I have to admit, as difficult as it is, he makes a good point here.
I'm nowhere near as well travelled, but we do a lot of work in the middle east (some of the nastier parts too), which is a place you would imagine a white westerner would count seriously against you.
But, frankly, I've never felt safer or more welcomed in my life (apart from the odd dicey moment).
OK, the US is not terrible, unsafe or specifically unfriendly. But there are little things; some cities I just didn't feel overly welcome because I wasn't American. I'm in my mid twenties and ordering a beer with a meal got me some highly suspicious looks! Numerous times I have been questioned by police; for being sat at a bus depot with a rucksack (they made me miss a bus and were utterly unapologetic, grr), for being stood on a street waiting for my pickup (for about 20 minutes.. I think someone had actually called them) etc.
Don't get me wrong; I've met loads of really awesome, friendly and welcoming Americans. And mostly it is fine. But more than any other place I have been to you get treated with suspicion.
One of the more surreal conversations I've had while entering the US was one guy who wanted to know why I've been to Turkey/Egypt/Morocco so many times - he just seemed to refuse to believe me when I said that they are really nice places to go on holiday and that they are very common holiday destinations for Europeans. I actually had to explain what it is that I like about them!
Note - I'm from the UK.
[Edit: Note that I really enjoy visiting the US - the country is great, its just that the experience of getting in can be a bit odd, although I have to admit that the last few times were all perfectly pleasant].
Americans can be pretty suspicious of outsiders even if the outsiders are fellow Americans. Where I grew up, walking around town (instead of driving) or standing at the bus station meant you were at best are some sort of vaguely criminal transient.
I will tell another personal experience. I am based out of India and have been invited to speak at a conference in San Francisco. I applied for a business visa and was denied that visa because apparently I am young (23) and they have not heard about my startup (it is of course not an IT service giant like Infosys, TCS or Wipro) or conference (it's about A/B testing). Mind you: my startup is doing quite well financially and we pay regular taxes (had all relevant documents to prove it). Getting a simple business visa for US is so hard that from multiple sources I heard that founders of a lot of VC funded startups (with more than million $ in bank) in India many times don't get a US visa if they need to setup a sales team there or be there for some business purpose. Is doing business in US for foreign startups really this hard or I am an outlier?
It's, of course, frustrating and I don't know what to do about it.
My experiences have been as bad too..I am an Indian citizen and came to the US for graduate studies about 3 years back. Immediately after graduation,I was supposed to join a reputed company but due to some administrative glitch by the USCIS, it took me 6 months to get the required work authorization. I was barely able to convince the company to hold my job. Those were the most harrowing days. I came to India this December for vacation and my work visa application has been again kept on hold status since the past 2 months and I am struck here. I am again on the verge of losing my job. The worst part of all this is, the administration at no point does seem to care about letting people know what causes the hold up and the estimated time for it to get resolved. The lack of transperancy is so frustrating. Each day you just pray that you will get some update from them. And I am not alone, I know atleast 5-6 persons who have been held up for some reason or the other at this time. I really like life in the US and the opportunities it provides, but now I am seriously contemplating if all this is worth it.
You're just too much of a flight risk - they see you as having too little at stake in India. I've had some friends have similar issues (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=851287). I myself returned to India after 8 years in the states partly because it was practically impossible to start my own business without a green card, aka 4 years of indentured servitude.
For future reference: Try to show assets you own (real estate, homes etc) that incentivize your return; Bring literature about your conference, maybe ads etc (they need to see that its purpose is not an immigration scam); if you're married or have kids, that helps a great deal. Good luck!
The right way to go about it is get a good lawyer to represent you. It seems like an overkill but sounds like you can afford it.
My valid visa case was rejected by INS and I was asked to go through a number of hoops because the lawyer had entered information in a different format. I changed lawyers and it made a sea of difference. Learnt the lesson that never skimp on lawyers. Try talking to Aron Finklestein or Alisa Klein at http://www.murthy.com/attprofi.html. They charge 200$ for a 20 min consult and will tell you what to do exactly. I was not sure if 20 mins would be enough to explain my complex case but 20 mins is all it took for them to come up with a strategy. Best of luck.
Unfortunately, it appears that India is among the countries hit particularly hard. Anecdotally, it is noticeably harder for an Indian to get a US visa (business or visitor's) than an average foreigner (from a country where a US visa is required).
