Americans do not understand how much press there is outside the US about tourists from Ireland / Germany / Canada getting locked up in ICE jails for weeks on end.
It's one thing to refuse entry to someone who doesn't have the right documents. The fear goes to a completely different level once people see tourists getting locked up.
As someone who lived in the US for 22 years legally and most of my social and business network there, I an not taking the risk of getting locked up in ICE jail any time soon, no matter how unlikely it is.
Exactly this. If someone from "high tier" countries like Canada and Germany can get locked up in ICE jails for several weeks imagine someone like me from a peripheral European country. Even worse, my youngest brother that has a more "tanned" appearance. tattoos, and a beard.
I won't be visiting the US for the foreseeable future (used to go several times per year for work), just not worth the risk.
> Exactly this. If someone from "high tier" countries like Canada and Germany can get locked up in ICE jails for several weeks imagine someone like me from a peripheral European country. Even worse, my youngest brother that has a more "tanned" appearance. tattoos, and a beard.
Out of curiosity, what do you think it's like to travel to Europe as someone who is dark-skinned, has a beard, and does not have a European passport?
I constantly travel to EU for work. I see all kinds of people from any part of the world, and they pass through fine.
When I traveled last time, I have witnessed an European denied entry for a reason I don't know, and a white male without any beard has been escorted into the immigration office.
Said office had a giant window. The officers were just chatting with him while checking his documents, and also drinking some coffee and eating some cake. I didn't look that long to see whether they have offered the same to him (because it's rude).
Also, I don't have an EU/UK/US passport, and I just pass fine.
It all depends what part of the EU and how you look.
For some EU perspective: last summer we traveled with a group of social dancers from Berlin to Pula in Croatia, going to an event at the coast.
Croatia joined Schengen in January 2023.
We had one couple in the group that where not "white". She is German but her parents are Vietnamese and he is from Syria. They're married, they have German citizenship.
They were the only ones from our group of ~20 people who got singled out and had their papers and luggage (!) checked. She looks Asian, he looks Middle-Eastern (oh, and he has a beard!).
That said, they just took 10mins longer to make it through the arrivals hall. They didn't get incarcerated.
However, the year before they were traveling to a dance event in Belgrade. That was was before they got married so he didn't have a German passport yet. He only had a Syrian passport and a residence permit for Germany/Schengen.
Serbia is not part of the EU. Usually such a mistake means they just send you back on the next flight. Happened to two friends of mine, both "white US citizens, who didn't also know this and were traveling to Belgrade from Switzerland two years before.
My Syrian friend however spent three days in a jail in cell with a dozen criminals before they let him fly back to Germany. Mind you, the event they went to was four days and he had a return ticket that could have been easily changed to the arrival day.
Racial profiling is everywhere. Also in the EU. And some EU countries are more "famous" for it, the Balkans e.g.
It is entirely outside of the EU until it's a member country. Serbia doesn't have any special status like Switzerland or Norway that are closer to the EU even if they are not members, and anyway the leadership of Serbia is currently closer to Russia than to the EU.
Though my point was that as someone who's moved into a EU country, it might not be entirely clear that it's not inside EU, given it's proximity and that they might have read about it in an EU context given its status.
Heck I'm in Norway and had to check to make sure I was right.
> Racial profiling is everywhere. Also in the EU. And some EU countries are more "famous" for it, the Balkans e.g.
Some countries are more "famous" for it, but that's really just a matter of perception and how it fits into an existing narrative, not based on actual evidence.
It's not like there's data showing that racial profiling is lower in France, Germany, and Sweden than it is in Eastern Europe.
I'd say racial profiling is probably around the same everywhere, but rule of law is not, and while you have a lot of corruption at the top level in France, bureaucratic processes makes it hard for low-level public servant to ignore said rule of law, which isn't the case in some Eastern European countries (i've heard that Romania made _huge_ improvement though, so maybe my only first-hand experience wouldn't happen these days anymore)
Are you implying there are similar arrests and indefinite detentions going on in Europe? Any data to share? Certainly worth being upset over if that’s a true accusation.
That's not the case in the US either. Like, how would that work if a non-citizen isn't bound to law anyway? "Oh you're not American, so you're not bound by our murder laws. Free to go".
But this admin highly disagrees with that notion. Really hope the courts start throwing heads sooner rather than later.
> Out of curiosity, what do you think it's like to travel to Europe as someone who is dark-skinned, has a beard, and does not have a European passport?
I can answer that! It is pretty uneventful. My experience with the border checks in airports was always very pleasant (despite the lines, depending on the airport they can be pretty long)
> Out of curiosity, what do you think it's like to travel to Europe as someone who is dark-skinned, has a beard, and does not have a European passport?
With a Canadian or American passport (until recently)? No problem.
> With a Canadian or American passport (until recently)? No problem.
First of all, the folks profiling and detaining you don't ask you where your passport is from first - they'll generally make the decision and then ask for your documentation.
But even then, I have a US passport, and I've had far more issues being detained in European airports than I have in the US - which is really saying something.
> First of all, the folks profiling and detaining you don't ask you where your passport is from first - they'll generally make the decision and then ask for your documentation.
It depends. Most countries do have certain kinds of extra policies for passports of certain countries. For example, Visa fraud, especially for education visas, is extremely common from India. So extra checks for those that the acceptance letter isn't from some diploma mill and that they're not coming to work illegally tends to to occur more often.
But the same is true for local citizens that make odd, quick trips to certain countries that tend to be sources for drug smuggling - you're going to probably get pulled aside.
Being a border guard is 40% art, 40% science, 10% luck, and 10% other.
> But even then, I have a US passport, and I've had far more issues being detained in European airports than I have in the US - which is really saying something.
You're a citizen, though. Unless they think you're importing something you shouldn't, you're far less likely to be hassled as you have more rights than others.
As a Canadian, I found that Canadian border agents tend to harass their own citizens, especially at land crossings, because the default assumption seems to be we're trying to dodge paying duties.
I've found American border guards mostly tend to act terse and rude (possibly as a strategy to try and trip you up?), though some of the nicest I've ever met were also American. I've found most EU guards with my Canadian passport to be bored and slow, though that may be because most Canadians going to Europe are just vacationing?
> It depends. Most countries do have certain kinds of extra policies for passports of certain countries
That's not relevant when, as I said, they detain you without knowing what passport you even hold.
> You're a citizen, though. Unless they think you're importing something you shouldn't, you're far less likely to be hassled as you have more rights than others.
Being a citizen does not, in fact, exempt you from being profiles and detained at border crossings, either in the US or in Europe.
> Out of curiosity, what do you think it's like to travel to Europe as someone who is dark-skinned, has a beard, and does not have a European passport?
Depends on which part of Europe. In the more diverse parts, nobody would bat an eyelid (even if border police might profile you).
EU Eastern Europe, you might get funny looks but it's still not an extraordinary situation to have various shades of skin colour (e.g. Syrians, various Central Asians are migrant workers in a few of the countries in question; a lot of e.g. the Balkans are on a palette of skin colours).
Non-EU Eastern Europe (referring more to Belarus than Montenegro here), might get casual racism.
Nobody will throw you in jail in indefinite detention in another country with no human rights because of your skin colour, beard, tattoos or anything of the like. Other than of course the usual suspects of Belarus, Russia, Azerbaijan and etc. who could for any reason.
> Nobody will throw you in jail in indefinite detention in another country with no human rights because of your skin colour, beard, tattoos or anything of the like.
Most EU country police don’t need probable cause to detain you. It does happen to be detained for no reason outside of profiling. For example, in France, you can be sent to jail for up to 24h with no probable cause.
A friend's family flew into a EU country with a letter, they thought this letter was their visa but it turned out to be a rejection from the EU country's consulate (maybe it was a request for more information for their visa application). They were denied entry, but there was no indefinite detention, they were just told to get on the next plane out of the country and had to wait in the "international area" of the airport until said flight.
Also, a 24 hour detainment in reasonable conditions is very different from an indefinite detention with a possibility of torture (solitary confinement) or being sent off to an El Savadorian prison with no hope of being returned.
In the US you need probable cause to get pull over or temporary detain you.
In France, you don't need probably cause for temporary detaining you, but if they suspect you of something they can also send you to jail. You can't be sent to jail in the US just on them just suspecting something.
> Depends on which part of Europe. In the more diverse parts, nobody would bat an eyelid (even if border police might profile you).
As a person who matches the description above, and has traveled to Europe extensively and frequently, I can tell you that as much as Europeans like to believe this is this case, it is absolutely not true.
> Nobody will throw you in jail in indefinite detention in another country with no human rights because of your skin colour, beard, tattoos or anything of the like. Other than of course the usual suspects of Belarus, Russia, Azerbaijan and etc. who could for any reason.
Unless you're making some extremely critical assumptions about how much wear the word "indefinite" can bear, this is unfortunately not true either.
A couple years ago my girlfriend and I spent about 2 months travelling through europe. We visited about 10 countries on our trip. A lot of our travel between countries was by bus. After a few bus trips we started noticing something strange - the busses often pulled over for rest stops just after we'd changed countries. Everyone would all get out of the bus to stretch our legs, and some police would miraculously appear and decide they wanted to talk to some of the people who were on our bus.
Now, officially the shengen zone means there's no need to show your documents between countries. But countries still don't want certain people coming in. And they don't want drugs smuggled in either.
It was really interesting who they decided to pull aside for a chat. It was almost always men who were travelling alone. Almost always men who were in the 25-45 age range. And I wouldn't be surprised if there was some racial profiling going on as well. The police never questioned me - probably because I was with my girlfriend the whole time. If she wasn't there, I bet I would have been pulled aside every time too.
Anyway, I believe your experience in Europe. But if you were a man travelling alone, its possible it was partially or fully due to that. For about a decade, every time I went through security at an airport I was always "randomly selected" to have my bag swabbed for chemicals. It never happens any more, and I'm as white as they come. I assume it was a gender + age + travelling alone thing - but its still a mystery to me.
I'm white, male. I travel to some lower-income countries for work. I can dress like a neat, well-paid software developer with the €2000 laptop and €1000 camera in my bag. I'll sail through security in Europe and at the destination, then have a horde of people hassling me for a taxi, sometimes pretty aggressively, and I feel I stand out as an easy target for robbery.
Instead, I wear some old, faded clothes for the journey. Then I get the "random" drug swab check in Europe, border control at the destination might ask to see my hotel booking, but the taxi drivers and street kids will ignore me as another cheakskate backpacker.
Normal stuff, millions folks like that come every year. Millions folks like that live here and also have citizenship, I have friends and colleagues working in banking fitting that description (including passports).
Now I am not saying we are uniform half a billion, not at all, wear burka in eastern EU in some small backwardish village and you will raise eyebrows and maybe more. Try that in US and its the same, to put it mildly.
> Americans do not understand how much press there is outside the US about tourists from Ireland / Germany / Canada getting locked up in ICE jails for weeks on end.
From my point of view, if POTUS blathers about annexing Canada, then the US doesn't deserve my tourist dollars, neither my Netflix subscription, neither my Amazon prime subscription. I've cut back on purchases/subscriptions from US companies as much as it was possible for me and my family. Also cancelled a trip to south east US. Purely out of spite.
Same here. There's one or two things I can't bear to cancel, but I've moved all my email from Google Workspaces to Proton, cancelled Netflix, cancelled plans to go to DEF CON, downgraded storage for Apple iCloud to just above what I need instead of way above, cancelled plans to get a new MacBook Pro this year, stopped buying groceries from companies with American owners, etc.
What I respect most about the European countries' leving tarrifs in response is when they're choosing to issue tarrifs on products that are heavily sourced from red states, and lesserly so from blue states.
You're going to have to come to terms with the fact that a growing number of non-Americans don't care about the left/right paradigm in America anymore.
They just view America itself as the problem and are deciding to detach from it as a whole.
Sending money to Netflix means sending money to the administration through taxes in the US. Funding left wing news sources in the US isn't our responsibility either.
Most stuff on Amazon is made in China anyways. Might as well order directly from Aliexpress or the producer's website. Exactly the same items, but without the American middleman.
