I dread crossing through American border control at the airport every single time. I use O'Hare, and they literally look and talk to you like dirt. I'm doing nothing wrong, I'm visiting America for legitimate reasons, yet I'm barked at like an army recruit.

Last time, I couldn't tell what the guy behind the glass screen was actually asking me to do, which irritated him immensely. "Lef'and." "Lef'and." "LEF'AND." It took a few tries for me to realise that what he was trying to say was "Can you put your left hand on the scanner, please?"

Maybe it's because I'm British, but I find the British border and security people far more pleasant, which is strange because on the whole, I find British people colder than Americans. Even when something goes wrong, they're apologetic (I was randomly picked for a full pat-down last time I flew out of Manchester, and it was all done with friendliness, good humour, and apologies for delaying me slightly.)

"Please" and "thank you" cost nothing, and would likely be quicker than these repeated barked orders. I like the American people--on the whole, I find them pleasant, polite, good-humoured, decent people. I mean, I am marrying one! So where do they find these people who work on the borders? Every single time I go through, I'm incredibly nervous of doing something slightly wrong, which makes me more nervous because I look nervous and worry they'll think I'm up to something. It's terrifying.

I'm an American living in Britain, and the difference in border crossings looks the same from my perspective. I dread trips back to America at this point. That said, the border control on the Eurostar can occasionally reach American levels of paranoia for some reason. At the airports it's always very pleasant, although the queues can be astonishing.

In fact a large part of the reason I left America is because I wanted to be able to participate in globally-networked businesses, and America's border policies were making that increasingly difficult. This doesn't just impact tourists -- it effects business travellers and academics even worse. Britain has always been much more open in that respect, but recent policy changes are sending it in a very American sort of direction, which I find quite distressing.

I don't know what, if anything, America can do to reverse this. The Obama administration doesn't seem to be actively beating the drums of xenophobia the way the last administration did, and yet the growth of these kind of institutions continues unabated. Why?

Coming into the UK through Heathrow, as a non-EU citizen, can be quite unpleasant. It's less so nowadays than before, and it was also highly dependent on where you are coming from and what passport you are carrying and when you are landing. That said, they tend to warm up the more you seem to know the drill and the more stamps for entry you have in your passport. For first time visitors the experience can be pretty aweful as they play Jeremy Paxman on you after you've just spent 10 hours on a flight. That said, if the immigration officer is of an ethnic minority they are usually much nicer. It's one of the times I don't feel bad for racial stereotyping, when I have a choice of desk after 40 minutes of queuing and aim for the non-white officer.

I find the other UK airports to be much friendlier in general, they even say 'please' and 'thank you' and even have a sense of humour.

I really like London City airport.

Last time I landed there I literally blitzed through immigration and boarded a DLR train like 15 minutes after landing.

A beautiful approach, too.

I'm not sure how keen Londoners are on being blitzed.

Even now.

The behaviour of all british border agents whether actually at the border or at embassies around the world are a credit the country, in my experience.

They understand that the border is the public face of a country and likely the only contact with the state a visitor will make.

I remember once going through the non-EU queue in Manchester, when the (black, probably Nigerian) guy in front of me got a bit of a going over about his visa status, until he broke down, then the agent discovered that he was a UK permanent resident as she was flicking through his passport and she realised he'd been turned away in Amsterdam (seems on a family visit). Anyway, the mood changed in an instant, he got a hug and advice about how to make sure the trip would work next time.

It was nice to see a human response in such a situation.

I had one of the irritable incoherent ones once. He said "put your forefingers on the fingerprint reader". So I did. He then looked at me as if I was defying him in some way, and repeated himself angrily. I looked at him in confusion, and just as he seemed to be psyching himself up to send me off for extra screening, I worked out that he wanted me to put my four fingers on the reader.

Presumably he says the same thing to everyone, and to this day I wonder what must be going through his mind when half of the people passing his desk seem to be ignoring his instructions.

As an American, I also prefer the British border security folks. They're polite and they have a sense of humor, but are still thorough.

Last time I went to London for work I explained that I was coming over to set up a network. What followed was an extended comedic interaction about how I was pulling the cable, the size of the spool needed, and whether I had flushed one end down the airplane toilet to let it unspool as we went.

Well, as a white middle-class American citizen flying in America, I dread the TSA checkpoints myself.

Sorry, man. :-(

There is somewhat of a stigma regarding government employees because they are mainly unionized and impossible to fire.

They can pretty much get away with anything short of criminal activity (and sometimes even that). What incentive do they have for being polite? It sucks but they aren't paid as well as private sector and they don't really care.

I think you're being overly reductionist here. Has every rude service interaction you've had come from a union worker? Has all good service come from non-union workers?

That's certainly not the case for me.

> I'm at the point where I wonder if I'm on a watch list.

At this point "they" have already won. It doesn't really matter who "they" is, but I can tell you that having grown up as a kid in a former East-European communist country the feeling that every sane person had on their back of their heads was: "The Securitate is watching me. Better not do anything fancy" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Securitate) . Even though, of course, the Securitate was only actively "watching" a small number of persons.

I grew up in the Canal Zone during the transition to full control to Panama. It was during the Noriega years and I had quite a few Panamanian friends and went into Panama City a lot. It was a dictatorship. Not at the same level of Romania but it was a dictatorship and I remember how one had to approach cops. In the U.S. people laugh at me when I say that I can no longer tell the difference between how to approach cops in America versus a dictatorship.