I have bit my tongue for a long time about this great community's slipping quality, but honestly, how does shit like this make it to the top of Hacker News. Flagged.
Any suggestions for how to get back to having hacker news on Hacker News? (And please spare us the lame "situational logic" response of how <anyShit> is hacker news.)
It's not just the off-topic stuff. It's groupthink. The needle on that has been buried for months now.
I'll give you a telling example: the insane series of threads where, in essence, an angry mob chased a comp-sci grad student around for nominating Wikipedia articles for deletion. "Here's the main offender!" "You're a drain on Wikipedia, a negative source of knowledge!" "You're an idiot!". An Internet-famous guy chimes in with a comment calling him "a gigantic Nazi asshole" (fun fact: this is after the guy took the time to sign up to talk to HN commenters).
Then HN dutifully mods up a blog post by the same guy that calls the guy out by name for "deciding he's the sole decider of the notability of programming languages". Nice.
Then a triumphal thread on a post about how the guy has stopped nominating articles for deletion on Wikipedia. The system works!
Why do I like this example? No politics. Still bad.
You can see the groupthink everywhere on the site, from the comment on any Amazon post that gets reflexively modded up for pointing out that Amazon removed Wikipedia content, or how Sony once installed a rootkit, or how IP laws are bad for America (I especially liked watching people downmod 'grellas trying to provide context and upmodding someone who, presumably, was not a startup lawyer).
Thank you for not only flagging it, but saying something. Supposedly that's against the guidelines, but if a community doesn't communicate in cases like these, how can the newcomers learn that articles like these are not hacker news.
One of my own guidelines for "not hacker news" is if it's an article that's designed to "raise hackles" in the sense of offending one's sense of justice or "how things ought to be". This clearly falls in that category. This isn't "intellectually gratifying", it's gratifying to your sense of righteousness / indignance. None of this stuff is at all new to anyone whose residence is not located under a rock.
Oh, also, as an aside:
> And please spare us the lame "situational logic" response of how <anyShit> is hacker news.
I think of that game as "7 degrees of hacker news". The more outlandish it is, the more 'fun'. For instance, an article about renaissance Italy could be hacker news, because Paul Graham has talked about the style of painting in that time period, and has compared painting to to hacking, and since Paul Graham is a hacker...voila`! Although, truth be told, that sort of subject matter might at least be interesting in the sense of telling me something I didn't know, rather than discussing current US politics.
Given that the US is largely considered the most entrepreneurial country in the world, I think this is relevant. A lot of people from other countries want to do business here, and this very well might be of concern to them.
This thread has sparked a large discussion and I think this is in line with the submission guidelines as being intellectually gratifying.
Working in the tech field often means travelling to the States. More importantly, since many hacker newsers are American, you should be aware that setting up shop in the States makes it more difficult for you to do business internationally, that travelling to visit clients/customers/suppliers is easier for you than it is for them to visit you. So yes, this is relevant.
And flagging an article because of a little easily recognized hyperbole?
Your are picking on the one time he goes hyperbolic. Overall, there are good points in the post, even if he does make that one statement that is obviously false. Just read it as "many" and move on.
>Any suggestions for how to get back to having hacker news on Hacker News?
I try to go to http://news.ycombinator.com/newest and upmod tech-related submissions once in a while. I should probably do it more often. Also, flagging stuff that could be on TV or Reddit.
I don't think there's anything to be done TBH. In previous discussions about the community's slipping quality I was always encouraged by the fact that submissions stayed approximately the same. That's not the case anymore. And what that means aside from less useful content is that a critical mass of news users and complacent old ones represent the majority on the site.
By having a mental gauge of what's too subjective and not posting those, as well as not voting on, commenting on, etc?
Maybe there is some sort of algorithm that can be established to determine the level of subjectivity of an article or post with a 95% confidence interval?
Band together (e.g. private mailing list) with like-minded people and upvote each other's submissions until the culture has changed.
EDIT: Hey, that's the only reasonable answer to the parent's question so far, as far as I can see. I don't like the idea either, but it's a reasonable idea, downvotes be damned!
I wonder how much longer it will take before americans get enough to take a stand about this. I suppose it would never reach critical mass with flying because not enough americans are flying to care, which is why I can't wait for TSA to follow through with their plan to set up their nonsense at bus stops and subways.