There's definitely going to be some sort of EU-China rapprochement now. Not that China is less oppressive - they remain more oppressive, and I wouldn't like to, say, get caught with weed going into China. But they're much less loudly annoying about it.
(another one to watch out for: opiate painkillers in your hand luggage into Middle Eastern states, including Dubai.)
It's not spite, or doesn't have to be. Non US-citizens have very few ways of exerting pressure on the current administration, but money happens one of them.
The threats to Canada aren't attracting nearly as much attention as they should. The problem is people have got too used to just assuming that what Trump says is bullshit: it's just there to sound good on the news, there's no intent to actually do it. Then the tariffs hit.
If there's the slightest possibility that what he says is not bullshit, then Canada needs to take it very seriously and the entire northern hemisphere security architecture needs to permanently change.
The annexing is so unhinged that I can't be sincere, yet anything Trump had any power to do he did do. He didn't get peace in Ukraine because he can't control Russia nor Ukraine. He can attempt an Canadian invasion because he is in control of the army.
^ this. Once (oh, actually twice!) while travelling, I have had entirely benign trouble with paperwork (things like not filling a form correctly on the first attempt). Explaining the circumstances to someone who has to figure out if you're scatter-brained, unlucky, or an actual criminal, isn't particularly fun, but it's been entirely professional and civilised. We resolved it all in about half an hour. Didn't even miss a flight.
Now that it's a political issue, rather than a logistical matter, so it's no longer professional or civilised, no thanks. I have one US customer and thankfully Google Meet is enough, because I'm not getting anywhere near the US for them. I can find other customers if I have to, but I don't think legal fees for navigating the oh-we-totally-had-good-reason-to-think-he-was-a-terrorist-your-honour jail are as easily deductible. As for leisure, haha, no, there are plenty of things to see all over the world where the chances of getting jailed because you said the wrong thing about the wrong president are much smaller. My visa expires this year, I'm not planning to renew it any time soon.
> So you genuinely think that if you go to the US you have a high risk of being imprisoned without due process even if you you don't break any US law?
I think that the risk of being imprisoned without due process is very low, but still substantially higher than in any other Western country, and certainly high enough not to justify the risk.
I also think that the risk of being temporarily imprisoned with due process, until they figure out that I haven't broken any law anywhere, is also very low, but still substantially higher than in most Western countries. And certainly high enough that it's not worth the risk.
I don't have an issue with border controls being a thing. I'm not a free travel idealist. I get why border controls exist, I think the premise of not letting people in unless they provably meet the host country's requirement is perfectly reasonable, and I certainly think that, even if someone did nothing wrong and just doesn't have their documentation in order, sending them back home on the first flight is an entirely reasonable thing to do. I just think that, in the current political climate, both the chances of being the victim of good old abuse and the chances of well-meaning ICE personnel screwing up are too high to be worth crossing the Atlantic for.
Lol there is no due process at the border for a simple imprisonment, it is 'administrative' and I have been held up to a day or so without any sort of hearing. I pulled my FBI record from the last time they tossed me in immigration holding cell, there is no record of it. They don't allow you to have a phone, they do not let you have an attorney, and they do not document they've imprisoned you. They lock you away and that is that, it is your word against theirs and your word from behind a jail cell. You will never prevail in such a situation, and if you complain outside of some place like HN the vast majority of people will angrily ask what you did wrong and that there 'must be more to the story' so you rarely even bring it up.
I do not think most people can conceive just how common and deranged the situation is, and that not only that the documentation is so poor and that most of the people this happens to will not speak up, either because no one will believe them or because they are not a citizen and are afraid it will result in reprisal.
Just look at the Chinese woman that died while the Border Patrol held her. They didn't release that she commited suicide it only came out because media kept requesting information on her otherwise Border Patrol wouldn't have released anything.
From what I understand, being arrested at the U.S. border while entering the country is strictly worse than being arrested by regular police while inside the U.S. In the latter case, the police arresting you will at least read you your Miranda rights, will have no right to search your phone unless authorized by a warrant, and will generally offer bail to get out of the jail in exchange for a court appearance. That's what due process, at a minimum, entails.
None of that happens at the border.
At this stage it doesn't even matter whether you have broken any U.S. law or not.
At the border? Well, it's not a high chance in absolute terms, but the risk of being deemed to have broken the law due to visa/ESTA noncompliance is a lot higher.
I would certainly no longer do US travel for a conference on a tourist visa in case that's deemed "work". (pop quiz to Americans: what visa do I need for that situation, and how difficult is it to get?)
We have multiple examples. It happens, because the incarceration has been privatized and they have no incentive to get you out. They want to keep making more money.
If they happen to look at you on social media / somewhere on the Internet and see that you've spoken out against the current administration's policies, you might be imprisoned (based on what's happened so far). It's the new lese majeste.
Shit, I'm a US citizen flying domestic while colored and I have that fear. If you don't think that's reasonable, you're not paying attention. It's not hyperbole to say that ICE is the new Gestapo, and because international airports are considered borders and thus they have jurisdiction, they cover most of where I'd want to go to or transit through in the US.
I think the news feeds within the US may be approximately equal in their delivery of "this is good change" versus "this is catastrophic change", whilst internationally it's almost entirely "this is catastrophic change" with minor pockets of intolerance apologia.
I'd be interested in alternate viewpoints since I may be in a bleeding-heart, empathetic, progressive, consequence-considering news bubble.
My reasoning is that a family member who lives in the US said that they feel protected / insulated because they're in a deep blue state. I don't feel this is representative of reality, or at least they should be more alarmed than they sounded.
>I think the news feeds within the US may be approximately equal in their delivery of "this is good change" versus "this is catastrophic change", whilst internationally it's almost entirely "this is catastrophic change" with minor pockets of intolerance apologia.
Exactly.
Americans generally don't understand the degree to which the rest of the world gets the CNN 5min recap of what's going on in the US, and it's very much the CNN recap and not the Fox one.
"Tourists locked up, school children shot, government defunded, California on fire, tune in at 11 for more".
The fact that ~half the country doesn't think ICE should be locking up tourists without good reason and the other ~half doesn't think ICE should be locking up anyone gets skipped.
Edit: Just to head off the nitpickers, by "good reason" I mean stuff that border guards of any nation would lock anyone up for if they found, regardless of visa type, status or nation or origin.
assuming your point is correct about what almost the entire country thinks about ICE locking up tourists (and I don't think it is) it's irrelevant: ICE does it anyway and that's all I as a potential turist care about
exactly. As a Canadian I don't really care that half or more of the country thinks that ICE should not be locking up random Canadians or that the annexation threats aren't real or that the tariffs are a negotiating tactic. It is not relevant to my life how they feel if any of these things affect me.
> Doesn't the crime rate go down when Republicans hold the power?
Federally? There's no reason to think the federal government changing hands would impact local crime rates. Overall violent crime has seen steady decline from the 1970s to the present day. [1] That period has seen both Democratic and Republican administrations.
At the state level it's a different picture. 8 of the top 10, and 17 of the top 25 states for homicide rate are "red" states.[2] I think poverty and per-capita income rates in a state are a better predictor of crime rates than which party is specifically in power.
> Doesn't Florida have a much lower crime rate than California?
If you consume exclusively right-wing news media (or your favorite social media ragebait) you'd have that impression. Depending on your source they're either about equal (FBI stats) over the past 2 decades or Florida's murder rate is higher (CDC).[2] Either way it is not "much lower". For "much" lower I'd go to states like Massachusetts, Utah, or Hawaii which have murder rates closer to Western Europe.
I hope that's true. In some places there are high chances to be robbed, killed or kidnapped as a tourist. The more wealthy you seem to the criminals, the higher the danger.
> Doesn't the crime rate go down when Republicans hold the power?
I don't think that's true—or at least, not a strong correlation. Crime rates were going significantly down since the early 90s, regardless who is in power. There was a smaller spike during COVID years, which has I believe returned to normal.
> I think the crime rate is a major concern for every tourist.
It is, but it isn't the only concern, and ICE sending tourists to prison is by definition not a crime, but is just as relevant to potential tourists.
> As a tourist, I rather visit Florida than California.
I really don't think you really want to look at the state level crime rates, you should look at the crime rate for the place you're going to visit. For instance, the violent crime rate in Florida was 260 per 100k people in 2022 (according to Wikipedia)... but if you're going to Walt Disney World, specifically: it's a whole lot less.
> Why would the police treat you bad? I you don't commit any crime it's most likely you have nothing to do with the police.
It's not true, in general, that police won't treat you badly as long as you don't commit a crime. (As an aside, you also have to interact with police officers if you've been the victim of a crime, and again, there's no guarantee they'll treat you well in this situation either).
Like the sibling comment, I don't understand the analogy.
Also, I'd like to emphasize what someone said elsewhere in this comments section: the rest of the world doesn't see the US through the "CNN vs Fox" lens, that's almost exclusively an American phenomenon.
When the President of the United States threatens to invade ex-allies, I don't think that the threatened people give a shit about what the American people think about it. The fact that this guy is the President means that most Americans were not against it, right?
Of course most Americans don't want random people detained. But still, this is happening in the US.
And one thing that I believe is absolutely clear outside the US (whether it's true or not), is that most Americans are perfectly fine with "America First". Americans don't really care about the impact of Trump on the rest of the world; they care about the impact on themselves. Boycotting US products is a way to impact the American people, in the hope that the American people will eventually realise that what's best for them is also better for the others.
Something that I found interesting: when Canadians started booing the US anthem in NHL games, Americans started booing the Canadian anthem. Why? Canada didn't do anything to the US. Does it sound that most Americans are against what's happening, when they defend it? There is this kind of American patriotism where people seem to be like "Yes, my government, is bullying you, but I won't admit it and I will fight against you if you say it. But I'm a good guy, I don't want my government to bully you. I'll just support it because it's my country".
So yeah... pretty sure that it feels a lot different from the outside than from the inside.
> most Americans are perfectly fine with "America First".
I agree with everything you said, except this. Sub “many” and I’d go with it. But at least here, in blue state / more-sane land, there is widespread horror and outrage. We’re only at the “tens of thousands of people protesting” stage and I’ll be the first to say Americans need to do more, but I think it’s going to far to say most Americans don’t care about the impact elsewhere.
I can't edit it, but my point was that this is the perception from the outside. And really I believe that the perception is that most Americans are fine with America First.
but I think it’s going to far to say most Americans don’t care about the impact elsewhere.
Indeed.
Recently in Palo Alto for a few months. Saw lots of people protesting Tesla dealerships, lots of interesting and creative anti-Trump and Elon signs.
Not one word of Canada, of Greenland. Trumps stated goal of destroying Canada's economy to force annexation, or to outright just take Greenland seem not protest worthy.
Most people I spoke to seemed barely conscious of the issue.
To be fair, other matters may be higher pri in their minds, so if other events were not happening in parallel, it may be different.
But when 65 billion dollar defence hardware purchases are being dropped (they are), when future military purchases are not going to happen, when police cars, municipal vehicles are not going to be from US companies any more, when natural resources are going to be sold to the EU and China instead (sadly), the US is going to feel this for a very long time.
Because these are choices for decades. And it's not only Canada making them.
The Hands Off protests had signs and chants saying hands off Canada and hands off Greenland. And I think it's understandable current events have higher priorities than possible events.
Why should US citizens deeply care about Canada? It's not their country, they don't live there. Don't tell me Canadians lose sleep thinking about the well being of US.
> Why should US citizens deeply care about Canada?
You don't have to deeply care about Canada to oppose annexation threats.
> Don't tell me Canadians lose sleep thinking about the well being of US.
A Canadian prime minister said Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.[1]
Doesn‘t look much different from Russian, Israeli or Chinese patriotism. When outsiders criticize your tribe for doing bad things, many are standing in support of the tribe, not the values, and they are the most visible.
Sure. But when the US threaten to invade an ally militarily, therefore destroying the status of "allies" for the foreseeable future and looking more like enemies, I suppose it's more shocking for those ex-allies than... say... when the US find a bullshit reason to invade Irak.
