Countries you shouldn't visit if you want to travel to the US
travel.stackexchange.com
travel.stackexchange.com
It used to be that Disney Land was one of the reasons to go to America. More and more people I speak to who would have gone now say "meh" to the idea.
As people in the United States wake up on a Sunday morning in their time zones, I guess it falls on me to say that this all depends on whom you talk to. I know lots of people who desire to visit the United States. The United States is still second only to France as the country most visited by tourists from other countries.[1] That's remarkable to me because France has land borders with several other countries, all countries with large populations, while the United States mostly has to be reached by transoceanic air travel.
The original post says, "I have heard that if I have been to some countries I might be refused to enter the US." What it does not say is, "I have checked the United States laws and have checked actual practice of what happens at the United States border, to see how that compares with border control in other countries." And then there are a couple of anecdotes in the few responses. This is basically not a high-quality submission for Hacker News, as it doesn't promote the thoughtful, informed discussion that should characterize our community here.
The typical set of Hacker News comments about the United States from people who have never been to the United States seems to mingle two points of view. On the one hand, the United States is criticized as an undesirable place that no one would want to live in or even visit, given a choice. On the other hand, the United States is criticized as an inhospitable place that doesn't give free, unrestricted entry to anyone who wants to work or visit or settle in the United States. (Criticisms of United States immigration policy on Hacker News mostly take the form of saying that the United States should let in more immigrants like, um, the people who participate on Hacker News.) A fable attributed to the Greek author Aesop[2] may explain how these seemingly contrary opinions of the United States can exist in the mind of the same person.
[1] http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/the-worlds-most-pop...
http://time.com/10296/most-popular-countries-to-visit-map/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Tourism_rankings
(Some sources disagree on the exact ranking, but every source I checked puts France first and puts the United States in the top five.)
> That's remarkable to me because France has land borders with
> several other countries, all countries with large populations,
> while the United States mostly has to be reached by transoceanic
> air travel.
It certainly has more of an international mix than France[2] due to France's proximity to to other countries though.
1. http://geography.about.com/b/2012/05/02/country-of-origin-of... 2. http://www.dgcis.gouv.fr/files/files/directions_services/etu...
The only exception to this are US immigration officials who I dread dealing with everytime I arrive. All my paperwork is in order and I've never visited any of those 'dodgy' countries but they are just so unfriendly and standoffish that it spoils my arrival. I get the impression they assume every arriving person has no right to enter and should be treated almost like a criminal.
There are countless anecdotes illustrating how immigration rules and officers are ridiculous and racist, but not all of them are about USA. In many respects immigrants are treated worse in Europe that in the states.
To some extent, we are reduced to anecdote, because an opaque and sometimes seemingly capricious (if not malicious) system -- or set of sometimes cooperating, sometimes competing systems -- leaves us no choice.
There also appears to be no effective and consistent gradation in risk management. No ability to elicit further investigation and potential resolution of open questions -- whether they are legitimate or the result of an inept initial evaluation.
A prime example of this, not with respect to visas but with respect to ongoing travel, with plans already made and tickets already purchased, is the "no-fly list" and other apparent, more obscure and hidden lists and qualifications having similar effects upon travel.
Are you on it? We can't tell you. Why are you on it? We can't tell you. I (general "I") have a mountain of evidence I can present demonstrating that I'm not a threat. There's no effective appeal process (never mind any "ostensible" appeal process; much reporting has demonstrated such to apparently be entirely non-functional). I'm willing to submit to search to demonstrate that I am not nor am carrying any immediate threat. Not an option.
That and why you are on the list is a secret. Options to mitigate a perceived risk and allow travel are not an option.
Hardly hallmarks of an "open" society.
I mention the "no-fly list" also in good part because it applies also to U.S. citizens. Such cases are not a matter of a foreign national soliciting the U.S. for a... "privilege". They reflect a government opaquely and apparently extra-judicially limiting free association (via travel).