When I was married and my American wife got to join me in the queue I was in, and had to go through the same process that I went through. Well she was incredulous that she was being treated that way.
Until Americans actually experience this, nothing will be done about it.
I've considered that enough to think that a better way to approach it is to subject people to the kind of security that they subject others to. So that if Americans want to visit other countries that they are finger-printed, interrogated, X-Ray'd, delayed and otherwise harassed.
Then when they complain point out that what is being done to them is a reflection of what they do to others, that is the only thing I can imagine might make them consider changing their ways... and I really am not living in the kind of world where I think this is achievable since European border control isn't going to start implementing this stuff on a per nationality basis. So it's not as if I really think this is feasible.
As I've pointed out in the past, I also no longer go to the USA or do business there.
When I am forced to have face-to-face meetings with Americans, I force the venue to be in Canada at a location I can get a flight to that doesn't require going via the USA (tends to be Toronto as direct flights from London are cheap and frequent).
This works for me to the point that I no longer think about it until it appears like this on a forum and I remember that I don't go to the USA anymore... it's become subconscious. I just don't go to the USA because of the experience of doing so (not limited to border alone, but border is the initial impression and the worst).
Try Sea-Tac airport. 20 lanes at the border, 17 reserved for American citizens, of whom there are probably about 20 on a 400-seater plane.
I've traveled all over the world, US borders are the most unpleasant. I'v had border guards in FSRs point guns at me but hey, those guys are just doing their jobs. In the US they go out of their way to be rude, lazy, incompetent and just plain obnoxious.
Basically that's the problem. It's estimated that there are somewhere between 3-7 million non-military Americans living overseas, but that's less than 3% of the population. If the US had senators and representatives dedicated to those people, we would have some clout, but because we still have to have "residency" in a specific state, we aren't really large enough to have much political clout.
Unfortunately most of the people who live in the US really don't understand the bullshit treatment that people get when entering the country. --It's not as bad for US citizens, but I still get questioned more coming into the US than any other country I've visited.
Part of it is the motivation to return home. I'm Australian, and we've got a fairly intensive customs procedure, but I could care less, I'm an hour or less away from home now.
Visting America was a different story though: I'm getting fingerprinted, and people are jumping queues, and the security is crazy... and all I'm thinking is "Why did I bother?"
Waiting for americans to care enough about the discomfort of vistors (relative to motivation to be there) might take a while.
I am a Russian citizen living in EU. I generally avoid trips to US.
BTW, me and some of my colleagues, postdocs or PhD students, had to go through the infamous TAL (technology alert list) checks. What it practically means:
1) you are a citizen of some US "enemy" country, like xUSSR, China, Brazil or, God forbid, Iran
2) you have a PhD in any engineering discipline (true for architects, computer scientists, chemists, physicists, etc) or you work towards your PhD
3) you are going to a conference in US
Then they will do a mock background check for long enough to grant you a visa one day after the conference ends.
It's not merely inconvenience at the border, but travel has become cost ineffective to him.
An expensive piece of kit lost that meant that I basically didn't make any money that month.
and
After 9/11 everyone is utterly paranoid and everyone from security guards to police, and even random passers-by, have hassled me. Claiming that I am breaking the law (I am not) or demanding I explain why I am taking pictures.
"I usually have to spend a lot of time being interrogated for my lack of a huge suitcase" he is bothered at the border. He is talking about the whole experience not only about the cost.
I'm a permanent resident of the U.S., but even with the green card the hassles at the border are just nasty regardless of where I've been or for how long. The attitude is atrocious and I usually feel more like a criminal they've reluctantly had to let back in rather than welcomed back home. Green card holders also get fingerprinted and in some cases retina-scanned at re-entry. The nudie scans have only managed to create a small additional inconvenience for me…
I am Indian and not muslim but "unfortunate" to have been born in the middle east. Everytime I visit the US, I have an intensive check, basically running all my finger prints through an extensive check. I have to swear what I saw is true (which I find awkward, raising my palm and repeating what they say). The officers take my wallet, go through all my credit cards, docs, etc. I have to wait for about 2 hours. I once missed my connection flight because of the long wait.
And what is crazier is that the same procedure repeats when I leave the US.
I always resented traveling to the US too because of border controls. Recently I moved to the US and felt relieved that I do not have to go through immigration there anymore. Seconds after that thought I had the epiphany that I now have to go through immigration whenever I am going anywhere else in the world.