Probably, but if your dad starts beating a kid in the street, I hope you'll do something about it. Also for your dad's sake and for your family reputation.
> The fact that this guy is the President means that most Americans were not against it, right?
I don't know if that's strictly accurate. United States citizens are some of the most heavily disenfranchised in the western world. Our oligarchs have spent decades making it more difficult to vote, especially for people of color, who overwhelmingly disapprove of the current administration. In some urban areas, it can take hours of standing in line to vote, and we don't get time off from work to do so. We've also had a decades long propaganda campaign telling us our vote doesn't matter.
More people didn't vote in the last election than voted for Trump. That's not to say they all would have voted against him, but it's not really the will of the American people.
I don't blame your sentiment, but as part of the 57% that MASSIVELY DISAPPROVES of that nutjob, I don't like the "most" word being used here ;)
Try to remember our weird Electoral College, and that ultimately the vote came down to ~230,000 votes in swing states. (I'm in one of them, and I voted against the felon.)
Also hate that "mainstream news" like ABC and CBS covered Saturday's protests with the phrase "tens of thousand" while the protest organizations reported MILLIONS of protesters (about 1% of the population.)
I'm not going to split hairs over what 43% means, but the point is that we are still in an ecosystem where "Trump supporter" is a viable political stance and very much has a seat at the table of discourse.
That state of affairs is utterly unacceptable, and signals that overwhelmingly the country doesn't get it yet. Look at how many Greenlanders like Trump— those are the numbers you need to be pulling at home. Once 80-90% of the US population agrees that he's not only a bad president but a threat to democracy and a criminal, then we can talk about feeling safe to travel there again.
Oh I agree. I'm angry that the 77 million people voted for Trump. I'm angry that ~22% of the population got out there and voted and supported Trump. And I'm angry that so much of the eligible voting population did not vote. And I'm angry that he's tearing my country apart from the inside.
And zero judgement of anyone's wise decision to avoid or boycott our country, or arm themselves against us.
Also don't know what to think of polls, but anything above 0% approving of Trump is stupid. It's still not "most", which is my only contention. But whether or not it's most doesn't matter as long as all of our checks and balances have disintegrated, and there's one person in charge and making horrible decisions that hurt many Americans, threaten tourists, and are currently wreaking havoc on the stability of the global economy.
"Most" in this case means 49.81% of the vote, with 48.34% voting against. And that's with people largely expecting Trump to behave the same way as last time and a historically unpopular Democratic candidate. Whatever right wing cope you may have read, if the election were held today he'd probably lose.
Granted I don't blame foreigners for not risking ICE abuse. And Hockey fans can just be dumb sometimes. A lot of Americans have severe recency bias, the right is saying "the same people telling you this will be catastrophic were the same ones who locked down schools over a cold and told you inflation would be transitory". These people are going to have to touch the stove to learn it's hot, and then they'll admit that it's hot but deny that it's burning them, and then enough at the margins will start to defect such that they start losing elections, leaving a hard-core to endlessly complain about how if they'd only held on until 3rd degree burns the stove would have turned itself off.
I haven't. I am just telling how I believe it is perceived from outside the US. It seems like Americans here find it a bit excessive for tourists to choose not to come to the US "just because of a mistake at the border". I'm trying to say that from the outside, the US is behaving at least like a big bully, sometimes like an enemy. You don't go on vacation in a country that threatens to attack you militarily.
Feelings of Americans don't matter much in this equation. Most are delusional about what is happening in one way or another. People from other countries will not get even close to the US while there is a chance they will be jailed and sent to a lawless detention center for looking different.
>People from other countries will not get even close to the US while there is a chance they will be jailed and sent to a lawless detention center for looking different.
I am from Europe. I don't think I look different than an American.
There’s no reason to lock tourists up. If you don’t want them put them on the first flight back. Locking people up is expensive and if they’re willing to leave anyway, totally pointless.
You would think that a country with a whole department devoted to government efficiency could work that out.
Aren’t a lot of jails private and for profit? Just bill the tourist for the stay and detain until they pay in full (accruing even more debt in the meantime). It makes perfect business sense which is all that seems to matter to the US nowadays.
No, it's a small-ish minority of them. Most are government owned and run.
That said, there's a huge incentive to piss away money holding people so you can justify your budget and use poor conditions to justify increases in budget. And on top of that the contractors that supply government jails are pretty evil too.
So it's really a distinction without a difference at the end of the day, it's all a pretty rotten system.
ICE sure isn't. That is tax payer money at work, sadly.
But yes, there are incentives that do reward cells and even individuals for number of imprisonments. And no, they do not check nor punish "administrative errors".
As has been a rising sentiment as of late: "The cruelty is the point"
You're right that it isn't efficient in any sense. But the kinds of people who go into and are chosen for "law enforcement" tend to be the very people that should never be given a weapon. It's just a large scale Stanford Experiment in that regard.
Nobody watches or cares about some CNN, that stuff, or Fox and your bipolar political stuff US very much internal US matter. We care about outwardish things, trump mood swings and so on.
For everyone outside the US, the fact that half the country doesn't think ICE should be locking up tourists without good reason is irrelevant since that half isn't barricading detention centers and tearing prison gates open with their cars.
... not that these things would make it safer to travel to the US. In the short run.
The status quo of power is that it is less safe to be a foreigner in the US than it has been in a long time. Possibly at any point in time the US wasn't actively at war with another nation.
> ~half the country doesn't think ICE should be locking up tourists without good reason and the other ~half doesn't think ICE should be locking up anyone
That is not remotely a good faith representation of the controversy.
I've lived my entire adult life in the USA (international student -> non-immigrant temp worker -> resident -> citizen). People are delusional if they think the USA is split in half about immigration. The anti-immigrant sentiment among whites, blacks and some naturalized immigrants (like Cubans in FL) is truly the only thing that crosses political boundaries here.
Let's face it, this is the "regular" newsflash we are getting everywhere: one part world catastrophes and one part local news. Or almost. And as the US is a big player in the world, or used to be at least, most eyes are on your catastrophes.
What are you trying to argue though? I am a bit at a loss to follow. Be so kind and explain.
You want foreign readers to read news about how half of the US wants you, the foreign tourist, be locked up in a jail cell?
The news is already out there. Everyone assumes it's so wanted, because well... it does actually happen
As a potential tourist to the US of A I could not possibly care less if I am detained due to a boondoggle or for no good reason. Both make me not want to ever go there again.
Suggesting that giving the rest of the world the "fox news viewpoint" would somehow improve foreigner's views or knowledge of America is spurious at best, and delusional at worst.
> Americans generally don't understand the degree to which the rest of the world gets the CNN 5min recap of what's going on in the US, and it's very much the CNN recap and not the Fox one.
No, Americans generally don't understand that the rest of the world, and the rest of the world's news, genuinely don't see things in this dual "us vs them", "CNN vs Fox", "Democrats vs Republicans" lens.
When Trump does shit, media from around the world say what he did and why it's bad.
When Biden or Obama before him did shit, media from around the world say what he did and why it's bad.
Fox are genuinely deranged hypocrites who themselves claimed in court that nobody sane would believe them. Very few of the world's media reflect their point of views, because they are absurd. CNN is all over the place, so sometimes their point of view matches with e.g. BBC or Guardian or Süddeutsche Zeitung, sometimes it doesn't.
The bigger debate I see is if it's worse for the US or worse for the rest of the world. The consensus is it's awful for everyone, apart from a few environmentalists that are looking forward to the reduce carbon emissions from a great depression.
I think the consensus is that if the rest of the world grows a spine it will emerge far stronger and the US a weaker state to before - akin to change the British Empire post ww2 compared with before, probably with the same glee they saw the British Empire falling.
This is off topic, but I've actually found comfort in how it has galvanised Europe.
What worries me is which side the US (government, not people) would choose to support if EU states send troops to Ukraine's front lines, which would absolutely instigate a Russian response.
(Trump wouldn't like that the little EU states are messing with his negotiations for the shrinking and pillaging of Ukraine, and Trump is, if nothing else, vengeful).
> The United States has decried "poison pills" embedded in proposed rules which could shut third country allies such as the United States out of European defense projects.
> US Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland emphasized the point in a letter and warned of possible US sanctions: "I hope we can avoid contemplating similar courses of action," he said. The EU has been asked to respond to the letter by June 10.
This is of course despite the fact most EU defence spending has always gone straight into the US economy.
> "The EU is actually at the moment much more open than the US procurement market is for the European Union companies and equipment," Mogherini said in Brussels. "In the EU there is no 'buy European' act and around 81% of international contracts go to the US firms in Europe today."
A defining pillar of a society is either a very strong common goal or enemy. US supplanted both, so yeah actually thank you for that.
My 2 cents - wanted to take family on a trip to western US, parks and maybe SF, not in fucking hell now or in next 2 decades. I know its just some tiny drop in the bucket, but that ~10k spent locally in those few weeks will be spent elsewhere and if enough people will do the same (which they will do), tourism will suffer a bit. Maybe US folks will go there more, who knows (US tourists are still very welcome in Europe, we just hate the people you vote in because they clearly hate us).
> What's wrong with El Salvador? Isn't it a diverse country with wonderful people?
You are also incorrect in your last 2 sentences but no point breaking it down, that much I've learned in past few years with various versions of maga supporters (yes, we have them in Europe too, they usually vote ultra right pro russian and/or obviously corrupt populists).
>What worries me is which side the US (government, not people) would choose to support if EU states send troops to Ukraine's front lines, which would absolutely instigate a Russian response.
Even the Biden administration was going out of its way to not push Russia too far. None of The Powers That Be in the US are interested in stumbling into WW3 with Russia, over Ukraine. Stumbling into WW3 with China, over Taiwan? Maybe. So I'd say Europe should approach such a decision from the assumption that you will receive no support from the US if you go down that road. If Europe wants to send its men to the killing fields of the Ostfront, it's on its own.
Assuming Europe, collectively, can even change the balance of power on the ground is also a stretch. Even some of the larger established militaries in Europe don't have the bodies to move the needle in this fight. The British Army, for example, has woefully understrength infantry battalions and is struggling with enlistment.[1][2] France claims they can put a division into the field [3] but I doubt that, probably more like a reinforced brigade (~5,000). I really don't get the impression European civil society is ready for hundreds or thousands of bodies to start coming back home either, but I could be wrong on that.
Meanwhile Russia inducted ~440,000 men last year, beating recruiting goals courtesy of MASSIVE cash enlistment bonuses, and still expects to grow their end strength this year as well.[4]
> whilst internationally it's almost entirely "this is catastrophic change"
Of course it is. Because the chance of a global recession is about 50% now.
Which means millions of people are going to lose their jobs, businesses will collapse, governments will go into deficit and cut services and there will be needless suffering only a few years after COVID.
Something i like doing from time to time is picking a foreign movie, ie Russian (you know, the standard bad guys) and just pretend it’s a US based movie. Or the reverse, watch something based in the US and turn on Russian dubbing.
It’s funny how quickly you realize the bad guys are both sides.
I say this because often when trying to interpret media i feel the language and accent of the presenter influences me. “They sound like me” therefore i start with an assumption they think like me. Rarely anyone in fox thinks like me.
Odd media literacy take? Yes of course the propaganda is supposed to influence you, and of course if you're actually trying to analyse media you shouldn't let it.
(I retrospectively put the high point of recent West-China relations some time around the release of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_at_Lake_Changjin , which is an obvious propaganda war film with Americans on the "enemy" side .. that was shown in Western cinemas. Certainly in the UK, I think in America as well. Very odd. BTW, MOSFILM is on Youtube if you need some classic Russian cinema)
Must have been a long time ago, because efforts to remove "he" as the default gender have been ongoing for years (80s?) and everybody has more or less settled on they rather than the awkward he/she.
Chinese and Japanese also do not have grammatical gender. Chinese imported gendered pronouns about a century ago for ease of translating Western gendered languages, but both languages tend to either refer to people by name or have no word at all and infer from sentence structure.
