Everyone in the world says this about their own border agents! People always seem to be most critical of their own.

i hated coming in through detroit or atlanta (one atlanta officer even tried to find me on facebook -- wtf?). but only had good experiences with new york city and chicago.

Except those situations are very rare. CBP's own website lists a total of 40 deaths over the past 15 years. I looked at over half of them, and very few were actually a "deadly confronatation"

Some of the deaths: * One intern died after collapsing during a 1.5 mile run that was part of his final exam. * At least two died following from heart attacks * Another two are listed as having collapsed and died with no further cause. * Another was listed as heat related. * At least two people died in separate incidents when their vehicles hit large animals. * At least four people have died due to accidental drowning. * At least three died when their aircraft crashed. * At least one was hit by a drunk driver. * At least two killed when their vehicle was hit by a freight train. * At least two were killed during altercations while off duty.

Most of the rest appear to be single vehicle crashes. It appears that less than 10 were actually shot, stabbed, or otherwise killed by people, and I didn't see a single listing of one happening at a border control station.

These people want you to believe they have an incredibly dangerous job. While it's certainly more dangerous than working in IT, the truth is that law enforcement isn't even in the top 10 of dangerous jobs!

The police unions would have you believe that it was. Regarding people killed on the job, law enforcement is right there with construction work, but most deaths on the job are traffic deaths. Actual genuine targeted murders of police officers are rare, it's about 40/year. The number of civilians killed in police-involved shootings is a different magnitude altogether, over 1000/year.

I'm not trying to be argumentative, but I've come to believe tech is a very dangerous career. Years ago I recall looking out my office window and realizing that everyone I could see in front of me had a (free!) soda on their desk and most of them had diabetes. Heart disease, diabetes, back problems, carpal tunnel, eye strain, obesity - tech is a silent killer. Sitting at a desk for 8+ hours a day will do that.

Perhaps they assume that if border guards establish a friendly relationship like that, it will only help bad actors distract the border guard from strictly enforcing the rules through jokes, small talk, etc.

Still, if the USA wants that approach, it could still learn a lot from Israeli passport control. Whenever I have entered Israel I have been asked a lot of questions and the official had some reasonable suspicion about my plans and travel history, but this questioning was still done in a fairly respectful and professional way. The guard wasn’t glum and surly like American border agents.

We watch cheap flight deals pretty regularly and have noticed we are seeing a lot more cheap flights to the US than normal, so it makes us think that perhaps the US is starting to suffer on tourism, but it could just be our biases.

As more people get fed up like us, tourism will wane, but I doubt it'll make a big enough dent anytime soon for any action to be taken, especially when it's spread across the entire US, so harder to see at once.

It's intended to be stressful because that gets people to crack. My advice is to not take it personally unless they really push the line. The stress is part of their procedure to make sure you are not lying.

However, for someone with a gun on their belt, having got their education from Hollywood films and with a government that snitches on the world to lock up dark skinned people in Guantanamo I guess this jobsworth mentality makes sense to them.

Upsetting people who have good money to spend means they don't come back. You don't want to be treated like garbage by imbeciles that insult your intelligence. It is taken personally. The U.S.A. is not that special, it is just full of entitled people that think they are special.

There is no reason they cant do the same job while treating everyone with respect. When you work with a group of people that see themselves as hammers, everyone else is a nail.

Because that's one way that police forces make it clear to you who is in charge.

Also, because you have no recourse against people wielding absolute power over you.