The funny thing is that I have never had a bad experience with US immigration. The only time I had a non-smooth experience was in Canada, before a flight from Montreal to Atlanta. An officer waved me out of line saying "I'm sorry sir but you were selected for a random security check. You can thank Mr George W. Bush for that."
The two funniest experiences I had was when entering Dubai and Sao Paulo, In Sao Paulo the immigration officer did not speak a single word of English. I do not speak any Portuguese. We quickly realized this frustrating situation and I was waved through. In Dubai I was the first person in line at the customs and not knowing what to do I just kept walking. The customs people just stood there and looked at me. I was already quite far behind the customs people, nearly out of the airport, when I realized that I just walked past the customs officers without having my bags or anything checked. So I went the whole way back just to go through customs properly.
I refuse to travel to the US because of how much hassle is involved. I don't starting my trips off on a sour note. The UK is headed this way as well, mind you.
On several occasions I've had expensive gear disappear from my carry-on during security checks and last year a TSA agent dropped my Canon 1D Mk3, smashing both the lens and the camera body. No apology, but more importantly: I was never compensated.
That can’t be, can it? Property damage is property damage. Shouldn’t the TSA have insurance anyway? Is he stretching the truth?
> I've been to Russia before the cold war ended. I've been all over the middle east. I've been to China. I've travelled all over Europe. I've been to Cuba and I've been to Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Nicaragua. What all of these places have in common is that going there was a far more pleasant experience than going to the US.
Oh, c'mon, this sounds very over-the-top. My experience is that TSA and USCIS (formerly INS) are very professional and follow a strict protocol. The protocol may be unfair or not, but that's the protocol, not the professional's fault. In places like Brazil your entire trip is at the hands of chance: Most times you get a nice officer, but sometimes not.
For example: After an incident involving an American in Brazil [1], all Americans were out of a sudden required by the Brazilian authorities to get pictures taken at the Brazilian customs. The situation got so ridiculous, that at some point the airports ended up with 3 lines: "Brazilian Citizens", "Foreigners", and "Americans". In other words, Americans were singled-out from the rest of the world. Would the OP describe that as a "pleasant experience"???
I have had somewhat bad experiences in the US too, but that's not even close to the kind of stuff I (or close family members and friends) went through in Brazil, or as a Brazilian in Europe. In the US I never had any trouble, and officers always acted professionally.
And I highly doubt this person would get compensated in any one of these countries.
There is also a really interesting (scarifying-wise) discussion about apathy, existentialism and generally missing purpose in America's daily life, in the later comments to check out (scroll down 1/3, i.e. a mile).
[+] [-] ErrantX|15 years ago|reply
I'm nowhere near as well travelled, but we do a lot of work in the middle east (some of the nastier parts too), which is a place you would imagine a white westerner would count seriously against you.
But, frankly, I've never felt safer or more welcomed in my life (apart from the odd dicey moment).
OK, the US is not terrible, unsafe or specifically unfriendly. But there are little things; some cities I just didn't feel overly welcome because I wasn't American. I'm in my mid twenties and ordering a beer with a meal got me some highly suspicious looks! Numerous times I have been questioned by police; for being sat at a bus depot with a rucksack (they made me miss a bus and were utterly unapologetic, grr), for being stood on a street waiting for my pickup (for about 20 minutes.. I think someone had actually called them) etc.
Don't get me wrong; I've met loads of really awesome, friendly and welcoming Americans. And mostly it is fine. But more than any other place I have been to you get treated with suspicion.
[+] [-] arethuza|15 years ago|reply
Note - I'm from the UK.
[Edit: Note that I really enjoy visiting the US - the country is great, its just that the experience of getting in can be a bit odd, although I have to admit that the last few times were all perfectly pleasant].
[+] [-] rdouble|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nhangen|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] schwabacher|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paraschopra|15 years ago|reply
It's, of course, frustrating and I don't know what to do about it.
[+] [-] schintan|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kingsley_20|15 years ago|reply
For future reference: Try to show assets you own (real estate, homes etc) that incentivize your return; Bring literature about your conference, maybe ads etc (they need to see that its purpose is not an immigration scam); if you're married or have kids, that helps a great deal. Good luck!