Anecdotally: a couple of years after 9/11, when I was a student, some of my friends who travelled to the US mysteriously disappeared for a few days. Turns out someone in the friend group had done some hackery type things (I won't go into more details to preserve their anonymity), and they were basically "detained" and interrogated for several days without being able to notify anyone, including any potential lawyers (not that students have lawyers on speed dial, but whatever). The culprit wasn't even among the people who were detained. No arrests were ever made. Just some good old scare tactics against teenagers.
Basically: behaviour at US borders has been iffy for a lot longer than some folks might think.
Yeah, recent news are essentially raising this from "crossing US border is dangerous, prepare yourself" to "US border guards got a quota of terror to inflict, do you really want to gamble?"
I'd like to provide a counterargument that it's not "iffy" to detain and question people who you're not sure sure should be allowed into the country at a point of entry, and that basically every country on the planet does it.
Non-citizens at US points of entry have very limited constitutional protection. SCOTUS has consistently held that the federal government has broad authority over immigration and border control. Basically nobody has a 1st or 2nd amendment protection at a border crossing, and non-citizens have further-restricted 4th and 5th amendment protections among others.
Border agents do not need any level of suspicion or probably cause to search your person or your effects. Failing to answer questions can result in entry being denied. US v. Ramsey held that everyone, citizen or not, has no inherent right to enter the US at a particular point of entry on a particular date and time and that basically any search is "reasonable" due to national security and law enforcement needs. That ruling was half a century ago.
Shaughnessy v. US ex rel. Mezei (1953) held that even a lawful resident who is re-entering the country after an absence can be denied re-entry without a hearing as long as that denial is lawful. Mezei lived in the US as a lawful immigrant from 1923 to 1948 then went back to Hungary for just over a year and a half. A 1924 law classified him as an "excludable alien" when he returned in 1950 he was permanently barred from re-entry. This was before LPR status was codified so I imagine there is more relevant case law to that classification specifically.
SCOTUS has consistently held multiple distinctions between citizens and non-citizens at the border: Citizens have an absolute right to enter the country, non-citizens (including LPRs) do not. Everyone loses most 4A protections at points of entry, but citizens have a reasonableness bar that non-citizens do not (US v. Montoya de Hernandez 1985, US v. Flores-Montano 2004). Citizens still enjoy due process while non-citizens do not (Shaughnessy again, Kwong Hai Chew v. Colding 1953). Citizenship ensures someone is not in a legal limbo status of being detained unreasonably or indefinitely (Boumediene v. Bush 2008), a non-citizen denied entry without the means to leave is basically stuck there. Citizens are presumed able to enter the country and have faster processing, all non-citizens including LPRs must prove admissibility every time.
So there's a century (or more) of case law supporting what some might call extreme power on the part of the federal government to deny non-citizens entry at any port of entry, for any or no reason. But what it boils down to is whether there are any countries in the world that don't have this policy? There is no country in the world where as a non-citizen I enjoy the same rights and legal recourse as a citizen if I am denied entry, and no country where it is not on me to affirmatively prove to the border agent(s) that I am legally permitted entry. It is always a privilege to enter a country other than your own.
Edit: At the risk of breaking guidelines and making for boring reading, I have to question the odds of someone being able to read this comment in ~30 seconds, process the argument, and decide its worth a downvote vs. "oh I don't like this first sentence."
It's probably more like "your first sentence doesn't address the GP's situation at all, so the rest of the post is just gonna be grandstanding without foundation". Which happens to be a correct assessment of your post.
Specifically, "disappeared for a few days" is not at all what basically every country on the planet does.
I'm very clearly responding to the oversimplifying final sentence and I cited several instances where non-citizens can indeed be held for days without violating US laws.
The GP frames this as the US doing something nobody else does, which is objectively false, and even if his specific example is an egregious violation of someone's rights I'm sure if we looked through the last 25 years of immigration detentions for other countries we could pick out something equally upsetting from each one.
Most of your comment is spent arguing about "can question and deny entry", which is missing the point by a mile.
Also, things can be legal and iffy at the same time (indeed, such wide-ranging powers basically invite that, since they give wide latitude to go overboard in cases that do not deserve it).
That is very much not what I said. Additionally: some of recent people who've been detained are "criminals" as well, a missing document, a tattoo-gun there on a tourist visum, etc. Doesn't make it right to treat them like utter garbage or to make their rights disappear.
Flying from the EU to the US isn’t cheap, and the thought of potentially being denied entry (or worse) makes me think it's best not to visit again for another four years.
Ireland or at least Dublin Airport is unique in that it has 'US Preclearance' so when you land you simply pick up your bags at the carousel and leave the airport as you've passed US immigration based in Dublin Airport.
This means if you're going to be denied entry it will probably be in Dublin which will make it a preferred airport of origin within the EU -- this is massively more convenient than getting stuck in JFK.
What jurisdiction extends where depends entirely on the agreements some diplomats must have worked out. When I travel between France and England for example the paper checks are at the point of departure and there are no more checks on arrival.
Yep. Last time I went to the US I made a mistake with my visa and was briefly detained. it could totally happen to me again, so I'd need a really good reason to run that risk again.
So... immigration services in the US don't use criminal language when discussing how they handle people accused of immigration offenses, because there's a whole legal structure to pretending it's a civil infraction and thus you don't have any rights related to say... trial by jury or the state proving your guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
But. The mechanical processes can include indefinite detention in facilities that look and function exactly like jails.
So... what you CALL it is almost certainly something different than what it is.
I've been in secondary, but didn't have it described to me that way. I would not call it detainment without clarifying it because I associate that word with incarceration, but I am also reluctant to travel knowing the odds of that happening again are up.
They were quite clear that I wasn't allowed to leave and I wasn't allowed to use my phone. I'm not sure where a debate about semantics would have gotten me.
Aren't all immigration "arrests" all "detentions", technically speaking (not that it makes any difference in reality - you're behind bars)? Aren't ICE prisons called "detention centers"?
There's a pretty sizable proportion of USians that have a hard time accepting that other countries exist.
For what it's worth, we're also starting to have similar (though so far less pronounced) reactions to domestic travel. There's a number of states that are unsafe to travel to if you or someone in your family has a gender identity that's not on the approved list--and that has an outsize effect. I won't go to those places since they don't deserve my tax dollars, and am just jumping on a bandwagon of plenty of other people in making that decision.
I'm Italian, my wife is Russian and my sister lives with her family in California. I've always been pretty vocal online about my dislike for Putin, and since the war in Ukraine started, I became very worried about visiting Russia, just in case they needed some random Italian guy to extort concessions from the Italian government. So, I stopped going (we were planning a family trip right in the Summer of 2022).
For this Summer we wanted to visit my sister, so we bought tickets last December. I've always been pretty vocal about my dislike for Trump too. Well, for the first time, I'm worried that, when traveling to the US, some overzealous TSA agent could ask me to get access to my social media accounts, and that I could be refused entry, or even get sent to one of those wonderful privately owned jails; you know, for lèse-majesté. I reckon that the risk is too little to warrant us canceling our trip, but honestly, if I didn't have my tickets already, I would probably not have bought them now.
I literally do not have any social media accounts (does HN count?), and I'm concerned that would immediately mark me as a suspicious individual (although I can eloquently justify this to the nth degree if required).
Having said that, weigh up the benefits and drawbacks of scrubbing your social media accounts to minimise that particular concern?
I don't have any, so I don't know what I'd be losing, but I can say that I feel sorry for some family members of mine who have been sucked in to the social media dopamine addiction farm. They'd be better off without it and having more time to be their own selves and live their own lives rather than other people's.
Strikes me there's a new AI service in there: aged social media accounts. Run by bots for at least 2 years and available for purchase to give you a plausible looking online footprint when needed.
(A similar service exists for Cayman Island holding companies IIRC)
>I've always been pretty vocal about my dislike for Trump too. Well, for the first time, I'm worried that, when traveling to the US, some overzealous TSA agent could ask me to get access to my social media accounts, and that I could be refused entry, or even get sent to one of those wonderful privately owned jails;
I've been a vocal Trump supporter on social media. By this measure they should give me a green card if I'll ever plan to visit US.
> I am not taking the risk of getting locked up in ICE jail any time soon, no matter how unlikely it is.
I've turned down a 7-day-all paid-trip my company was offering me to San Francisco for this (and I had in the past a bad experience at Puerto Rico's border).
It's not even about being locked up in an ICE jail.
In Australia, we just had someone [1] who was detained for 8 hours with their phone/laptop searched all because they stopped over in Hong Kong rather than flying direct to the US.
It's that kind of irrational, unpredictable behaviour that makes travellers stay away and instead choose from one of the hundreds of other desirable travel destinations who want you to visit.
> Americans do not understand how much press there is outside the US about tourists from Ireland / Germany / Canada getting locked up in ICE jails for weeks on end.
We read about it, too. It just seems absolutely nobody close to power is willing to do anything to even tap the brakes.
The fact that Trump is nuts and possibly serving Putin by destroying the West is one thing, but the fact that so many people seem fine with it, corporations and institutions eager to do his bidding, Republicans all voting along with things they used to strongly oppose, that's really an eye opener.
If you are from Canada, get Nexus. Much less trouble crossing in USA. Small fee to pay for the peace of mind and the process to cross is so much faster.
Well yes, that would be a thing to do if this was only about personal safety (and one was only worried about the border and not getting vanned on some random street corner).
At this point it's also about standing with our countrymen and spending our tourist dollars at home.
I don't think this is the main reason. US show hostility to the rest of the world, talking about annexing other countries or trying to ruin their economy. I know Trump doesn't represent all USers, but still, I much rather spend my tourist money somewhere else.
Just like a lot of Americans (including the left) that I personally know who still think "51st state" is a light-hearted joke or "Trump doesn't mean it" or they don't think it's a serious threat.
They don't know or don't think canadians takes this seriously and it's not fucking funny.
I'm not surprised at all. That's North Korea/Russia levels of terror and it's honestly sickening that Trump can just go on TV and say "yeah it's a good deal I'm glad we're working with El Salvador".It's maddening the admin can admit a "mistake" but then fight with a judge that they can't be ordered to fix a blatant obsruction of the constitution they loved waving around the year prior
While every item in her bag was swabbed and dismantled, she was subjected to a full body search. "I was in this very loud, weird, industrial space with pipes and conveyor belts and lights and sirens, being told to open my legs. I was silently crying, watching all my stuff being torn apart as someone else was searching every crevice of me."
Not to mention how they have thrown legal US residents in a fucking Salvadorean megaprison without due process and all but laughed about it.
I don't give a damn what anyone thinks about immigration or actual policy, these are tin pot dictator moves. They are crimes against humanity, and they are happening with regularity in two months since the new administration.
Our reputation accumulated over a century has been largely wasted, and American soft power has evaporated.
They didn't simply expel them, the sent them to a foreign prison. Don't misrepresent what occurred. And Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a legal resident. They are doing this to people who _do_ have the right to stay. Even for those who are in the US illegally, they are entitled to basic human rights and have protections under US law. They can be deported in accordance with domestic and international law.
Sending them to foreign prison camps instead is in fact a crime against humanity.
> Americans do not understand how much press there is outside the US about tourists from Ireland / Germany / Canada getting locked up in ICE jails for weeks on end.
And they shouldn't. As far as I know, those cases of German getting locked up media coverage was intense, but the stories didn't check out. Those were cases of Germans entering by foot via Tijuana, making condracting claims to the ICE officer - raising suspicions with those officers. In case of entering the US by plane, I haven't seen and credible articles that resulted in detention.
He failed to show up to a hearing about his green card. Not saying his treatment is warranted, but all those cases had at least some kind of merrit where an ICE agent might become suspicious. It is not as random tourists getting detained.
"Schmidt’s green card was allegedly tagged for him failing to attend a hearing because the invitation was sent to his old address, according to the family’s fundraiser to cover Schmidt’s legal costs and loss of earnings.
“To compound this error, he had just recently been provided with a new replacement Green Card since he had lost the original one,” the fundraising page says. “Even then U.S. Immigration failed to let him know that there was an outstanding hearing which he had missed and that his card would be tagged.”"
This is the nature of social media. If you see 10 examples of something happening in another country there is a good chance you will alter your behavior.