The U.S. is still the envy of much of the world, and not without some good reasons. And the majority of trips both by foreign nationals and by U.S. citizens take place without undo circumstance. But the trend in travel restrictions worries me, for one. And, as an ostensibly self-governing citizenry, how are we to effectively govern as such policies increasingly cut us off from controversial parts of the world we might do well to actually pay more attention to? Such governance includes foreign policy. Also, foreign examples can serve as useful lessons in guiding our own domestic policy -- if such examples are though of as "bad", then as examples of things to learn from and hopefully avoid.
token, I know you as an open-minded, insightful, and "fair" participant, here, and I don't mean my response to come across as overly "argumentative" or upset. Rather, I take your point, but present my own not so much as a counter-point but as an adjunct that I think also needs to be considered, and so I'm mentioning it in this response.
I appreciate that. (Upvoted, of course.) Thank you. I've noticed before that you devote effort to building up a thoughtful community here.
I don't imagine what people feel like when I can observe what people feel like. What I observe is that a lot more people on Hacker News and elsewhere desire to visit the United States and to settle in the United States[1] than decide never to go to the United States at all. That's a fact of the world that I have to deal with without emotion or name-calling but just by thinking about what policy implications that fact has.
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/dec/14/united-states-i...
http://www.pewresearch.org/daily-number/u-s-is-top-destinati...
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/saudi-arabia-th...
Saudi also practises that modern form of slavery where slaves aren't property now, they're merely foreign labourers who have had their identity documents removed so they can't escape and their promised wages withheld. http://www.al-bab.com/blog/2013/december/saudi-arabia-defend...
(I don't find the link now, but there was a news about a European woman, that was raped and when she was going to the police, she was arrested for adultery and threatened with jail (I think) or else she should marry the rapist. I am not sure, if it was Saudi Arabia or a neighboring country, but such a thing just makes me ill!)
†http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecution_of_Marte_Dalelv ‡http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alicia_Gali
I'd like to visit the US, but I don't like the idea of having my fingerprints taken and stored for 75 years by US authorities. Of course, it's completely within the right of US authorities to decide the rules for entry into their country and I suspect it deters a very small number of people. Fingerprints are also taken by EU countries that issue biometric passports: http://euobserver.com/news/121816
Ignorance of how they work and how unlikely they are to affect your life. (I'm sure many Americans are similarly ignorant about some "dangerous" group in another geographic location which is in fact dangerous but unlikely to be encountered.)
(India is dangerous, but not for men, and not because of poverty.)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-05/teenages-accused-in-de...
Source: Me, traveled to Iran and Israel on the same passport, along with Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan
Hint, I am not European. Every time I landed in the US, I expected a shit storm, and the Iran stamp was a whole page on the last page of my passport. Never have I been asked more than one question by an ICE officer.
I also married into an A-rab family, and no one has ever given any of us trouble. I know bias is subjective, but the numbers of Americans, specifically US servicemen and contractors, is so large no one will question an American who has visited these countries.
I believe it is probably due to I am a Muslim and I have Indian immigration stamp in my passport. I even have my I-20 endorsed prior to travelling. Even with I-20 proof, I had to convince the officer that I came to the US for education. I also have friends who are also Muslim, randomly searched/detained at the airport and all of them are students too.
Besides that, I enjoyed my stay in the US. Just the immigration part is PITA.
At the time, I was in the US as an Australian citizen traveling on a Visa Waiver. Your passport gets stamped and the Visa Waiver document is stapled into your passport with the instruction that it should be removed upon leaving the country (and normally done by airline or immigration staff upon passport check).
I flew from St Louis to Paris, and didn’t notice / didn’t think about this. Flew into Paris, and if you’re familiar with Europe, especially at the time, passport management was “lax”. I didn’t receive a stamp in my passport - and they certainly had no interest in the US Visa Waiver.
Traveled into Spain, same thing. Back to Paris, same thing. Flew into New York JFK, and got pulled to the side, interrogated, detained.
“So, according to your passport, you never left the country by any licit means. You have no stamps in your passport from any country in the meantime. And yet here you are, arriving back in the US on an international flight. Let’s come back here and talk."
Using that to lie to consular authorities is really stupid though. I've travelled to Yemen and to other countries that are 'suspicious' and never had any problems, if I'd lied about it I would almost certainly have been picked up on it (come on, you don't think the US government has a database of people who've travelled to Yemen or Pakistan on most major airlines?) and would have had some very difficult questions to answer.
So it is quite likely you were bending the rules, and I would not go around mentioning that. I mean you are talking about identity fraud at the fed level. The paperwork would have reminded you penalties for that are not so fun. I filled out some myself once.