[+] [-] learner4life|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brown9-2|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cema|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edw519|15 years ago|reply
Everyone?
I have bit my tongue for a long time about this great community's slipping quality, but honestly, how does shit like this make it to the top of Hacker News. Flagged.
Any suggestions for how to get back to having hacker news on Hacker News? (And please spare us the lame "situational logic" response of how <anyShit> is hacker news.)
[+] [-] tptacek|15 years ago|reply
I'll give you a telling example: the insane series of threads where, in essence, an angry mob chased a comp-sci grad student around for nominating Wikipedia articles for deletion. "Here's the main offender!" "You're a drain on Wikipedia, a negative source of knowledge!" "You're an idiot!". An Internet-famous guy chimes in with a comment calling him "a gigantic Nazi asshole" (fun fact: this is after the guy took the time to sign up to talk to HN commenters).
Then HN dutifully mods up a blog post by the same guy that calls the guy out by name for "deciding he's the sole decider of the notability of programming languages". Nice.
Then a triumphal thread on a post about how the guy has stopped nominating articles for deletion on Wikipedia. The system works!
Why do I like this example? No politics. Still bad.
You can see the groupthink everywhere on the site, from the comment on any Amazon post that gets reflexively modded up for pointing out that Amazon removed Wikipedia content, or how Sony once installed a rootkit, or how IP laws are bad for America (I especially liked watching people downmod 'grellas trying to provide context and upmodding someone who, presumably, was not a startup lawyer).
[+] [-] davidw|15 years ago|reply
One of my own guidelines for "not hacker news" is if it's an article that's designed to "raise hackles" in the sense of offending one's sense of justice or "how things ought to be". This clearly falls in that category. This isn't "intellectually gratifying", it's gratifying to your sense of righteousness / indignance. None of this stuff is at all new to anyone whose residence is not located under a rock.
Oh, also, as an aside:
> And please spare us the lame "situational logic" response of how <anyShit> is hacker news.
I think of that game as "7 degrees of hacker news". The more outlandish it is, the more 'fun'. For instance, an article about renaissance Italy could be hacker news, because Paul Graham has talked about the style of painting in that time period, and has compared painting to to hacking, and since Paul Graham is a hacker...voila`! Although, truth be told, that sort of subject matter might at least be interesting in the sense of telling me something I didn't know, rather than discussing current US politics.
[+] [-] fiaz|15 years ago|reply
This thread has sparked a large discussion and I think this is in line with the submission guidelines as being intellectually gratifying.
http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[+] [-] bryanlarsen|15 years ago|reply
And flagging an article because of a little easily recognized hyperbole?
[+] [-] e40|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gaius|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nir|15 years ago|reply
I try to go to http://news.ycombinator.com/newest and upmod tech-related submissions once in a while. I should probably do it more often. Also, flagging stuff that could be on TV or Reddit.
[+] [-] retube|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] poet|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] sev|15 years ago|reply
Maybe there is some sort of algorithm that can be established to determine the level of subjectivity of an article or post with a 95% confidence interval?
[+] [-] iterationx|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] foljs|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Luc|15 years ago|reply
EDIT: Hey, that's the only reasonable answer to the parent's question so far, as far as I can see. I don't like the idea either, but it's a reasonable idea, downvotes be damned!
[+] [-] danssig|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] buro9|15 years ago|reply
When I was married and my American wife got to join me in the queue I was in, and had to go through the same process that I went through. Well she was incredulous that she was being treated that way.
Until Americans actually experience this, nothing will be done about it.
I've considered that enough to think that a better way to approach it is to subject people to the kind of security that they subject others to. So that if Americans want to visit other countries that they are finger-printed, interrogated, X-Ray'd, delayed and otherwise harassed.
Then when they complain point out that what is being done to them is a reflection of what they do to others, that is the only thing I can imagine might make them consider changing their ways... and I really am not living in the kind of world where I think this is achievable since European border control isn't going to start implementing this stuff on a per nationality basis. So it's not as if I really think this is feasible.
As I've pointed out in the past, I also no longer go to the USA or do business there.
When I am forced to have face-to-face meetings with Americans, I force the venue to be in Canada at a location I can get a flight to that doesn't require going via the USA (tends to be Toronto as direct flights from London are cheap and frequent).