The reverse scenario is happening too. There are americans that refuse to go to europe because of the examples they seen of immigrants committing crimes and ruining neighborhoods.
As someone who spends a lot of time on both locations, I know that both scenarios are rare, and can logically overcome the emotional response after seeing examples online. But for people who don't travel much I understand.
I travel quite a bit, and there are only 2 places on Earth where I was close to a shooting happening in real time: São Paulo, Brazil, and Oakland, California.
As much as the scenarios can be rare, there is an undeniable sense of everything hanging by a thin thread when traveling around the USA, which I've only experienced in Latin American countries in all my trips.
Giving that I'm originally from Brazil even though with Swedish citizenship, I won't be traveling to the USA anytime in the near future. I have no idea what could happen, might be a completely rare occurrence to be profiled at the border, jailed for no cause, etc., but there's nothing in the USA worth enough to make me even more paranoid at crossing its borders. It's more like the straw that finally broke the camel's back, it's been brewing for a while, I've been stopped by CBP for holding both a B-1/B-2 visa on my Brazilian passport as well as an ESTA on my Swedish one, I do not want the potential issues that another interrogation by CBP at present times could create, like being sent to some jail for 20 days instead of just being refused entry and put on a plane to get back to the EU.
I travel even more than you and only got robbed twice in 40 years on earth: in Johannesburg, South Africa and Stockholm, Sweden.
You can claim it's rare, but it happened on 100% of my trips to Sweden. Therefore, I will never travel back to Sweden. It's just not worth it and I have no idea what could happen (stabbing? murder?). Nothing in Sweden is worth the absolute fear this country provokes.
How do you know? It doesn't look like OP specified how much they've traveled.
> I only got robbed twice...in Johannesburg, South Africa and Stockholm, Sweden...it happened on 100% of my trips to Sweden
That sucks, I'm sorry that happened. It sounds like it happened once, and so that "100%" is just one trip by one person? Unfortunately, that result is within the realm of randomness, though I'd understand if, to you, it felt bigger than that.
That said, I don't think it compares to arbitrary (or worse, politically- and personally-motivated) government detainment (or otherwise harming) of innocent people.
Please don't come here, it's definitely dangerous and you shouldn't ever step foot here again to avoid any danger to your life, it's a hellhole that no one like you should ever attempt to visit :)
It's not rare, it will happen to you. Do not come.
> This is the nature of social media. If you see 10 examples of something happening in another country there is a good chance you will alter your behavior
That's actually the nature of bayesian probability: if something is happening a higher proportion of the time vs. before, it's more likely to happen now vs. before. If that something is bad, that means higher risk. It's expected that a rational actor would act to minimize risk to them.
> As someone who spends a lot of time on both locations, I know that both scenarios are rare
Precisely how rare is it, over the last couple months, for US immigration officials to detain someone (perhaps "for further questioning", perhaps to a prison) who hasn't violated any laws? Claiming "it's rare" isn't very useful. Remember, the expected probability is ~0.
If non-US citizens can be deported to El Salvador without due process for having a tattoo that an ICE officer deems to be "gang-related", you're immediately going to alienate most of the World's population from wanting to visit for any purpose.
The lack of due process and the threat of extradition on a whim is one that feels less likely to happen to me as a caucasian with US citizens as family, but the impact of it would be life-changingly poor. I'd rather just not travel to the US, for tourism, family or business reasons.
I'm not sure anything done in the last 3 months is much of a surprise to people who listened to his campaign talking points. It seems to me that people just thought he was a lying politician who lies, and this was just more lying. What's caught people out is that he's doing it all, and believes SCOTUS will never condemn or find illegal a thing he has done so due process is an abstract concept only, and others consider themselves immune for actions covered by Exec Order.
What I find terrifying and everyone else should as well: If all that stands between you and indefinite detention is an accusation without due process that you're foreign then literally anyone including citizens can be black bagged.
When they'll deport innocent US citizens to El Salvador and then argue it's impossible to get them back I don't have any hope at all as a visitor. There's no way in hell I'm stepping foot in the United States right now.
Good point, the man I was thinking of isn't a citizen. But even though the administration has admitted it was an error, they still aren't interested in seeing him returned.
Don't even count on being a U.S. citizen making a difference. If they don't have due process for non-citizens, they just have to claim you are not a citizen to send you to El Salvador. Without due process you cannot prove you are a citizen.
German tourists are being detained by ICE. British tourists have been detained by ICE. Permanent residents of the US have been detained by ICE. Graduate students, scientists, tourists, you name it... detained for prolonged periods of time by ICE. Not all of them had tattoos, that's just an example, and that's the point - ICE want to use fear and uncertainty, because that's their M.O.
Detainment is bad enough. It's only a matter of time before extradition to El Salvador is extended, but even if that didn't happen, what is happening right now is enough to put people off.
"A Pew Research Study conducted in 2023 shows that 32.0% of Americans have tattoos. 41.0% of individuals under 30 have at least one tattoo, as do 46.0% of individuals aged between 30 and 49."
That's not "most" in the sense, 50%+. It's still pretty significant.
> Using forward booking data from a major GDS supplier, we've compared the total bookings held at this point last year with those recorded this week for the upcoming summer season. The decline is striking — bookings are down by over 70% in every month through to the end of September. This sharp drop suggests that travellers are holding off on making reservations, likely due to ongoing uncertainty surrounding the broader trade dispute.
> And I rolled it over 30 days to be able to show any recent changes while not getting lost in the noise of daily change.
small thing, but learned at work that often there's a weekly pattern (and I'd bet there is for airplane travel) so you ought use a rolling 7 day average instead of 30 because there are different numbers of weekends in each day's 30 day number.
This is why there's a slight zigzag in the line charts in the article.
One fun one is that in a lot of year on year change reporting for China specifically, Jan-Feb is considered a single month and then all the other 10 months are seperate. Reason is:
[spoiler]
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The dates of Chinese New Year move around across the year and they have such a big effect on the stats that it's easier just to lump the two months together.
Yep. It's only going to get worse before it gets better, but that's necessary to change the political situation — that's the real "medicine" that we're taking here.
People will only wake up when the economy really hurts. That's why they voted for 47 in the first place, so I hope they're even more awake now.
A certain cohort of the population ignores logic and reason, and runs on vibes and tribalism. They will only understand economic pain, when it hurts them personally, based on the evidence. And so, the rest of the world must incur economic pain in the US so the electorate understands its place in the economic system.
Looking at the crazy New York city, with the crazy architecture and such or going othe replaces and seeing the crazy car centric structures, but also the crazy neighborhood between rich and poor or just the crazy landscape around Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls.
The positive crazy compared to negative crazy sums up less and less to a positive value, though.
Yes but then you hang a “no guests” sign outside. You don’t let them in your house and then scream at them, lock them up in the bathroom for 2 weeks before kicking them out.
The public cruelty is the point. Make people suffer horrendously outsized consequences for the most minor of innocent infractions and it quickly sends a message that you're not welcome here.
This is more like hosting an AirBnB but then sometimes you lock your guests up in the basement and torture them. So you get some bad reviews on AirBnB. If that's what you're going for.
This is more like the sad case of someone who got out of their car and knocked on a door to ask directions, in Texas, who was murdered by the occupier who was paranoid and armed.
That is perfectly reasonable, when it is literally your house.
But within the metaphor - elected leaders need to balance the short-term approval of voters who are angry/xenophobic, against the longer-term disapproval of voters who don't like losing "their" cuts of withering travel/tourism-related revenues ...and can figure out who is mostly to blame for that.
"While every item in her bag was swabbed and dismantled, she was subjected to a full body search. "I was in this very loud, weird, industrial space with pipes and conveyor belts and lights and sirens, being told to open my legs. I was silently crying, watching all my stuff being torn apart as someone else was searching every crevice of me."
It makes sense if you view it as an intentional effort to demonize the US. Terrorizing visiting tourists is a great way to get the “we are crazy, your best never come here” message out.
The simplest explanation is that this administration wants the US to be hated and sees atrocities as an important tool in that effort.
That department -- customs and border enforcement -- needs to be ideologically pure for the next phase. They'll need to be able to rapidly judge new hires for culture-fit. Can you do the things that only make sense if your boss wants USA to be hated? Can you deftly talk that group of travelers into all unlocking their phones for imaging?
Off the top of my head, playing Devil's advocate it could be to encourage illegal immigrants to self-deport. The jailing of Germans with green cards for a fortnight is an unintended side-effect of cranking up the overall hostility level.
The thing is: this isn't entirely new, it's just something that happens very rarely to Westerners who don't alert sniffer dogs.
The "kids in cages" Southern border immigration detention ran through both the previous Trump administration and the Biden administration. Some pretty horrific stories from then, especially during COVID.
That story starts with her being refused entry to Canada. So, there's more than just "US border guards mean" going on here.
Then it turns out that she was using Workaway, which is like AirBnB or Uber but for foreign labor on tourist visas. They don't tell you that you need a work visa to work in another country [1], but you almost certainly do anywhere you go, not just the US. The woman in the story was working in exchange for accommodation, which is legal for citizens but not for aliens: work permits and visas exist to deter illegal immigration. She didn't have intent to immigrate illegally, but the scheme under which she entered the country was illegal, and she confessed to it in her statement to the border guards.
The real bad actor in this story was Workaway, and I'm surprised they haven't been shut down yet. They offer an alien labor arrangement that is almost certain to get you detained if caught with the wrong visa, don't give you advice on visas, and aren't there to help if something does go wrong at the border. I doubt there are many countries who welcome their alien labor arrangements, either.
[1] "Workaway is a listing site that enables contact between members, we are unfortunately unable to arrange or advise on visas. There are so many countries with different regulations or laws for different types of volunteering activity, so we would suggest directly getting in touch with the relevant embassy of your destination. It is the responsibility of the host and/or volunteer to make sure they are within the law." https://www.workaway.info/en/stories/workaway-for-newbies-co...
You're right. But as someone who has been internationally nomadic for 15 years, I don't think most people understand how many tens of thousands of people travel internationally on tourist visas doing work exchanges to be able to afford their tourism. It's commonplace. Yes, it's usually illegal. Most countries don't dedicate a whole lot of resources to enforcing that. And in most countries, getting caught working while on a short term tourist visa will get you 1) a fine 2) deported (probably self-deported, on a commercial flight) and 3) banned from re-entering the country for a period of time.
What does NOT usually happen in these cases is 1) having a full body cavity search 2) being shackled in the back of a van 3) having your phone confiscated 4) being forbidden from contacting any family or legal representation 5) having your clothing cut apart 6) being transported to a different city without being informed of what is happening 7) being cut off from access to your foreign funds 8) being detained for 19 days.
The notable thing isn't that she broke the law. The notable thing is the cruel and unusual severity of the punishment for a relatively minor visa violation. Typically, when countries punish tourists so severely for what should be a slap on the wrist, tourists stop wanting to go there.
Nobody is denying her visa wasn't correct for the type of work she was doing. But that doesn't justify the treatment she got. Nobody but violent criminals should be treated like this.
This was a paperwork issue and should've been resolved with paperwork - refusal of entry and a plane ticket back.
ICE statements about detention say it's supposed to be non-punitive, but clearly it's punishing for the detained. Lots of people get detained for what are actually civil violations or even just suspicion of civil violations, not crimes. We really need a new system. People shouldn't be locked up for more than 24 hours until they've seen a judge, and I imagine in many cases, lockup could be avoided entirely with a court summons (which if violated would justify arrest).
> Brösche had her German passport, confirmation of her visa waiver to enter the country, and a copy of her return ticket back to Berlin
Sounds like all her paper work was good to go...
> she was still pulled aside for a secondary inspection by a US Customs and Border Protection agent.
Ok, that sucks but not too crazy...
> Brösche said she then spent days detained in a cell at the San Diego border before being taken into custody by Ice. The agency brought her to the Otay Mesa detention center, where she’s now been for more than a month.
What?
> US Customs and Border Protection accused Brösche of planning to violate the terms of the visa waiver program by intending to work as a tattoo artist during her time in Los Angeles.
