It's getting more and more common these days that whenever I talk to people about travel, the US is completely off their list. The TSA, NSA, NYPD, Bloods and Crips, the reasons go on.
It used to be that Disney Land was one of the reasons to go to America. More and more people I speak to who would have gone now say "meh" to the idea.
It's getting more and more common these days that whenever I talk to people about travel, the US is completely off their list.
As people in the United States wake up on a Sunday morning in their time zones, I guess it falls on me to say that this all depends on whom you talk to. I know lots of people who desire to visit the United States. The United States is still second only to France as the country most visited by tourists from other countries.[1] That's remarkable to me because France has land borders with several other countries, all countries with large populations, while the United States mostly has to be reached by transoceanic air travel.
The original post says, "I have heard that if I have been to some countries I might be refused to enter the US." What it does not say is, "I have checked the United States laws and have checked actual practice of what happens at the United States border, to see how that compares with border control in other countries." And then there are a couple of anecdotes in the few responses. This is basically not a high-quality submission for Hacker News, as it doesn't promote the thoughtful, informed discussion that should characterize our community here.
The typical set of Hacker News comments about the United States from people who have never been to the United States seems to mingle two points of view. On the one hand, the United States is criticized as an undesirable place that no one would want to live in or even visit, given a choice. On the other hand, the United States is criticized as an inhospitable place that doesn't give free, unrestricted entry to anyone who wants to work or visit or settle in the United States. (Criticisms of United States immigration policy on Hacker News mostly take the form of saying that the United States should let in more immigrants like, um, the people who participate on Hacker News.) A fable attributed to the Greek author Aesop[2] may explain how these seemingly contrary opinions of the United States can exist in the mind of the same person.
A friend of mine said he would never visit Saudi Arabia because he could get jailed or killed for no reason or no fair trial. I told him thats my reason for not visiting USA, Bradley Manning among a list of many and Guantanamo.
The US remains a very popular tourist destination and I'm guessing that many European countries will also look suspiciously at your passport if you've recently travelled to countries embroiled in conflict such as Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan.
I'd like to visit the US, but I don't like the idea of having my fingerprints taken and stored for 75 years by US authorities. Of course, it's completely within the right of US authorities to decide the rules for entry into their country and I suspect it deters a very small number of people. Fingerprints are also taken by EU countries that issue biometric passports: http://euobserver.com/news/121816
Stamps on a passport is actually a pretty good example on what one would like to hide from the authorities even though he didn't do anything wrong. I say that as an answer to people like Eric Schmidt who say that if we have something to hide, we shouldn't have done it in the first place. Well, that would be true in a perfect world, but here we have a perfect example that it's not the case. So for this case, I would also advise having multiple passports.
Yeah, I know people who have "lost" their passport in between trips to Israel and to Arab countries. I guess it's worth the replacement fee to avoid potential problems.
According to on one the engineers I shared an office with at Dar Al Handasha (a huge arab consulting engineering partner ship) is what you do if you travel widely in the middle east.
The recommendations are utter horseshit. Again, empiricism and anecdotes don't always line up, but I have visited many of the countries of the Arab world, lived in one and currently live in another, visited Israel, visited Iran (not the Middle East, no matter what you think), and the latter two on the same passport.
Hint, I am not European. Every time I landed in the US, I expected a shit storm, and the Iran stamp was a whole page on the last page of my passport. Never have I been asked more than one question by an ICE officer.
I also married into an A-rab family, and no one has ever given any of us trouble. I know bias is subjective, but the numbers of Americans, specifically US servicemen and contractors, is so large no one will question an American who has visited these countries.
I was studying in the US 2 years ago and during the summer break I went to India to visit my gf who is studying there. During re-entry to the US, I was detained/interrogated for couple of hours.
I believe it is probably due to I am a Muslim and I have Indian immigration stamp in my passport. I even have my I-20 endorsed prior to travelling. Even with I-20 proof, I had to convince the officer that I came to the US for education. I also have friends who are also Muslim, randomly searched/detained at the airport and all of them are students too.
Besides that, I enjoyed my stay in the US. Just the immigration part is PITA.
This was (thankfully) pre 9/11 (though my story is somewhat tangential) - I can’t imagine what might have happened if it had happened after:
At the time, I was in the US as an Australian citizen traveling on a Visa Waiver. Your passport gets stamped and the Visa Waiver document is stapled into your passport with the instruction that it should be removed upon leaving the country (and normally done by airline or immigration staff upon passport check).
