How can so many employees be so incredibly inefficient!? For some, it was pretty obvious: they were just standing around doing literally nothing while people were clearly frustrated by lines that did not move for long periods of time. Some of the “officers” were wandering the area with no apparent end goal. One (as usual) was bellowing ridiculous instructions with fear-of-death seriousness: a job that any sane manager should have eliminated years ago to save money.
And every time, it freaks me out: I don’t want my laptop stolen (say) but there is zero attention paid to the people walking up and walking away with bags from the conveyor belt on the other side, and when the line grows longer and longer I CAN’T go over there and keep adequate watch on my things. Invariably, my bag and stuff makes it through LONG before I do and I just have to hope it hasn’t disappeared.
The entire system is insane. Every Last Rule they introduced based on some random threat or other is pointless. The only thing worse than these pointless rules is knowing that these employees will freak the hell out over every violation of their pointless rules, while completely ignoring real threats.
The experience that made most upset is when my parents were leaving and I was saying goodbye to them. They are in their 70s and don't speak much English. My mom was trying to say thank you and smile at the ticket agent. And he marked her ticked with a bunch of red "S" letters. I knew what that meant.
Next thing, I was helplessly watching my parents being harassed by TSA agents, a bunch 20 year old punks. They were pulling and tugging at them, my mom almost in tears not understanding what they want from them. Made them empty all the luggage and such.
The thing is they are used to that treatment but just in their country not here What upset them is that they had to lower their expectation of how this country treats its visitors as well.
Not only was a lot of the signage and printed instructions only in English, the customs officers were down right berating people in English (many of whom obviously didn't speak English) for things they had no way of knowing, like standing in the proper line, because they couldn't read or speak English. In many cases the customs officer would simply lead people (who had no idea where they were going) into a line, then leave. The wait for translators was hours in some cases. And if you were lucky enough to get through customs, you were rushed through another security line and required to put your bags on one of five conveyer belts to the bowels of the airport to be screened AGAIN (even if you weren't taking a connecting flight). Only you had no idea which belt you were supposed to choose because there was no signage, only a scant few attendants yelling out which belt you were supposed to put your bags on (in English, of course) while streams of people rushed by.
The contrast between entering other civilised countries and entering the United States is one of the things I hate about travelling. Every other country I visit manages to control its borders and have a pleasant, polite entry process, but not my own! I've seen border agents scream and holler at people who clearly don't understand English: there's just no excuse for that. It's rude.
The United States and Europe are political units of approximately the same population and area; there's no reason why entry into the U.S. must be so much more miserable than entry in the E.U., any more than there's a reason why we Americans pay such relatively high taxes for such relatively little in services.
I don't know the particulars of this incident, so I won't comment on it. The man's not a citizen, so he certainly doesn't have a right to enter, but I do think that the border exception to the Fourth Amendment is terrible, and that requiring citizens to share the contents of their electronic devices without a warrant is an invasion of privacy.
U. S., OTOH, I dread and I'm a citizen.
My theory is I think it's almost a relief when border police deal with a fellow Canadian. If it's someone from the US I bet 99% of their worry is they have a gun.
But US customs seem to have a chip on their shoulder as if they want to torment you.
I've had the Canadian border agents accuse me of trying to smuggle in a car to sell (depending on the exchange rate it can be profitable). I've also had them grill me as to why I'm coming to Canada. "Who are you meeting? What will you be doing?". I'm Canadian, you have to let me in!
On the US side, it's mostly "Welcome home!" even though I only had a green card. There was one time when a CBP officer got testy wanting to know who owned the car while my wife was driving. It was more his foul mood than anything.
Logically, you'd expect the US agents to grill me considering I'm not a citizen, not the Canadians.
That said, the US and Canadian border agents work very closely together. They share their lists of "suspects" and are more than willing to hand someone over to the other side if it makes their life easier.
Another comment said that since this happened in a Canadian airport, the guy should have just left. I'm pretty sure the US CBP would have let their Canadian colleagues know about this guy and he wouldn't have made it out of the aiport.
They had to verify the address (surprise, some streets start with the number 1, who would've thought?) and then another officer gave us the needed visa and let us into the country, all the while the original officer was glaring at us as if we somehow managed to find a loophole to gain entry into the country.
Is it Texas? I think they gave up on that last year:
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/news/2015/02/06/texas-dps-sto...
Plenty of articles about it online. I used to be involved with organising meetings for scientists, and we'd never arrange one in the USA because of the hostility towards foreigners, particularly from Africa.
Hmmmmmm
Seemed like an easy decision when getting my visa and every time I reenter.
Like, how hard is it to do a basic 2 hour training in "communicating with non english speakers" so you can stop your staff insulting and screaming at non-native speakers?
It's controversial, cause it hurts tourism and business.
I've visited Brazil with a U.S. passport at least once per year since 2003, most recently in December 2015, and have never been fingerprinted.
No, but they might link you to real crimes that you didn't actually commit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Mayfield
Having a huge database encourages this kind of sweeping searches, wherein false positives become very likely.
Edit: is there anyone else systematically keeping track? You can get good information on FlyerTalk, but it seems to be a one-off kind of thing (asking a particular question about a particular country at a particular moment).
In Canada most of the major international airports have US border crossings inside the airport inside Canadian territory. In my experience those are strangely the most hostile and confrontational to Canadians. I've found land border guards, and guards inside US airports themselves to be friendlier. I don't know why, but it seems others have this experience too.
In any case given the change of political tide in the US I will no longer be traveling there for pleasure. Only for work.
It's the first experience foreigners have in our country, and we make it one of the worst experiences in the developed world.
Industries that benefit from tourism should lobby the Federal Government to improve the travel experience to, from, and within the US. I personally would fly at least a few more times a year if the TSA/CBP process treated people with urgency and dignity.