We Americans have been manipulated by our leaders and it's sad for me to see how easily it was done.

Care to elaborate?

I had a good friend who grew up in Romania and his stories scare the crap out of me.

1. Your next door neighbor is just gone one day, replaced with another family. Nobody asks why or what happened. You just don't ask.

2. Election ballets are write-ins. One guy wrote "Mickey Mouse" on the ballet and they came looking for him. He was forced to report to the local police station to watch propaganda videos for 8 hours a day for 8 days.

People can complain about how things are going here in the US, but to say it becoming more and more like a dictatorship seems a little disingenuous.

Well it wasn't as bad in Panama under Noriega as it was in Romania under Ceaușescu. Panama couldn't be called a benevolent dictatorship but it wasn't the worst of them.

Times were tough in Panama and this includes being tough for the cops. I had to pay bribes. I was once questioned by the police over a matter and was scared I'd be taken to a holding cell in Panama City. If you were put in a holding cell in Panama City and were not considered friendly to the regime you could be placed in a cell were you would be sexually assaulted by transvestites put in the cell for such a purpose.

Some areas - nice areas - were off limits to Americans who knew better. Places were officer of the Panamanian military lived. You didn't want to be caught there. When stopped by cops you considered it a good thing if the only thing that happened was that you lost money.

It was much worse for Panamanians than for Americans. We did have a military presence and until the end Noriega didn't want to push the boundaries of acceptable behavior too much.

The two defining characteristics in my mind of a police state are a feeling of powerlessness when dealing with police forces and the feeling of arbitrariness of how police forces deal with you. We aren't at the point of police statehood yet but I see the U.S. going down this path.

> our next door neighbor is just gone one day, replaced with another family. Nobody asks why or what happened. You just don't ask.

These sorts of things were happening in the Stalinist "dark" '50s, that's for sure, but when I grew up, in the '80s, the regime had become a little bit more "civilized". I think it was mostly because Ceausescu had signed the Helsinki Accords (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsinki_Accords) and in general because he wanted to detach Romania from Moscow's grip. The regime wasn't technically allowed, so to speak, to imprison people for political reasons, so this is why the authorities were resorting to either fake psychiatric assessments or to made up petty theft charges in order to take away "inconvenient" people.

Anyway, it's a very long and complicated story, 20 years after the facts even us, Romanians, don't have a single view on the whole thing (surprisingly enough, there's a quite big percentage of the population who'd rather relive those times than having to deal with the realities of the present).

It's already happening in some way, lots of people I know refuse to travel to US because of so many horror border stories.

In Europe everything is so much simpler. If you are inside UE all you need to show is your ID card and your are set.

Why doesn't US do the same thing with european countries at least ?

Same thing for working VISA, we are the good-old-europe for god sake :P not a quarantine zone

> In Europe everything is so much simpler. If you are inside UE all you need to show is your ID card and your are set.

Simpler than that. Inside the Schengen zone, there are no borders at all; you can travel by car from France to Italy or Germany and back without being stopped anywhere.

You can just start working anywhere inside the Schengen area without needing any permit or working visa. Its more like the US States rather than different countries.

Not true. Unfortunately.

The Schengen agreements regulate short-term stays only. For long-term stay or work there are specific laws, different for each country.

I wish this were different, but Europe still has a long way to go before it is a single open market.

If you are a Schengen citizen then try it. Just grab your stuff and go to Valencia or Stockholm and stay there for 10 year, no problem. Of course you have to pay tax there, register locally, etc. As EU citizen, you can even vote in local elections, as voter and candidate. But not all EU countries are in Schengen, and not all Schengen countries EU members. In many countries, the people are just too afraid for change. Same as with the Euro. People in countries like Sweden or UK are just too afraid to give up control of their own currency.

> In Europe everything is so much simpler. If you are inside UE all you need to show is your ID card and your are set.

If you are inside the Schengen area, you only need to show your id card. Go to/from the UK, and you still need your passport.

Traveling between Schengen countries is more comparable to traveling between US states than from Europe to US or reverse, because the whole point of Schengen is a common system for protecting the "outer" borders.

No true, I travel to the UK very often and I only show my ID, which works as a passport inside EU countries.

A German id card is enough to enter/leave the UK. No passport required. I would assume the same holds for other european id cards.

It holds for many European countries. The United Kingdom has separate passport-free travel agreements with most, but not all, Schengen countries (and with some non-Schengen countries as well.)

To be fair, my travel outside of the Schengen has still been a lot more pleasant than the way the US border is described...

Not if you're travelling from Ireland. You don't need to show any ID - though technically, if you're not an EU citizen you're supposed to join a different exit queue.

The secret phrase that makes the troll let you cross the bridge is "Am I free to go?" You're an American citizen, they can't deny you entry.

I know that it was a Supreme Court ruling that Americans had an absolute right to come into the country. But in the present time we live in a situation where being labeled an enemy combatant or terrorist is grounds for indefinite detention without recourse to Habeas Corpus. Also, my girlfriend comes to the U.S. and I don't want to fuck things up for her. They know about her because she gets asked why she and I were in Turkey together 4 years ago.