This works for me to the point that I no longer think about it until it appears like this on a forum and I remember that I don't go to the USA anymore... it's become subconscious. I just don't go to the USA because of the experience of doing so (not limited to border alone, but border is the initial impression and the worst).
[+] [-] gaius|15 years ago|reply
I've traveled all over the world, US borders are the most unpleasant. I'v had border guards in FSRs point guns at me but hey, those guys are just doing their jobs. In the US they go out of their way to be rude, lazy, incompetent and just plain obnoxious.
[+] [-] jbm|15 years ago|reply
No politician is deaf to the voices of "the people", but it's a lot easier to get into speaking range when you can afford a professional lobby.
[+] [-] tallanvor|15 years ago|reply
Unfortunately most of the people who live in the US really don't understand the bullshit treatment that people get when entering the country. --It's not as bad for US citizens, but I still get questioned more coming into the US than any other country I've visited.
[+] [-] johnb|15 years ago|reply
Visting America was a different story though: I'm getting fingerprinted, and people are jumping queues, and the security is crazy... and all I'm thinking is "Why did I bother?"
Waiting for americans to care enough about the discomfort of vistors (relative to motivation to be there) might take a while.
[+] [-] gritzko|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iwwr|15 years ago|reply
An expensive piece of kit lost that meant that I basically didn't make any money that month.
and
After 9/11 everyone is utterly paranoid and everyone from security guards to police, and even random passers-by, have hassled me. Claiming that I am breaking the law (I am not) or demanding I explain why I am taking pictures.
[+] [-] tintin|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wisty|15 years ago|reply
Unfortunately, in the US, lots of things can destroy you: Lawsuits from car accidents, medical issues, not having a car, et cetera.
Nice comment.
[+] [-] rue|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rue|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] I_get_stopped|15 years ago|reply
And what is crazier is that the same procedure repeats when I leave the US.
[+] [-] sp_|15 years ago|reply
The funny thing is that I have never had a bad experience with US immigration. The only time I had a non-smooth experience was in Canada, before a flight from Montreal to Atlanta. An officer waved me out of line saying "I'm sorry sir but you were selected for a random security check. You can thank Mr George W. Bush for that."
The two funniest experiences I had was when entering Dubai and Sao Paulo, In Sao Paulo the immigration officer did not speak a single word of English. I do not speak any Portuguese. We quickly realized this frustrating situation and I was waved through. In Dubai I was the first person in line at the customs and not knowing what to do I just kept walking. The customs people just stood there and looked at me. I was already quite far behind the customs people, nearly out of the airport, when I realized that I just walked past the customs officers without having my bags or anything checked. So I went the whole way back just to go through customs properly.
[+] [-] ilitirit|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ugh|15 years ago|reply
That can’t be, can it? Property damage is property damage. Shouldn’t the TSA have insurance anyway? Is he stretching the truth?
[+] [-] jranck|15 years ago|reply
Unfortunately I don't see this changing any time soon with the TSA unionizing.
[+] [-] sambeau|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jakku|15 years ago|reply
This time they took everything out of my bag. Spent ten minutes reading my diary! I mean what the fuck! Were aggressive, rude.
The system is an utter disgrace to foreigners. I wont be coming back.
[+] [-] Maro|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] die_sekte|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] felipe|15 years ago|reply
Oh, c'mon, this sounds very over-the-top. My experience is that TSA and USCIS (formerly INS) are very professional and follow a strict protocol. The protocol may be unfair or not, but that's the protocol, not the professional's fault. In places like Brazil your entire trip is at the hands of chance: Most times you get a nice officer, but sometimes not.
For example: After an incident involving an American in Brazil [1], all Americans were out of a sudden required by the Brazilian authorities to get pictures taken at the Brazilian customs. The situation got so ridiculous, that at some point the airports ended up with 3 lines: "Brazilian Citizens", "Foreigners", and "Americans". In other words, Americans were singled-out from the rest of the world. Would the OP describe that as a "pleasant experience"???
I have had somewhat bad experiences in the US too, but that's not even close to the kind of stuff I (or close family members and friends) went through in Brazil, or as a Brazilian in Europe. In the US I never had any trouble, and officers always acted professionally.
And I highly doubt this person would get compensated in any one of these countries.
[1] http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/americas/01/14/finger.gesture....
Disclaimer: I am a Brazilian naturalized American.
[+] [-] frevd|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] known|15 years ago|reply