I flew from St Louis to Paris, and didn’t notice / didn’t think about this. Flew into Paris, and if you’re familiar with Europe, especially at the time, passport management was “lax”. I didn’t receive a stamp in my passport - and they certainly had no interest in the US Visa Waiver.
Traveled into Spain, same thing. Back to Paris, same thing. Flew into New York JFK, and got pulled to the side, interrogated, detained.
“So, according to your passport, you never left the country by any licit means. You have no stamps in your passport from any country in the meantime. And yet here you are, arriving back in the US on an international flight. Let’s come back here and talk."
In many (most?) countries you can get a secondary passport that you can use with "unfriendly countries". You use that for one set of countries, and you use the primary one for USA and other countries that have poor relations with countries from the first set.
I had three concurrently valid passports at one time, partially because getting multiple entry visas sometimes requires having [a] passport couriered to the country in question and I didn't want to be unable to travel while my passport was in Abuja.
Using that to lie to consular authorities is really stupid though. I've travelled to Yemen and to other countries that are 'suspicious' and never had any problems, if I'd lied about it I would almost certainly have been picked up on it (come on, you don't think the US government has a database of people who've travelled to Yemen or Pakistan on most major airlines?) and would have had some very difficult questions to answer.
In a lot of Europe you would not know that you had crossed a border, it is no big deal. Even in and out of Switzerland that is not 'part of Europe' in the EU sense. It feels good when nobody cares to look at your passport and you can just roll on in.
There is also the knowledge that if you were up to no good, e.g. smuggling drugs, they would probably catch you as you stopped off at the 'drop off', to not just nab you but your associates too. The European customs people are clever like that, they could just open everyone's bags at the border - U.S. style - but if they have good intel that you were up to no good they would follow you and catch you doing the deed. In that way there would be no 'suspicion' about it, or a mere possession charge. It is a different style to the 'big fence' that the U.S.A. has.
Elsewhere in the world, for a comparison of how it should be, go to Canada. There are people looking at your passport, but you feel quite positively welcomed. They don't look at you like dirt.
Meanwhile, with the U.S. of A., there is no feeling of certainty that those people in uniforms are going to let you in. I remember having to go to the back of a queue half a dozen times because of form filling details at JFK and I was only on a connecting flight to Canada and I wasn't wanting to step foot beyond the airport onto hallowed U.S. soil. I am not completely illiterate, my journey was a straightforward business trip and there should have been no need to send me to the back of a queue to put a tick in a checkbox. Heaven help the guy that flies in on 'Eritrean Airways' with a black face in his/her passport, kids in tow and without knowing that peculiar American English that U.S. government officials speak.
These people that arrive at airports might be terrorists, communists and whatever else the government tells you to be afraid of, however, the majority are people with money about their person and quite prepared to spend it. Imagine the U.S.A. as one huge shop, with people wanting to come in and spend. Sure there might be shop-lifters wanting to come in, but, the vast majority just want to spend, or get a job. There is no need to tip everyone's pockets open, go through every bag and profile everyone. Having a big fence just does not make things welcoming.
I think that the U.S.A. is a wonderful place, the hospitality of people (beyond the border check points) is probably the best in the world. The scenery is fantastic. I could go on. But I am probably never going to go to the U.S. ever again. I think that the country as a whole has fallen, I prefer my memories of the good old days. I am sure there are plenty of pockets of what I like about the U.S.A., however, some innocence has been lost and the dark side has been ventured into since that otherwise fine September day that we don't speak of.
As I understand matters, money talks in the U.S.A. Before that September day we never speak of there were visa requirements to go through, but, these made you feel special that you were allowed in. It was no big deal. Since that day there has been the Department of Homeland Security - a.k.a. Lockheed Martin and friends - and there is real money in this OTT security. The parasites of the DHS are going nowhere soon and it is not as if all of the tourism businesses are going to get the voice in Washington to make things a little bit more rational. Sadly the U.S. has gone overboard on being overly militarized.
I also wonder how rich the U.S.A. actually is these days. In the U.K. we don't get as many young American people coming over here to see the world, do some reasonable short term job (e.g. front of house in a hotel or restaurant) and 'experience the culture'. There was a time when we did have more bright-young-things coming here from the U.S.A. than we do now but I don't have statistics to back that up.
