

Do the U.S. air travel policies prevent you from visiting the U.S.?  - yequalsx

My girlfriend lives in Germany and she hates the electronic visa waiver program, the fingerprinting, paying a small fine to come here, and dealing with the TSA.  She's almost at the point of refusing to come to the U.S.  I'm curious if other non U.S. citizens feel similarly.
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iwr
Pretty much all arab-looking people will get special attention going through
US Customs. I have a friend whose name is the same to someone on the no-fly
list and he can't enter the US without serious hassle.

It's no comfort that you can be detained indefinitely, without appeal, or
recognition of existance. Granted, the risk is not that big for Western-
looking people (who haven't travelled to the Arab world), but it's inexcusable
for a country that considers itself the leader of the "Free World".

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yequalsx
An Iranian friend of mine is only allowed to leave the U.S. through an airport
in New York. It's a bit ridiculous.

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smiler
I'm in the UK and have travelled to the US a number of times for work. Being
British and white, I guess I don't attract much attention. I will be
travelling again in January so will be interesting to see what it's like.

Pesonally I love the electronic visa waiver. I no longer have to fill out
paper work on the plane.

I personally don't care about them having my fingerprint. I'm just one of
millions transiting through the Usa everyday and I can't see much is going to
be done with it other than sitting on a hard disk somewhere.

I see the attitude in the TSA but it doesn't really bother me. They work in an
environment which is always busy, full of noise and obviously I am always in
international terminals so they have a lot of complex visa and immigration
situations to deal with.

The immigration line can be seriously annoying. I wish they would have
separate lines for people on the visa waiver and also for people on connecting
flights. The fact there is no priority for people on tight connections is
annoying.

I'm not fussed about a full pat down, doesn't bother me.

I love coming to the US and don't find the security hassles that big of a
deal. I love airports so I love to get to the airport early. After a 10 hour
flight, an extra hour is nothing to get annoyed over and I just stand in the
line with a book or magazine to read.

People should watch ck louis on flying. Most of us in the west are incredibly
privileged compared to lots of other parts of the world and I for one choose
to worry about more important things than a quick pat down and immigration
check. Flying is enjoyable if you just chill out, relax and have a sense of
humour with delays etc

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_delirium
It's definitely caused displacement of some academic conferences. The visa
issue is one of the deal-breakers, because more than one keynote speaker has
missed his/her talk due to the visa not coming through in time, even though
there were months of lead time. It's quite strange that a famous scientist
who's visited the U.S. a dozen times before would need more than a rubber
stamp to give a keynote talk at a scientific conference.

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albahk
I have to go to the US next year for a family gathering and I seriously would
rather not go at all because of this ridiculous TSA stuff.

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mikebradshaw
not prevent, but make me need a _REALLY_ good reason to go through all of that
on top of the long flight.

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yequalsx
I wonder if this will lead to more WebEx sessions and/or loss of business. I
think it would be great if people stopped coming to the U.S. for holiday.
(Except my girlfriend!)

