Ever since 9/11 it's been harder for non-whites. That was long before any of this. I won't even bother now. It's not worth my freedom.
I was harassed and detained every single time I went back. Always something different, never anything to actually do with who I actually am or anything I actually did or didn't do.
Do you have any data to back this claim up or are you just stating your opinion?
I was routinely detained at passport control because there was a bad guy with my same name. It took some amount of time and being very polite to get me out of that.
I know a guy who shares a name with a one legged IRA bomber. One would think there would be some effort disambiguate name collisions.
In this case a three year old could probably do it. Let’s see. One, two. Not the guy!!!
It's been harder for people of middle eastern descent but that's about it. I'm nonwhite and have flown a lot and never had any issues. My friend is arab, hipster girl born in LA, and she always gets selected for screening.
I know it's normal to criticize the US now being like that, but the reality is, this is a shared vision among the 5-Eyes countries if you dig deeper. It just happens that the US is very outspoken about it. In Canada, for example as I read a couple weeks ago, individuals "having some sort of geopolitical proximity to a concern of Canada" are being put under the microscope and seen as guilty until proven otherwise, primarily from the Middle East (or West Asia if you don't like that terminology), despite the fact that there was no 9/11 or similar event to trigger any reaction, and how’s that a “proximity concern” to Canada.
Whats the most common reason they’ve harnessed you over? Just wondering if they’re going based on prior issue on file? I’m of Indian descent , born and raised in the U.S - I must be the lucky one. Because I’ve never had any issues. Entering back in the country has been trouble free so far.
Have you thought about signing up for global entry. Recently signed up for it myself and now I just skip talking to a human (and waiting in line)
Ok, so.. I don't know how to say this without sounding insensitive, but I'm a pretty traditional looking (albeit perhaps short) British, blue-eyed, white guy.
I have seriously never had a positive interaction with the US border force. Wether it's the TSA or another associated organisation (since I've been pestered by people who are not TSA).
I've been detained, questioned, randomly selected, given contradictory rules by different people, had things randomly confiscated and even been insulted.
I'm not confrontational, and I don't believe I stand out.
I have had exactly ONE positive interaction (in 2011) whereby I had accidentally travelled with a pocket knife in my checked luggage and due to the fact I was not allowed to check my luggage on the return journey (due to the train being delayed going into Newark; seriously, I understand why Americans distrust public transport) - I told the TSA agent about it and he was kind regarding it, offering condolences, but obviously destroying the knife.
I'm not sure if I'm on some kind of easing program to disincentivise me in particular from visiting the US, but I could easily see that if I was anything other than what I am in terms of race/religion/looks/citizenship: that I would presume that this was the reason.
And, for context, I've been to the US on average twice per year in the last 15 years, so this is my experience from around 30 trips, and 60-ish interactions with the international air apparatus.
It's a pretty decent country once I'm in though, though I wouldn't want to live there.
EDIT: I'm not sure why the parent is being downvoted, his anecdote is the same as mine.
Both things can be true; that it's on average a shitty experience, and that it's on average an even shittier experience for folks of certain demographics.
You can't imagine a shittier outcome for bringing a banned weapon into an airport than "I told the TSA agent about it and he was kind regarding it, offering condolences"?
> I have seriously never had a positive interaction with the US border force. Wether it's the TSA or another associated organisation (since I've been pestered by people who are not TSA)
The trick is to pay to not interact. Global Entry, TSA PreCheck with Digital ID, et cetera.
And for the record, I'm dark-eyed and brown skinned. There are absolutely racists in the Trump administration. But they don't seem to have co-opted this element yet. Instead, it just presents the classic American preference for wealth.
(Note: I'm not endorsing the system. TSA PreCheck makes sense; the fee for it does not. Same for Global Entry.)
These days at many airports, precheck has the same procedures as normal screening. You keep your shoes on, laptops and liquids stay in the bag, and you don't show a boarding pass. And the lines are the same length.
Global entry is a real difference, but you need to travel internationally quite a bit to make the application/renewal process worth it (conditional approval backlog is 12-24 months now, although it seems you skip to the front just in time to do interview-on-arrival on your next trip).
by the way - You can use Global Entry ID# for precheck during domestic travel. My precheck was expiring and I had called specifically for a question. Their support person told me that since I recently signed up for global entry, I didn't need to get precheck. So even if you don't travel internationally often, but might - then its worth it to get Global entry. Of course if you don't plan on ever travelling outside of the U.S ,then yeah no reason to get it.
> you meant to write unequal treatment for the wealthy right?
Yes. I'm not endorsing the system. Just stating why folks on HN might be having wildly different experiences.
Broadly speaking, if you have to interact with border control or airport security, you're going to have a bad time. The stupid, lazy and mean are overrepresented in their ranks. You may have a slightly-worse time with particularly physical affects. But I've absolutely watched my British-accented white friend from Atlanta get singled out every time for fuckery by their TSA.
If, on the other hand, you get the unequal wealth treatment, you won't see a disparity. Because there isn't one. You're rarely interacting with a human being.