Ok, let's say that's actually the truth. Let's say she told them "yeah I'm gonna work here". Ok, she's in the wrong, worst case but being detained for A MONTH?!
> According to ABC’s 10News, she was forced to spend eight days in solitary confinement in the facility.
?!
> Lofving also said she tried to get help from the German consulate in Los Angeles.
I wish they would have reached out to the Consulate to see if they'd supply any information about what's going on here. Maybe its policy for the consulate to not have any comment about cases though... not sure.
Cases like this make me wonder how long it will be before the first "digital nomad" or simply workaholic gets detained, after admitting they might check the email and have a Zoom call during their vacation.
Sounds like due process was exactly what she got. Are you suggesting everybody gets a trial before they are deported? Or that the US has to allow you to enter if you do so legally, determined by trial? Either will result in much, much longer deportation times.
What reason is there to think that there is any more backstory? More transparency might yield new information, but it might not. The situation might simply be exactly as it appears.
The backstory is that she illegally entered from mexico but CBP is in the US, Mexico won't take her back so ICE has to arrange deportation. Unsurprisingly there are no return flights from bumfuck border town to Germany so she is detained (and interrogated, her Instagram shows her giving tattoos to people in mexico) and sent to San Diego and detained until ICE arranges a flight. ICE prioritizes mass deportations so a single person likely gets put at the back of the queue.
A sane border would just block illegal entrance. But pretending that ICE should be optimized for single person expedited deportation is just stupid. While in CBP you may not be allowed to contact your lawyer the 60 days she was in ice custody was completely fair game, but she didn't for some unknown reason.
I'm an EU citizen who's on the organizer team of Elm Camp 2025, and I'm really on the fence whether to even risk the flight to US and attending, hearing these stories :(
First, do it for your own safety. A wrong form or the wrong answer to a verbal question after 18 hours of travel could land you in weeks of brutal detention.
Second, do it to help the cause. We here in America need to suffer the consequences of our actions. We need to see conferences canceled. We need to see imports stopped. We need to see people refusing to bring their knowledge and expertise here.
It is going to be a long, dark four years for the globe. It's going to take all of us working from within and without to have any hope of dismantling this evil empire.
What visa do you hold? I wouldn't be confident that organising a conference would fall under ESTA or B1, speaking at one should be, but ultimately it's upto the goon looking at your application at the desk. In any case ensure you immigrate as early in the day as possible to maximise the chance of a quick deportation if you are rejected.
Not necessarily the same distance. For example if you consider academia, the center of gravity of "serious" "western world" universities that can reasonably be visited has shifted considerably towards Europe now.
Beyond the recent chilling effects from people being detained, the idea of having your digital presence scanned and judged by a flaky arbiter at the border, or having your devices imaged and/or backdoored are big turnoffs for me.
I have friends who were asked about their social media accounts at the US border. I.e. like you have in Russia, where they can check your Telegram for the subscription to opposition channels.
It's not surprising that people are reluctant to travel to the US now.
Remember that many (most?) people coming from Canada go thru US immigration there, so these numbers (from US airports) likely represent non-Canadian visitors.
With so many fewer people coming the ratio of fliers to immigration people is going to be lower, chance of getting hassled is going to be that much higher.
Personally I'm unlikely to return while these stories of bad things happening to people at the border continue
(this isn't a new thing, in particular because the US has no exit processing infrastructure - people get tagged as overstaying even though they've left, get popped into detention when they return - always keep your boarding passes when you leave).
It matches my anecdotal experience here (from Germany). When talking about travelling to the US, previously the discussions of the drawbacks would circle around climate impact, expense or flight time. Recently, this has shifted to feeling unwelcome or unsafe. I talked to two different people last week who had gone to the US regularly in the past years, who have decided to not go this year (attending a wedding and the other for touristic reasons), due to the current political climate.
As a Middle Eastern Canadian, I’ve been harassed at the U.S. border more times than I can count—often detained and questioned for hours, leading to major delays and unnecessary stress. It’s happened so frequently that I've completely stopped visiting the U.S. and avoid any connection that involves touching U.S. soil. It makes travel a bit more complicated, but honestly, it's worth it.
These days, my favorite place to visit is Europe. Even the UK, which can sometimes be tricky for travelers, has never been an issue for me. I’ve only ever had polite and respectful interactions there. And when crossing into Germany in particular, I’ve found the officials to be consistently professional and efficient.
I feel like I'm spinning, hitting the spiral of the drain where civilization is to inevitably pass through, gone. The many who suffered and continue to suffer from iniquities of the human race carry the tonnage of likewise experiences, know a truth that is so impossible to know:
"It was useless to close one's eyes or turn one's back to it because it was all around, in every direction, all the way to the horizon. It was not possible for us nor did we want to become islands; the just among us, neither more nor less numerous than in any other human group, felt remorse, shame, and pain for the misdeeds that others and not they had committed, and in which they felt involved, because they sensed that what had happened around them and in their presence, and in them, was irrevocable. Never again could it be cleansed; it would prove that man, the human species - we, in short - had the potential to construct an infinite enormity of pain, and that pain is the only force created from nothing, without cost and without effort. It is enough not to see, not to listen, not to act."
The US used to be the coolest place I'd do anything to visit growing up. In the last decade or so it's become way more unattractive and not worth the effort compared to alternatives.
Me and my wife had the plans of visiting the US every year for vacation before our daughter starts with school in a couple of years. Not anymore. I think this administration will not only destroy a lot of goodwill and business relationships, but also the dreams of many people who had a positive attitude towards the US.
Just to note that in most places at the moment (unless you turn up in that red baseball cap...) the attitude to most Americans is likely to be a kind of horrified pity (again, unless you start saying how great it all is). Most people are generally aware that Trump doesn't have universal support, and unlike your own media apparently, we do get coverage of protests and so on. Getting back into your own country though, yeah that might be a problem. Sorry.
Maybe related - I noticed that hotel room prices in New York dropped, they used to start at $350/night just a few months ago, now you can get them for $150/night.
>This newsletter doesn’t delve into politics, and the reason for this change is both pretty obvious and not in need of further discussion here.
Can someone state the obvious for me please?
The two thoughts in my head were "this is because tourism is down" and "this is because migrants/asylum seekers aren't crossing the border at the moment".
I would think you'd draw different conclusions if it's one or the other, but, regarding the latter, I don't know how many of them cross the border at the border and how many typically do it with a plane ticket.
Thanks for sharing your perspective, but my question is about the proportion of people like you who are thinking about visiting compared to people who are thinking about migrating.
A general sense that the US is actively trying to hurt us in the rest of the world. Enabling Putin, stopping USAID programs, imposing tariffs etc. the list is long by now. Just makes you not feel like supporting it by buying US or going there and spending money. Secondly lots of stories about tourists being detained by ICE make it feel even almost scary to go.
I voted for not him and persuaded a number of people to do the same (not that it mattered in my state anyway, other than reducing his popular vote margin). I'm not yet sure what more I could have done.
I get that narrative. I guess my point is that, if border crossings at the US-Mexico border are down 90%+ compared to last year, and if some migrants/asylum seekers fly in instead of crossing a border on foot/in a car, then how much of this decrease is would-be migrants deciding it's not a good time, and how much of this is would-be tourists being scared of detention? Is that even possible to know?
I was.. with my friend visiting family. Not knowing where they live - because the person picking them up is waiting at the airport (8h detained, 10y ago).
Another one being accused of selling drugs in LA (never been there, detained for 2 days, banned and put on a flight back home, 5y ago)
People are staying away from an oligarchy where habeas corpus has been suspended for a wide range of situations, and that results in extradition without an option of release to El Salvador. That's the obvious bit the rest of us know and can see and TFA draws a line to that you can't see yet.
Tourism is not down in other countries. Migrants/asylum seekers don't typically fly in by plane to the top 8 airports in the US, and those that do, do not do so in numbers anywhere near large enough to account for the change in numbers.
A lot of people do immigrate by flying in and not leaving when their visa expires. It doesn't make for very spectacular news footage though. Not sure what the numbers are, but I used to work in restaurants with lots of people who were "undocumented" and they all came to the US via flight. The people crossing the border on foot are absolutely destitute and easy targets of animosity
UK is its own kind of dump, and has the same anti-immigrant dumpster fire being stoked by the media to distract the populace while the politicians & their friends finish looting what little is left of the country. Would not recommend.
i know europe is making it easier for grants/proposals to go through and lessening the overall time it takes for grants to be accepted, for people in academia leaving the US
So this period last year the visits went up 300K, and this year they are down 200K. So compared to the two year ago it's still up 100K? Am I missing anything? It would be interesting to see the data over a multi-year period.
edit: they actually even say that the data "go back for 3 years", but only show 1 year of data.
It makes sense that 2024 had more travel than 2023, given Covid. But a longer timeline view would be nice, as would measurements in percent rather than numbers.
Based on a quick online research, I estimate there are about 30-40k visitors landing from Europe in the US on any day. So roughly 3 million people in the last 3 months.
I have seen maybe 5-10 very prominent cases in the last 3 months.
Are these numbers roughly correct?
Do we have any knowledge that this number is higher than before?
I would guess that this is a similar situation to mass shootings at school - quantitatively low risk, qualitatively both repeating and horrifying enough that most Europeans would choose drastic measures to minimise the risk of such a thing rather than accept it as a cost of doing business.
People buy lottery tickets knowing very well they are almost certainly not going to win. But you never know. You might get rich. You buy the ticket is the prize is tempting enough. Likewise, you avoid a low probability risk when the outcome is bad enough.
But this is only true if things have changed. That's why I am asking if we know that the number of incidents went up compared to last year or if it was in the same range but without the media coverage.
You assume that being detained is the only thing you're thinking about.
Not wanting to support the US for plunging the whole world into economic turmoil or not wanting to support a country speed running into fascism are other reasons.
This is not really... what you expect it is, I think.
There are more people killed in mass shootings in the USA every year than there have been people killed in attacks during Christmas in Europe, like, ever.
People buy lottery tickets knowing very well they are almost certainly not going to win. But you never know. You might get rich. You buy the ticket is the prize is tempting enough. Likewise, you avoid a low probability risk when the outcome is bad enough.
Yes. And there's comparatively less incentive to go into the USA... where you have higher chances to get assaulted, even by CPB/ICE/police, or shot, by anyone, than anywhere in the EU.
You may also not take the lottery ticket, and buy someone a drink.
Its like Tesla's FSD killing people. The threshold for acceptance of fuckups is very small, especially when you don't do anything wrong and there is a lot of needless humiliation. Why risk it? There are actually nice welcoming places all over the globe.
America's unwavering support for a lunatic country openly and joyously committing acts of unspeakable horrors probably not helping. Your president boasted on twitter about mass murdering a village tribal gathering. Wonderful country you got there
I think it’s a reality for sure, but aren’t the graphes showing the reverse, that downwards trend started before all of these US politics changes and news and +80k in April 2024 -80k in April 2025 just mean we are back to the April 2023 numbers?
Why would anyone fly to a country that's proud of shackling them and keeping them in detention without notifying their families? With the added bonus that next week they might be rendered to a slave gulag in El Salvador?
A lot of US undocumented immigration is not people jumping the US-Mexico border but instead people from India, the Middle East, and China intentionally overstaying their Visas. Obviously they don't want to come during an administration that is hard on immigration.
Can anyone explain why the number of US passengers increased in a proportion at the same time? Perhaps airlines dropped prices due to the lower demand, causing US citizens to snap up tickets?
It happens every year, but not necessarily on the same dates, both year to year and family to family, depending largely on where you or your kids go to school. Most people I know had spring break Mar 17-23 this year. It was a few weeks earlier last year.
I see. According to this [0] website spring break finished typically in mid-March last year. Perhaps that explains why the blue line in OP dips back to 0% around mid-March.
maybe Americans semi-permanently abroad assume other countries will employ reciprocal craziness, like a trade war, and are running home before they get locked up too?
Maybe US business people are traveling to other countries to compensate for the resistance or refusal of international partners to travel to a fascist state.
People coming home for fear of retaliation? People coming home to help family who might get caught in some detention issue? People who were working for agencies like USAID no longer having a reason to be abroad?
