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by secult 272 days ago
That's quite an insult! I wonder how many foreign workers (or foreigners in general) take the eventuality of getting "randomly" detained into account while travelling into USA.
5 comments

As someone from Europe (the Netherlands), it is an important reason for me to no longer consider to travel to the USA. The idea of the possibility to be deported to a prison facility in South America or Africa, with no due process is simply terrifying.

I would strongly advice any fellow countrymen not to travel to the USA, especially if they are not 'pure' white. There are many Dutch with Dutch parents that are not 'pure' white, because they have a Chinese, an Indonesian, a Caribbean, an Italian, a Spanish, a Moroccan, or a Turkish ancestor (to mention just some possibilities).

>> the eventuality of getting "randomly" detained into account while travelling into USA.

Absolutely every canadian crossing at a land border. The steady number of horror stories is keeping them away.

(Air travel is less impacted as canadian pre-clearance proceedures mean anyone rejected by ICE will not also be detained by them.)

Preclearance only happens at one Canadian airport, AFAIK.
Preclearance is at all the major airports https://www.cbp.gov/travel/preclearance (strange airport name in Ireland)
It's definitely a growing concern, coworkers visiting their home countries have been half-jokingly saying "see you in X weeks, assuming everything goes fine at the border" and even US citizens and permanent residents are being strongly encouraged to plan out contingencies (remote work, what to say to maybe be able to contact the immigration attorney if detained etc) with the company before leaving, just in case.
Anyone even remotely educated takes it into account, although most people have a low estimation of the actual risk
I do. Never been to US since the Patriot act, a have a several-million dollars small startup and would love to see Colorado and California, why not move there, but I’m just afraid of TSA.

On the other hand, I envy USA for enforcing their visas. Europe follows American criminality stats by 10 years, so when we used to mock USA for George Floyd, we’re now in it; for Korean shop owners, we’re now in it; For random knives in busses, we’re in it, and with school shootings, it’s just a matter of time until it happens.

And European people are much farther away from reaching the conclusion that law must be enforced in multicultural nations.

> mock USA for George Floyd

Crime committed by the police.

> Korean shop owners

What's criminal about Korean shops?

> school shootings

Gun control means no more school shootings. See Dunblane.

> law must be enforced in multicultural nations

Nobody ever said it shouldn't, but it has to be enforced in a fair and even-handed way.

> > school shootings

> Gun control means no more school shootings. See Dunblane.

If you are citing Dunblane as an example of gun control not working, perhaps consider the fact that you had to go back to 1996 to find such a bad example in a country with strong controls means that while it doesn't work 100% it does work really rather well. To find a similar example (>20 dead or injured in a school or related environment) in the US you'd to go all the way back into the mists of time to… August. Before that the last large school shooting was Uvale in 2022, still only three years not 29.

> If you are citing Dunblane as an example of gun control not working

No, the opposite. An example of the policy response working. The tragedy was met with universal revulsion and tightening of gun control. There were a few complaints that the tightening was a bit much, but there wasn't a significant faction of people who said that a few dead schoolchildren were a necessary sacrifice for their gun "rights".

(School shootings seem to be a post-cold-war phenomenon. Dunblane was 1996; Columbine was 1999)

> If you are citing Dunblane as an example of gun control not working

I don't see how you read that at all.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_massacre

There was a school shooting, and we restricted gun access.

An example of failure of those laws stopping any and all would have been the 2010 Cumbria shootings. But they are still few and far between.

> but it has to be enforced in a fair and even-handed way.

In France, I’ve met a guy who went 180 times in custody between 13 and 18 years old.

I asked him: “Wow. Was it racism?”, literally pointing at his face.

“No”, he said.

> that law must be enforced in multicultural nations

per usual it's the other cultures causing the fuss, right.

Criminals get defended against the enforcement of the law, I see.
What I see is someone attributing crime to cultures.