I tried to get the second, not for Yemen but somewhere else not too far away. I told the US Embassy, and they told me to just use the one and it was not worth the subsequent hassle to apply for a second (or third in your case if that is truly possible). The stigma of where I was going was bad, but not enough they said to waste my time with an additional password.
All I had to do was pay the processing fee and document why I needed them. Admittedly, the third one was harder to get and required an interview but even that was perfunctory.
I have heard that most countries are much less eager to give out passports than mine.
Ignore my know-it-all attitude.
Probably the same technology provider doing a global roll out based on country size.
Unless...could it be PRC?
Source: My own experience
[0] https://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/forums/middle-east/to...
There is also the knowledge that if you were up to no good, e.g. smuggling drugs, they would probably catch you as you stopped off at the 'drop off', to not just nab you but your associates too. The European customs people are clever like that, they could just open everyone's bags at the border - U.S. style - but if they have good intel that you were up to no good they would follow you and catch you doing the deed. In that way there would be no 'suspicion' about it, or a mere possession charge. It is a different style to the 'big fence' that the U.S.A. has.
Elsewhere in the world, for a comparison of how it should be, go to Canada. There are people looking at your passport, but you feel quite positively welcomed. They don't look at you like dirt.
Meanwhile, with the U.S. of A., there is no feeling of certainty that those people in uniforms are going to let you in. I remember having to go to the back of a queue half a dozen times because of form filling details at JFK and I was only on a connecting flight to Canada and I wasn't wanting to step foot beyond the airport onto hallowed U.S. soil. I am not completely illiterate, my journey was a straightforward business trip and there should have been no need to send me to the back of a queue to put a tick in a checkbox. Heaven help the guy that flies in on 'Eritrean Airways' with a black face in his/her passport, kids in tow and without knowing that peculiar American English that U.S. government officials speak.
These people that arrive at airports might be terrorists, communists and whatever else the government tells you to be afraid of, however, the majority are people with money about their person and quite prepared to spend it. Imagine the U.S.A. as one huge shop, with people wanting to come in and spend. Sure there might be shop-lifters wanting to come in, but, the vast majority just want to spend, or get a job. There is no need to tip everyone's pockets open, go through every bag and profile everyone. Having a big fence just does not make things welcoming.
I think that the U.S.A. is a wonderful place, the hospitality of people (beyond the border check points) is probably the best in the world. The scenery is fantastic. I could go on. But I am probably never going to go to the U.S. ever again. I think that the country as a whole has fallen, I prefer my memories of the good old days. I am sure there are plenty of pockets of what I like about the U.S.A., however, some innocence has been lost and the dark side has been ventured into since that otherwise fine September day that we don't speak of.
As I understand matters, money talks in the U.S.A. Before that September day we never speak of there were visa requirements to go through, but, these made you feel special that you were allowed in. It was no big deal. Since that day there has been the Department of Homeland Security - a.k.a. Lockheed Martin and friends - and there is real money in this OTT security. The parasites of the DHS are going nowhere soon and it is not as if all of the tourism businesses are going to get the voice in Washington to make things a little bit more rational. Sadly the U.S. has gone overboard on being overly militarized.
I also wonder how rich the U.S.A. actually is these days. In the U.K. we don't get as many young American people coming over here to see the world, do some reasonable short term job (e.g. front of house in a hotel or restaurant) and 'experience the culture'. There was a time when we did have more bright-young-things coming here from the U.S.A. than we do now but I don't have statistics to back that up.
My only hope is that the pendulum swings back again, that Americans realise they don't need this big fence to protect them from non-existent terrorists. One day people just might wake up and realise the confabulations of the military-government are bad for business, tourism and just being normal.
Well, that's because most of the EU (plus Switzerland and Norway) is part of the Schengen Area which explicitly allows for free movement between countries. I assure you that you can't just roll into the UK which is not under that agreement.
I think after terrorism, one thing the US and UK fear are working holiday types entering and especially without reasonable funds. We were grilled in both places.
(Australian, visited both 2-3 times each and think both are fantastic tourism drawcards but the entry process is daunting.)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/niels-gerson-lohman/us-border-...
That's quite a read. What a terrible story.