Many americans loved what Hitler was doing to Make Germany Great Again.
Charles Lindbergh for example blamed the Jews for WW2
> National polls showed that when England and France declared war on Germany, in 1939, less than 10 percent of our [USA] population favored a similar course for America. ... The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration.
We don’t like to talk about it but there were literal, actual Nazi rallies in support of Germany. And not fringe, either — notably one at Madison Square Garden.
In fairness, there are still nazi rallies all across the country. It's them forcing their freedom of assembly and speech rights on everyone. Doesn't necessarily mean everyone in the US today is a nazi.
Even the Trump brigade are more fascists than nazis. Not that it's a good thing, just pointing out the distinction.
I have no complaints with the fact that either nazi or fascist rallies are allowed, but I have great objection to what it says about the country that they were/are attended in relatively large numbers.
While there were certainly many Nazi sympathizers, one should not extrapolate the desire to stay out of the war as widespread support for Germany.
Popular opinion was generally against the third reich. In 1936 there was an ultimately unsuccessful effort to boycott the Berlin Olympics and in 1938 94% of Americans disapproved of Germany's antisemitic policies. [0][1]
When the war started, opinion varied depending on the question. When asked about directly entering the war most were indeed against it. However, if asked simply about supporting England, France and Poland, Americans were strongly in favor. They supported providing humanitarian and military aid and rejecting any of Germany's territorial claims. [2] The more complicated question was if America should continue supporting England even if that risked involvement in the war. In early 1940 about 35% were in favor, rising to 70% by Autumn 1941. [3]
A few years ago, when US ESTA and visa process started to require that you declare your social network accounts, a lot of people were in a mind like "who cares? I have nothing to hide so I don't see the problem"
And now we can see the problem that this can create you huge problems just by posting lawful content that is not positive to Trump and his policies...
People of my family are flying in in March. New restrictions are in place for people who visited specific countries. My only advice to fellow Europeans who want to travel to the US is to get issued a new passport and, if you have to, lie on your ESTA if you spent any time in Cuba or in the Middle East since 2011 (Your trips are linked to your passport ID)
You should not lie to them, but they basically play a huge bluff game. They will scare you into thinking they know all. They do not, they are largely playing a confidence game. Cartel members or their clients who are coached will make it through no problem with the right story if they already have a visa. A relatively innocent european who admits they are going to tattoo someone, because they are naive, will get sniffed out and crucified.
I have been to Iraq and Syria so I have been subjected to imprisonment and/or intense questioning almost everytime I enter. I'm pretty familiar with their system and interrogation techniques.
I've been in the US despite visiting two fo those countries. Now, if you went to Cuba after 2021, you're completely barred for entry it seems, which, to be honest is weird. anyway like i said, your travels are link to your passport number, just ask a new one.
The most concerning aspect of these stories are the ones where there's never an explanation of _why_ the person was detained. I don't know if they ever found out what happened. In some cases its clear but others seem like an administrative error.
Also there is big question what is expected out come for being denied entry. Waiting on airport for next open outbound flight? Spending days or weeks in some inhumane facility? Later one doesn't seem reasonable risk to take...
I mean, I'm a US citizen and I'm not doing foreign travel any time soon because I don't want to fly into the US either. With the way ICE is acting, I'm not going to count on my citizenship to protect me from violations of my constitutional rights.
TSA and all of its security theater is going to get the boot. Airports can manage their own security. That won’t change international customs which is still managed federally.
That’s basically the system we have in Australia - customs and immigration handled by officers of the Federal Government, and generally Federal police patrol airports (one of the only places you will normally see them if you don’t live in Canberra), and then the airports have private security companies do the security screening.
There are still Federal standards they have to comply with but it’s more reasonable than the US (we never had to take off our shoes and liquids of any size have been allowed again for years as long as you’re only going to the domestic part of the airport, they’re separated here)
TSA including all of its security theatre was on life support because of insurance premiums - it allowed some creative actuarial accounting that shifted responsibilities and reduced insurance costs for airlines in post-9/11 insanity
WHAT THE HELL WHY DID YOU COME IN YOU'RE NOT WELCOME HERE
...sorry but you said-
I DON'T CARE WHAT I SAID.
...OK fine I'll just be leaving.
OH YOU THINK YOU CAN JUST LEAVE? YOU CANT LEAVE! You'll be locked in my dank basement for the next five days while I fill out the paperwork for you to be dragged out of the house!
The 'sea' of data is huge - I am doubtless entered into it multiple times with all manner of associated data.
The ICE casts it's net (with a pack of valid as well as a far number of non-valid associations) through this sea and when it lifts it there are number of 'fish' therein. I will be in there, among the silvery bodies and the attached associations.
I am 'by-catch' as I have no crime ever - but millions of tons of bycatch die even if discarded.
There is an old French Canadian poem, that says, in essence - 'The wind might roar, and the waves they might dash, but you will not drown on Lac Sainte Pierre - so long as you stay on the shore.
Countries all over the world are issuing US travel warnings. If there's an error or mistake on your visa you risk being detained by ICE for weeks on end or even end up in the Gulag in El Salvador.
For European visitors, they can see the fascism miles away. A lot of Europe was occupied by Hitler while the US wasn't. The extraordinary claim that Musk's salute wasn't a Nazi salute is mind boggling. Even when people have seen it side by side: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1Zwiv8erk0
So far, the travel warnings I've seen all specify specific groups targeted by the American government, such as LGBTQ+ people.
News of tourists getting imprisoned for weeks or longer have been all over the news, but so far Europe doesn't seem to have actually brought out a general warning for that kind of danger.
That said, the people I've spoken to (most of which aren't LGBT+) are hesitant to go to the US now. There's a stark difference between the "haha, what the fuck, US" sentiment I used to sense and the "what the fuck, US" we're getting now.
The similarity is obvious, but there's a difference between "a travel warning has been issued for minorities" and "a travel warning has been issued".
Unlike what the right-wing media may make it seem, the amount of trans/nonbinary people is absolutely minute. The warnings apply to at most a percentage of the population, and even then it only affects the people that have come out of the closet and jumped through the hoops necessary to get their passport altered.
That obviously doesn't make the political trend _right_, but the geopolitical and economic implications are very different.
These warnings don't include advice against entering the country as a tourist, despite the recent reports of tourists getting arrested and locked away at the border. Such a warning would set a much more grim tone for the future of the western bloc.
"So far, Portugal, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Germany, France and the U.K. have all issued new travel guidance for those wishing to travel to the U.S."
Last I checked, Germany's advice was similar (i.e., not a general warning); and from the article, it doesn't look like Portugal's advice is a Travel Warning either. There's a difference between making information available, and providing warnings.
What changed is that they made the text clearer, that ESTA approval doesn't guarantee entry and decision is made by the border officer and adding a note that wrong information may lead to incarceration.
Those notes weren't "needed" before as that was rare, while theoretically the rules were the same, but seem to be handled stricter now.
It's absolute lunacy that western governments are giving out negative travel advice against the US at all, but I've noticed Newsweek seems to have an agenda on this topic.
Finland Ministry for Foreign Affairs has this section on their "Traveling to United States" page (Google translated):
Current affairs
When traveling to the United States, it is important to note that a valid ESTA or visa does not necessarily entitle you to enter the United States. Overstaying your stay or providing incorrect information about the purpose of your stay may result in arrest or deportation.
The United States has also issued an executive order (25 STATE 11402) on February 24, 2025, according to which applicants for a US ESTA or visa must in future indicate their gender as either “male” or “female”. According to the order, applicants must indicate their gender as determined at birth in their application.
If the applicant’s current gender as recorded in their passport differs from their gender as determined at birth, the US authorities may refuse entry. It is recommended to check the entry requirements in advance with the US authorities.
There is no gender marking X in the Finnish passport. If, for example, a dual citizen has a passport with an X marking, the entry requirements can be checked in advance with the US authorities.
Political demonstrations may occur in major cities, which may turn violent. Avoid large gatherings or demonstrations.
It's mostly a footnote in the form of "contact the embassy if you're trans/non-binary". The implication seems to be that those people will need to alter their passports (again) to gain access.
Germany also added a warning that minor criminal history can be a reason for imprisonment and deportation, as well as a reminder that an American visa or ESTA document are meaningless against an unwilling border patrol agent:
Weder eine gültige ESTA-Genehmigung noch ein gültiges US-Visum begründen einen Anspruch auf Einreise in die USA. Die endgültige Entscheidung über die Einreise trifft der US-Grenzbeamte. Es empfiehlt sich, Nachweise über die Rückreise (z.B. Flugbuchung) bei der Einreise mitzuführen. Gegen dessen Entscheidung gibt es keinen Rechtsbehelf. Den deutschen Auslandsvertretungen ist es nicht möglich, auf die Rückgängigmachung einer Einreiseverweigerung hinzuwirken.
Reisende sollten ausschließlich mit einem gültigen ESTA oder Visum in die USA reisen, das dem geplanten Aufenthaltszweck entspricht. Vorstrafen in den USA, falsche Angaben zum Aufenthaltszweck oder eine auch nur geringfügige Überschreitung der Aufenthaltsdauer bei Reisen können bei Ein- bzw. Ausreise zu Festnahme, Abschiebehaft und Abschiebung führen.
Denmark has added this to their VISA page:
Når du skal søge om ESTA eller visum til USA, er der to kønsbetegnelser at vælge imellem: mand eller kvinde. Hvis du har kønsbetegnelsen X i dit pas, eller du har skiftet køn, anbefales det at kontakte den amerikanske ambassade forud for rejsen for vejledning om, hvordan du skal forholde dig.
Germany added this:
Die ESTA-Beantragung ist gebührenpflichtig (21 USD).
Reisende in die USA müssen bei ESTA- oder Visumanträgen entweder das Geschlecht „männlich“ oder „weiblich“ angeben; relevant ist hierbei der Geschlechtseintrag der antragstellenden Person zum Zeitpunkt der Geburt. Reisende, die den Geschlechtseintrag „X“ innehaben oder deren aktueller Geschlechtseintrag von ihrem Geschlechtseintrag bei Geburt abweicht, sollten vor Einreise die zuständige Auslandsvertretung der USA in Deutschland kontaktieren und die geltenden Einreisevoraussetzungen in Erfahrung zu bringen.
The Finnish travel advice has something similar:
Yhdysvallat on myös antanut 24.2.2025 toimeenpanomääräyksen (25 STATE 11402), jonka mukaan Yhdysvaltojen ESTA:a tai viisumia hakevan on jatkossa ilmoitettava sukupuolekseen joko ”mies” tai ”nainen”. Määräyksen mukaan hakijan on hakemuksessa ilmoitettava syntymähetkellä vahvistettu sukupuolensa.
Jos hakijan nykyinen passiin merkitty sukupuoli poikkeaa hänen syntymässä vahvistetusta sukupuolestaan, Yhdysvaltojen viranomaiset voivat evätä luvan maahantuloon. Maahantulon edellytykset on suositeltavaa varmistaa etukäteen Yhdysvaltain viranomaisilta.
Suomen passissa ei ole sukupuolimerkintää X. Jos esim. kaksoiskansalaisella on passi, jossa X-merkintä on, voi maahantulon edellytykset tarkistaa etukäteen Yhdysvaltain viranomaisilta.
As a US citizen who despises Trump and has international travel in the near future that was booked long ago, even I almost consider cancelling just due to the fact that basically anywhere I go will almost certainly have immediate negative thoughts about any US citizens now.
Trump has ruined basically all our credibility on a global scale.
There was a post on HN a few weeks ago from the Recurse Center immigration advisor, and a decent proportion of comments were about the alarming situation in the US. I probably would have applied, but I won't travel to the US while conditions are as they are.
This doesn't surprise me in the least. I wouldn't want to get locked up in a ICE jail either. Not to mention support an immoral administration or country that is essentially blackmailing the rest of the world.
Is the reporting and media coverage on this, going to contribute to the potential harm of this being a long term impact? (is the hype creating the conditions?)
