system that has to be manually provide by a on-site staff. That way the decision to be compelled to provide authentication will rest on people not being interrogated in an airport.
[+] [-] mirimir|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bloomca|8 years ago|reply
Also, US is just an example here (because many conferences are held in the US), but also there are stories from the UK, for instance. From my point of view, the problem is that with social networks it is extremely easy to get access to your whole life – it is already pretty easy to identify person on the facebook, for instance (right now there is no way to prove that it is _exactly_ you, but I am pretty sure they will be soon). So, with restrictions on such monopoly media (and I've heard it is already harder to register on the Facebook), it is very easy to end up in a situation where we will get "human score" (similar to credit score, but in the digital world), which will be used in such situation.
And even the bigger problem is that it might be needed for a work, for a loan application, etc, so you wouldn't be able to do all this without it (or even "to apply for a visa your score should be higher than 3.0". My predictions are that governments will try to work more closely with popular platforms trying to emerge such (there were few stories than people were detained because of tweets) metrics, and to broad access not only from your phone, but from their device, just your user profile.
[+] [-] ibejoeb|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emeidi|8 years ago|reply
I was joined with my dad who recently retired and never has left the continent - his first long haul flight and first time to the US.
I feared and prepared for the worst and I even was debating about leaving my iPhone, iPad and MacBook Air at home to avoid any searches.
It turned out to become the smoothest immigration ever: We stood at the curb waiting for the car rental bus within 45 minutes after we stepped out of the plane.
Short lines, smoothly working self-service kiosks, a friendly immigration officer, not one single intimidating or aggressive question.
Way to go!
[+] [-] pcurve|8 years ago|reply
I've never seen this one in the U.S. or anywhere else.
I think they are trained to be neutral or even aloof.
[+] [-] differentView|8 years ago|reply
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/04/2...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/03/10/mu...
[+] [-] dx034|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hrrsn|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omarqureshi|8 years ago|reply
I'm used to being randomly selected for an additional search every time in the UK premiere flight. My colleague (another British Muslim) was also selected which we found quite amusing.
On the other side it wasn't bad, just answered truthfully, only snag was my colleague who accidentally had both a 10 year business visa and an ESTA at the same time who then had to go down to immigration to have it removed.
After immigration I was asked to speak to a customs officer and that was it, I continued on my journey.
Little more painful but not overly.
Personally I think this guide is a little extreme and I'm sure in the worst case it probably does apply.
[+] [-] mattmanser|8 years ago|reply
The US targeting companies with large amounts of data, obtaining passwords to access all of Basecamp's data, either for industrial espionage or counter-terrorism.
[+] [-] kalleboo|8 years ago|reply
That said, that's still too high a risk for business data.
[+] [-] Markoff|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smoyer|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AngeloAnolin|8 years ago|reply
A company composed of a lot of remote workers outside US that definitely goes out of their way to have their employees come into the US for their business meetings is a keeper.
On a side note, I am a bit confused on a questionnaire asked at the Customs:
Here to do work? Nope! Here on business, meeting with Basecamp.
Wouldn't this be under the discretion of the customs officer to determine whether business meeting qualifies as work? I suppose that being on a business meeting with your company still predisposes the fact that you are technically still paid on those days that you are meeting with your company?
[+] [-] talklittle|8 years ago|reply
Presumably Basecamp has set up business entities abroad.
https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/2272/about-differ...
[+] [-] mdc2161|8 years ago|reply
Internal business meetings did not require a work visa, while meetings with one of our clients did.
[+] [-] bnt|8 years ago|reply
- Getting a visa was a painless process. I just applied and I got a business visa.
- Entering the States required me to show my passport. Nothing else. Nobody asked me why I was going there, nobody asked me to show my phone or laptop (I had both). There was no separation, pat downs etc.
[+] [-] edanm|8 years ago|reply
You know that thought experiment where you have scientists debating global warming, but to make it clear just how much consensus there is, instead of having 1 scientist against and 1 pro, you have 1 against and a whole crowd pro?
I run this thought experiment every time I enter the states. I can usually see around me many thousands of people in the airport, getting along just fine. I can imagine the many tens of thousands who go through those airports every day, and the probably millions all across the country who go through the airports without trouble.