I look stereotypical MENA and haven't faced any extra screening, and I travel a lot for work both domestically and abroad, and I'm too lazy to get Global Entry or TSA Pre so I'm dealing with general TSA.
Did your friend maybe travel to an Arab country at some point in time that either faced significant instability, a country that borders Syria+Iraq, or to the West Bank via Jordan?
I'm an American living outside the US. While this is true it feels a bit like how pedestrians have the right-of-way at road crossings: you're legally protected, but is right now the time to test how much people are going to respect that?
I crossed the US-Canada land border with a non-US friend to go to a birthday party a while back; they sent us to secondary so my friend could get their passport stamped (their previous visa had run out). CBP took the opportunity to search our car and tried to convince us they found weed before letting us go (neither of us use it).
Another time my wife and I (both citizens) were crossing and the border agent gave us a hard time for having different last names.
I can't imagine what it's like for people with less privilege than I, but I'm already to the point where I stress about crossing the border. I bring a spare phone, wiped of anything interesting, I let my partners know when I'm at the crossing in case something happens; Paranoid? Possibly. But the potentiality of something going horribly wrong is through the roof, and there's increasingly little recourse. Yes, citizens especially should be insulated from this, but we're seeing egregious violations on so many fronts I don't want to trust that to hold.
And, yet, the CBP can cause you any number of headaches and subject you to intimidation and humiliation prior to your actually being waved through -- especially if they deem you "difficult".
Similar to lots of the other comments in this thread, I'm subjected to additional screenings every time I come back into the country. I'm a completely average middle-aged white guy and I have no idea why this happens. Is it because I'm anxious? I have a somewhat common name; perhaps they've confused me with someone else? Was it because I was at Schipol the same time as The Underwear Bomber or because I went to Turkey on vacation? I will (probably) never know why but it's so unpleasant that I've stopped leaving the country for fun (something I used to love) and has had a real, negative effect on my relationship with my spouse.
Thanks for the reminder. I had forgotten all about that. Is yet another point as to why effectively the USA does not even actually exist anymore more is the Constitution valid.
Some may be confused by reading that or even scoff at it, but it’s really not any different than any other kind of fraud by deception where, e.g., you think you have a certain amount of assets with Bernie Madoff that make you rich, but in reality it’s all just fake and does not actually exist at all.
It’s just that Americans haven’t realized that their country has being defrauded out from under them, much like how the EU just snuck in and went from standardizing trade to co-opting democratic self-determination and just swiping national sovereignty out from under the people of Europe because the ruling class said “no take backs” and that’s just how it’s going to be now.
Given what's happening in the US (and especially with the supreme court), I don't have much faith that any law the government finds inconvenient or objectionable will be adhered to.
Well they should stop worrying. They will be fine. I suggest they don't make MSNBC or similar as their only news outlet. (and yes same for people who only watch Fox news or Newsmax).
You cannot actually deny entry of an American into America, at least not of a true naturally born American to at least one equally naturally born American parent and relatives, probably at least two more generations back.
People are not going to like hearing this, but everyone else who were merely made American citizens by process, has a bit of an increasingly minor risk of being denied entry if they or their first generation relative are deemed to have received their citizenship illicitly and or shown or even just accused of foreign ties, let alone any involvement of espionage or terrorism.
More likely is that even in cases of espionage and terrorism, the government would simply prefer permitting entry and then simply prosecuting people.
> You cannot actually deny entry of an American into America, at least not of a true naturally born American
What counts as natural born is constantly subject to fuckery. (The Citizenshop Clause is all the Constitution has to say on citizenship, and it doesn’t directly address either naturalization or revocation.)It took Congress in 1924 to admit American Indians are born in America [1]. Meanwhile, we've created de facto exemptions on the positive side for e.g. John McCain [2] and Ted Cruz [3].
A future Congress (or potentially just the President, under Trump's precedents) could absolutely vote to strip citizenship from e.g. dual nationals or people who have travelled to this or that country.
You clearly have a strong bias, so I’m not sure it makes any sense in even engaging in conversation with you.
But to at least offer you some salvation from the memes you hold, as much as I didn’t like him, McCain was clearly a natural citizen as a function of his jus sanguinis birth to a legitimate American father. That is not an exception.
Additionally, it was not “admitted that Indians are born in America” as much as Congress did a little bit of magic to sidestep the fact that “Indians” had what up until recently still were effectively sovereign nations, and in some ways they still are, but kind of more like legal black holes and loopholes that supersede American law that everyone else is suppressed to follow, i.e., super-Americans. They weren’t in fact born in America, because the various types of “Indian” territories were effectively not America, regardless of the stunted and dull, rudimentary grasp on history, politics, governance, and reality the average person has.
Ironically, objectively speaking, the recent full recognition of Indian theories as American land with full rights while giving up sooner of their freedom and independence is arguably the last act of actual “colonialism” in human history as a function of its connection to the past. But that kind of thing is totally lost to the general public that has the ignorance of a bull in a China shop, and the maladjusted confidence of a redditor.
I was harassed and detained every single time I went back. Always something different, never anything to actually do with who I actually am or anything I actually did or didn't do.