My only hope is that the pendulum swings back again, that Americans realise they don't need this big fence to protect them from non-existent terrorists. One day people just might wake up and realise the confabulations of the military-government are bad for business, tourism and just being normal.
>In a lot of Europe you would not know that you had crossed a border, it is no big deal. Even in and out of Switzerland that is not 'part of Europe' in the EU sense. It feels good when nobody cares to look at your passport and you can just roll on in.
Well, that's because most of the EU (plus Switzerland and Norway) is part of the Schengen Area which explicitly allows for free movement between countries. I assure you that you can't just roll into the UK which is not under that agreement.
From the perspective of a USian, the UK doesn't sound like one of the best places to visit anymore either. A further along soft-surveillance state where I won't have citizen's rights..
I hold a non-immigrant visa for the US, and I've wondered many times if visiting Cuba was a good idea or if it could lead to losing the visa. It doesn't seem to be mentioned in the list. Does anyone have any experience?
[+] [-] hadoukenio|12 years ago|reply
It used to be that Disney Land was one of the reasons to go to America. More and more people I speak to who would have gone now say "meh" to the idea.
[+] [-] tokenadult|12 years ago|reply
As people in the United States wake up on a Sunday morning in their time zones, I guess it falls on me to say that this all depends on whom you talk to. I know lots of people who desire to visit the United States. The United States is still second only to France as the country most visited by tourists from other countries.[1] That's remarkable to me because France has land borders with several other countries, all countries with large populations, while the United States mostly has to be reached by transoceanic air travel.
The original post says, "I have heard that if I have been to some countries I might be refused to enter the US." What it does not say is, "I have checked the United States laws and have checked actual practice of what happens at the United States border, to see how that compares with border control in other countries." And then there are a couple of anecdotes in the few responses. This is basically not a high-quality submission for Hacker News, as it doesn't promote the thoughtful, informed discussion that should characterize our community here.
The typical set of Hacker News comments about the United States from people who have never been to the United States seems to mingle two points of view. On the one hand, the United States is criticized as an undesirable place that no one would want to live in or even visit, given a choice. On the other hand, the United States is criticized as an inhospitable place that doesn't give free, unrestricted entry to anyone who wants to work or visit or settle in the United States. (Criticisms of United States immigration policy on Hacker News mostly take the form of saying that the United States should let in more immigrants like, um, the people who participate on Hacker News.) A fable attributed to the Greek author Aesop[2] may explain how these seemingly contrary opinions of the United States can exist in the mind of the same person.
[1] http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/the-worlds-most-pop...
http://time.com/10296/most-popular-countries-to-visit-map/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Tourism_rankings
(Some sources disagree on the exact ranking, but every source I checked puts France first and puts the United States in the top five.)
[2] http://www.bartleby.com/17/1/31.html
[+] [-] antocv|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chestnut-tree|12 years ago|reply
I'd like to visit the US, but I don't like the idea of having my fingerprints taken and stored for 75 years by US authorities. Of course, it's completely within the right of US authorities to decide the rules for entry into their country and I suspect it deters a very small number of people. Fingerprints are also taken by EU countries that issue biometric passports: http://euobserver.com/news/121816
[+] [-] tzs|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Kayou|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TillE|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] walshemj|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 616c|12 years ago|reply
Hint, I am not European. Every time I landed in the US, I expected a shit storm, and the Iran stamp was a whole page on the last page of my passport. Never have I been asked more than one question by an ICE officer.
I also married into an A-rab family, and no one has ever given any of us trouble. I know bias is subjective, but the numbers of Americans, specifically US servicemen and contractors, is so large no one will question an American who has visited these countries.
[+] [-] pyalot2|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eternalban|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] why-el|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dandruffhead|12 years ago|reply
I believe it is probably due to I am a Muslim and I have Indian immigration stamp in my passport. I even have my I-20 endorsed prior to travelling. Even with I-20 proof, I had to convince the officer that I came to the US for education. I also have friends who are also Muslim, randomly searched/detained at the airport and all of them are students too.
Besides that, I enjoyed my stay in the US. Just the immigration part is PITA.
[+] [-] FireBeyond|12 years ago|reply
At the time, I was in the US as an Australian citizen traveling on a Visa Waiver. Your passport gets stamped and the Visa Waiver document is stapled into your passport with the instruction that it should be removed upon leaving the country (and normally done by airline or immigration staff upon passport check).