These millions are what you should be stacking up against the dozens of anecdotes you get on the web.
(For what it's worth, I have had very easy experiences with immigration, with mostly people being very nice to me, but a few times someone was rude/mean to me. Nothing more than that.)
[+] [-] celticninja|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] staticelf|8 years ago|reply
Sure they didn't seem very friendly but it wasn't a big of a hassle. I didn't bring my laptop though because I don't want it searched.
It seems like you run on luck mostly. You only need to give up passwords and such if you are unlucky.
[+] [-] benevol|8 years ago|reply
Why would I value my personal data any less than my work data?
So what this rally means is: "Don't Travel With Any Data".
And knowing that they only need to plug an infected USB device into your PC/phone/tablet to infect the latter irrevocably, the situation can now be summed up as:
"Don't Travel With Any Data Or Any Hardware".
Now what does that say about the sate of a country?
[+] [-] kidmenot|8 years ago|reply
EDIT: at least until after this presidency.
[+] [-] sidchilling|8 years ago|reply
I have been to the US multiple times with a B1-Business Visa and didn't do any of this stuff. I just showed up and the customs officer asked a bunch of questions about my purpose of visit and that's about it. I didn't need any invitation letter or hotel bookings, etc.
Hotel bookings and a LOT of other documentation is required when applying for a tourist / business visa for Europe or UK, but traveling to the US has always been fairly straightforward (except that you need to make two visits the US embassy or consulate twice for the visa formalities).
At all times, I had my company laptop with all the data + source code.
Is this something that has recently begun?
[+] [-] throw2016|8 years ago|reply
The posturing and denial may continue for now but it is only a matter of time before the edifice of pretension falls on the weight of its own contradictions.
The soft power and moral credibility is gone. No one can take any US position on human rights seriously. What's left is force and brazen hypocrisy as we become more brazen building totalitarian infrastructure, go about destroying entire countries and putting millions of lives in disarray to pursue 'strategic objectives' or to put it simply make more money.
Internally it seems citizens don't care about privacy, spying, human rights or the destruction of other countries as long as the money is flowing. It keeps on becoming more and more egregious as more boundaries are crossed yet there is no citizen response. If there is a value system its certainly not visible. The government can do whatever it wants.
In the end we seem to have succeeded in building a commercial hub, not a country. Humanity and all that makes it wonderful beyond the practicality of making money will rest elsewhere.
[+] [-] oblio|8 years ago|reply
Edit: s/TSA/CBP.
[+] [-] secfirstmd|8 years ago|reply
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.secfirst.u...
or raw content here: https://github.com/securityfirst/Umbrella_content
[+] [-] jlg23|8 years ago|reply
If that is advice you have to give to your employees, either stop working for the US army in war zones or hold meetings in a free country.
[+] [-] jbb67|8 years ago|reply
Seriously.
We applied online for the visa thing. It took under 5 minutes. Then at the airport we queued up at immigration for around 10 minutes. We showed our passport and answered one question about purpose of visit, and they waved us though.
This is the experience of 99.9% of those who visit.
[+] [-] GFischer|8 years ago|reply
I applied for (and was granted) an U.S. visitor (B-1) visa last month, it was very expensive, I had to fill out a form that took significantly more than 5 minutes (several hours because I had to contact family members for details), and I had to schedule an in-person interview where they (very politely) cross checked most of what I wrote in the visa form, and were very detailed in the questions.
That's why the article says "If your country does not participate in the Visa Waiver Program or you are not eligible for an ESTA, you'll need to apply for a B-1 business visitor visa… the long way."
"We'll work with you through this process. Start early, as soon as we have dates for a meetup or conference. Visa appointments and processing can take weeks to months."
That directly contradicts your claim (and matches my experience).
I still haven't flown to the U.S., but those in my family who have, experienced multi-hour delays (my mother lost her flight in Boston only last month due to 2 hours in the immigration queue), most of my family members have been set aside for in-depth questioning at least once, etc.
I do know some Europeans have a very different experience (those under ESTA), but I'm not certain your saying "the experience of 99.9% of those who visit" is correct.
You might notice that none of the highly populated countries (China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Russia and Mexico) are in this list:
http://www.esta.us/visa_waiver_countries.html
[+] [-] futurix|8 years ago|reply