[GordonS]

It's not just one story though - there have been plenty stories and comments on HN, as well as other places.

I'd be surprised if anyone who regularly travels to the US hasn't found it to be extremely unpleasant at times. A while back I spent 6 months or so going back and forth from the UK to Houston or Atlanta, and every time I absolutely hated going through immigration. I've travelled to dozens of countries, and literally everywhere I've found the border guards to be friendly - except the US. Every time they behaved like power-hungry bullies, or I saw them behaving that way towards others. One time I travelled with a female colleague who was basically harassed by ridiculous questions from a very angry and loud border guard for no reason at all. He wasn't satisfied until she was in tears.

Another time there was a really long queue after getting off a flight (think it took over an hour to get to the desk), and there was a pregnant woman in the queue who seemed unwell and wanted to sit down - a guard shouted at her to stay in line, refused to get her a chair, and refused to let her jump forward in the queue (despite prompting from willing fellow passengers).

So the reason people don't want to travel to the US? Because it's a fucking horrible experience.

[gist]

> there have been plenty stories and comments on HN, as well as other places.

We have ZERO data on the probability of this happening to someone. What we do know is that when it happens to certain people and they have some kind of notoriety or the ability to get noticed we hear about it. That means there is a non rational reaction from people which makes it seem like any one person stands a large chance of having the same experience. Obviously they have not the time or resources to doing this on any widespread basis. Hence it's a small risk. Ditto for that matter to letting them see what is on your phone. Don't want to sound like the 'if you have nothing to hide' guy (Eric Schmidt) but honestly is it such a big deal? [1]

[1] By that token I have no clue why people would allow complete and total strangers access to where they live (or drive them) which to me seems like a much greater risk. (Not saying the OP did this).

[GordonS]

I agree that it would be nice to get 'real' number on this, rather than relying solely on empirical evidence. But given the nature of it, I don't see how that's possible.

When I mentioned other stories and comments, I wasn't only referring to those by people with "notoriety or the ability to get noticed" - indeed, I was mainly referring to randoms (such as myself, and BTW I have no notoriety and am an introvert).

[alexmlamb2]

I'm a US citizen, and my worst experience has been with Canadian border patrol (I'm not saying this is general, just my experience).