I flew from St Louis to Paris, and didn’t notice / didn’t think about this. Flew into Paris, and if you’re familiar with Europe, especially at the time, passport management was “lax”. I didn’t receive a stamp in my passport - and they certainly had no interest in the US Visa Waiver.
Traveled into Spain, same thing. Back to Paris, same thing. Flew into New York JFK, and got pulled to the side, interrogated, detained.
“So, according to your passport, you never left the country by any licit means. You have no stamps in your passport from any country in the meantime. And yet here you are, arriving back in the US on an international flight. Let’s come back here and talk."
[+] [-] 4ad|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mvandenbergh|12 years ago|reply
Using that to lie to consular authorities is really stupid though. I've travelled to Yemen and to other countries that are 'suspicious' and never had any problems, if I'd lied about it I would almost certainly have been picked up on it (come on, you don't think the US government has a database of people who've travelled to Yemen or Pakistan on most major airlines?) and would have had some very difficult questions to answer.
[+] [-] dewey|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Theodores|12 years ago|reply
There is also the knowledge that if you were up to no good, e.g. smuggling drugs, they would probably catch you as you stopped off at the 'drop off', to not just nab you but your associates too. The European customs people are clever like that, they could just open everyone's bags at the border - U.S. style - but if they have good intel that you were up to no good they would follow you and catch you doing the deed. In that way there would be no 'suspicion' about it, or a mere possession charge. It is a different style to the 'big fence' that the U.S.A. has.
Elsewhere in the world, for a comparison of how it should be, go to Canada. There are people looking at your passport, but you feel quite positively welcomed. They don't look at you like dirt.
Meanwhile, with the U.S. of A., there is no feeling of certainty that those people in uniforms are going to let you in. I remember having to go to the back of a queue half a dozen times because of form filling details at JFK and I was only on a connecting flight to Canada and I wasn't wanting to step foot beyond the airport onto hallowed U.S. soil. I am not completely illiterate, my journey was a straightforward business trip and there should have been no need to send me to the back of a queue to put a tick in a checkbox. Heaven help the guy that flies in on 'Eritrean Airways' with a black face in his/her passport, kids in tow and without knowing that peculiar American English that U.S. government officials speak.
These people that arrive at airports might be terrorists, communists and whatever else the government tells you to be afraid of, however, the majority are people with money about their person and quite prepared to spend it. Imagine the U.S.A. as one huge shop, with people wanting to come in and spend. Sure there might be shop-lifters wanting to come in, but, the vast majority just want to spend, or get a job. There is no need to tip everyone's pockets open, go through every bag and profile everyone. Having a big fence just does not make things welcoming.
I think that the U.S.A. is a wonderful place, the hospitality of people (beyond the border check points) is probably the best in the world. The scenery is fantastic. I could go on. But I am probably never going to go to the U.S. ever again. I think that the country as a whole has fallen, I prefer my memories of the good old days. I am sure there are plenty of pockets of what I like about the U.S.A., however, some innocence has been lost and the dark side has been ventured into since that otherwise fine September day that we don't speak of.
As I understand matters, money talks in the U.S.A. Before that September day we never speak of there were visa requirements to go through, but, these made you feel special that you were allowed in. It was no big deal. Since that day there has been the Department of Homeland Security - a.k.a. Lockheed Martin and friends - and there is real money in this OTT security. The parasites of the DHS are going nowhere soon and it is not as if all of the tourism businesses are going to get the voice in Washington to make things a little bit more rational. Sadly the U.S. has gone overboard on being overly militarized.
I also wonder how rich the U.S.A. actually is these days. In the U.K. we don't get as many young American people coming over here to see the world, do some reasonable short term job (e.g. front of house in a hotel or restaurant) and 'experience the culture'. There was a time when we did have more bright-young-things coming here from the U.S.A. than we do now but I don't have statistics to back that up.
My only hope is that the pendulum swings back again, that Americans realise they don't need this big fence to protect them from non-existent terrorists. One day people just might wake up and realise the confabulations of the military-government are bad for business, tourism and just being normal.
[+] [-] ghaff|12 years ago|reply
Well, that's because most of the EU (plus Switzerland and Norway) is part of the Schengen Area which explicitly allows for free movement between countries. I assure you that you can't just roll into the UK which is not under that agreement.
[+] [-] zuz1peeK|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|12 years ago|reply
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/niels-gerson-lohman/us-border-...
That's quite a read. What a terrible story.
[+] [-] carlob|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peteretep|12 years ago|reply