It also happens to be ridiculously overpriced for what you get as a tourist, and in tough economic times satisfying one's curiosity about the US may not be as high on the list. But yes, there is also the political climate.
This seems to imply that someone can be "curious about the US, and might like to explore" but that they also already know the value of "what you get as a tourist".
I don't think that is valid. While my monoculture question came of as loaded, judging by the backlash of commenters, and I should haven't asked it, I don't think the OP understands the diversity of the US, and I don't think a judgement on value of travel in the US without experiencing it first can be made; even by US residents.
You're still on the same US-diversity train but there's nothing in that comment to justify it.
There are other many more layers to a tourist's cost/benefit analysis than just culture. Some of those layers will be common to the entire US:
- exchange rate between USD and their home currency
- affordability might vary across the US, but perhaps the consider even the cheaper places to be too pricey (the US is indeed a very pricey destination compared to much of Europe)
- the customs & border people deter tourists from visiting, no matter where in the US they want to go
- the US is a long flight away for many people in the world, whether they're going to Seattle, LA, NY, or Miami.
OP might be absolutely enthralled by US cultural diversity and still make the exact same comment.
But you don't know that. Maybe op has done multiple cross country trips across America. Maybe they've only been to NYC and Disneyworld. You could have asked them, but you didn't!
"do you think the US is a monoculture?" implying that the commenter does think that, and that that thought is ignorant and absurd. Instead of asking what they are referring to so you can discuss the point they're making.
What fear mongering politics? The commenter is obviously talking about the reported cases of people being detained, deported, and harassed for their political views.
> implying that the commenter does think that, and that that thought is ignorant and absurd
It is a widely held view of the US by many foreigners; they don't conceptualize how big and diverse the US is.
I thought a perfectly reasonable and likely interpretation of their comment is that the later sentence, with the "also" does not connect their `value of being a tourism in the US` comment to the political climate. Other commenters here apparently do weigh the cost of travel with the risk the government of the country will detain them.
Do you think they were talking about ICE because they mentioned the cost of tourism? I don't think they were referring to risk of detainment with that comment.
The border crossing is the first experience that you get from a country. It has definitely gone worse. And it was not great to begin with.
In the past, I had the ... pleasure ... of being put in the "back room" for 3 hours after a long transatlantic flight at SFO. I was not afraid then, just annoyed and tired. I would be afraid now and I would rather avoid it. There's many other places I can choose to visit.
I am still in debt from the last time they took me to the back room, did some kind of x-ray which detected my belt buckle. They declared the belt buckle was actually drugs up my ass, they strip searched me, and they then dragged me to two different hospitals chained and shackled and then sent me the bill when nothing was found. For this, the AUSA issued a retroactive search warrant, signed after they did it.
Sorry to hear about your traumatic encounter. Was this all after Trump's ICE enforcement changes? In any case, if you haven't already started this already, there are certainly US law firms that would love to take your case pro-bono, as in the US the government foots the bill for compelled medical exams unless the person was later found guilty. Also, the US Fourth Amendment requires warrants to be issues before searches except in exigent circumstances, so it was either exigent -- and a warrant wouldn't be legally required, or is an illegal warrant. This case sounds like it be a legal goldmine for you and your legal representative, especially now with all the public light being shed on invalid detainment.
I have contacted multiple attorneys including the one of Ashley Cervantes who had a nearly identical case (almost all same facts except she was vaginally raped by finger of doctor) who lost. They all said they do not take these kind of cases as they are too difficult to win. Cervantes IIRC still owes that bill as well.
If it were normal police I think you would be right but federal / CBP it is effectively impossible to overcome. One of the big things they do is play jurisdiction fuck-fuck games, if you start to win in federal court the judge will find a reason why it should have been in the state court and vice versa. The other thing they did in say when I lodged a complaint to the nursing board was they just played flip flop games that it was a police search when I complain of illegal health care, but when you complain the police search is illegal it gets shifted to just being health care, so they just flop a catch 22 to avoid being responsible for either.
>Was this all after Trump's ICE enforcement changes?
Interesting. If I have reservations of a government the cost of the trip isn't a consideration. I've forgone all-expenses-paid trips (for work-related conferences) to foreign countries because of the politics at the time.
"What you get as a tourist" now includes the threat of indefinite detention in a for-profit prison. The "political climate" includes the indefinite detention of people that did nothing wrong.
It's not a monoculture, but there aren't many places on a typical tourist's itinerary that aren't also 3-5x the price of a European, Asian, South American, or Caribbean destination. It doesn't make US tourism bad, but at a 5x price differential one may weigh whether they want to see the Grand Canyon or Hawaii that much more than the Andes or Malta. There may be underappreciated gems in the US, but the fact that they are underappreciated also means they aren't popular destinations for mass tourism.
Did you honestly think my question about monoculture was directed at their "political climate" comment and not the comment about cost?
I did not think their comments implied a connection between the value of being a tourist in the US and a their concerns over politics. Maybe if it were much cheaper they wouldn't care about the politics, but that doesn't seem likely to me.
How so? The article doesn't mention the value of travel in the US. The comment "It also happens to be ridiculously overpriced for what you get as a tourist" is clearly adding an _another_ reason they (suspect?) tourism declined.
It is followed with "But yes, there is also the political climate.", which I interpreted as an agreement with the reasons in the article -- that the decline was due to the political climate.
How is that a misinterpretation? It seems likely and reasonable that that the "ridiculously overpriced" comment is being stated because they meant it is _additional_ reason for the decline - as it is one not stated in the article.
The biggest reason is that pricing is not part of local culture. Politics is.
To take this a step further, it doesn't matter where you enter the country, even if it is a place where the people are generally nice and specifically sympathetic to tourists getting detained, the first person you're dealing with is an LEO at border control & they are all following the same orders. They appear to be going out of their way to look for reasons (on your cell phone, tattoos, etc.) to send you back home. God forbid you have a run in with another cop after you've entered the country...
The US, Trump, is trying to "refinance" global trade with the united states. The short of it is that the Trump wants countries to pay more to be part of the west's "protection blanket". Most of the "paying more" will come in the form of a weaker dollar, devaluing foreign held treasuries and making US industry more competitive with local manufacturers.
Trump seems to be going nuclear with this plan, and because he obviously is not particularly smart or diplomatic, I don't think he grasps the immense second and third order effects this will have on perceptions of America. American goods might get cheaper, but maybe no one will want to buy them. No one will want to travel to the US. No one will want to live in the US.
I mean it's not surprising. US Immigration seems to have been told to reject whoever they feel like, interrogate for hours in hopes of finding anything no matter how random to deny entry.
People might choose to fly somewhere else instead though, so it doesn't necessarily reduce the overall amount of carbon emissions from air travel. Especially if you see Europeans deciding to go somewhere else in the Americas instead, which I've heard some of my friends considering. Although if Europeans choose to travel within Europe instead then yes we'd see a reduction as the distances are rather shorter (and with any luck some of them would go by rail)
Trump thought of that so now he is also singlehandedly starting a global depression to ensure nobody will be traveling at all. Truly he has done more for the climate than Gretha.
On the point of air travel specifically, Canadians are being advised to use airports over land borders because if you are denied entry at U.S. customs at a Canadian airport, they cannot detain you as you are on Canadian soil.
So for Canadians still travelling to the U.S. it might actually increase their carbon footprint.
I see all these articles about Canadian and European hate for the US, and anti-US sentiment in general. They all sadden me.
The US is made up of 350 million people. Only one of them is Donald Trump. Most of the country didn’t vote for him. We still value our friends and allies, even if the stooge Putin got elected does not.
They should make you sad. The leader of your country said we suck and that we would be better off being a part of the USA (and that he would MAKE us be a part of the USA)! It doesn't matter how many of you didn't vote for him when hes the one making the decisions.
This sort of thing doesn't happen because of just one person. The situation reminds me of the (fictionalised) account of the Roman Empire in "I Claudius": the narrator remarks that corruption had well set in in the centre under Tiberius, but everything looked ok to those outside the City until the madness of Caligula. That's not to say that the majority of Americans are bad people, but the political culture must have been diseased for some time for this to be possible.
Hate? I get we're on a completely different page - but if you asked most people in Canada or EU right now they would tell you we're scared, not hateful.
We're fully aware that the guy who put tariffs because he got angry at us on a whim is the same guy who can launch the nukes.
Our collective will put him in power. I'm eliding how much more complicated it is than that because it is important to recognize that he represents us in big and meaningful ways and minimizing that by calling him as just one of us is to live in denial.
Norwegian here. People collectively lost their minds after the 2024 election. The USA is a great country, embodying values that bring out the best in humanity. You don't deserve this hate.
There’s not a lot of hate of the American people, but unfortunately we have to deal with the US Government when travelling and deal with their trade framework with importing and exporting.
If anything I feel sympathy for the American people now that I and many others feel strongly compelled to avoid US services and products, and avoid travelling and spending my tourist and business dollars into your economy based on the actions of Trump and the Republicans!
Most of the country couldn't vote at all because they are immigrants (not citizens) or because of any of the structural reasons why they couldn't take time off to vote or they were intimated at the ballot box. Voting day still isn't a federal holiday.
The bad news is that 2024 was one of those elections where both candidates were so bad, that the winner didn't even manage to get 50% of the cast votes.
Trump/Vance got 49.1% of the popular vote, and Kamala/Walz got 48.3% of the popular vote. None of those clowns even cracked 50%.
The candidates were so bad, that you could win without getting a majority of the popular vote.
So, yeah, just a wholesale failure by both sides to inspire the vast majority of Americans. I guess right now, we're kind of seeing why no one was enthused about these guys being in power.
John F. Kennedy couldn’t get 50% against Richard Nixon, as just one of many examples of a fine candidate winning with less than 50% of the popular vote.
But that doesn't change the fact that there are good people in the US.
But good and bad are a bit irrelevant. I believe it was a mistake to go poking Europe with a stick because there are 600 million people there. Most far better educated than us. They were perfectly contented to sleep in the then current global order, and willing to help with maintaining that order if called on in an emergency.
For some incomprehensible reason, we decide to go over there and poke that lion?
I don't get it because I genuinely believe that Europe would be the best partner for the US. It's not because I'm "good" or "bad", but because I believe close relations with Europe are good for this republic. Now obviously, in the US at the moment, mine is not the consensus view. That's fine. But I believe it's gonna cost us.
China and the EU will become closer. All of Asia will begin to realize there is more to be gained by working together than working at odds with each other.
And heaven help the rest of the world if the Europeans, the Chinese, and the Africans ever figure out that if they work together they don't really need the rest of us.
> And heaven help the rest of the world if the Europeans, the Chinese, and the Africans ever figure out that if they work together they don't really need the rest of us.
That's the part I just don't understand, they think after the willful crash of the US economy the rest of the world will bail us out because...
It makes a lot more sense to invest the "seven trillion dollars" or whatever number they're throwing around in their own economies rather than build up the manufacturing base of someone else. Spanish factories in Spain versus Spanish factories in the US.
Then, assuming these companies do invest all this money in the US, they will just complain how the foreigners are buying up all the "strategic assets" and are a "clear and present danger" to American Sovereignty. America is not for sale, don't ya know?
Is Trump personally disappearing these students of the streets? Is it Trump personally detaining and 'violently interrogating' people at the border? Is it Trump personally shutting down USAID? Is it Trump personally calculating these insane tariffs? Is it Trump personally going into schools to deport children? No, that's regular US Americans helping Trump.
You gotta understand, the rest of the world doesn't see you as woke/Maga or red/blue or rural/urban -- they just see you as American.
It doesn't matter if you didn't vote for this guy. You collectively didn't do enough to stop him from getting reelected and now you're not doing enough to stop him from hurting former allies.
Fix your domestic problems and then we can look towards starting up a dialogue of reconciliation.
As a Canadian, it's not even that. Im not holding someone responsible for what their political opposites do. It's just not safe or smart to be close to America right now. And it may never be again. And that's fine. This is not the beginning of resentment towards America. It has been there for a very long time, because America has been the global hegemon and has been ruthless in keeping its position.
I mean the rot goes much deeper than Donald Trump. Most of the US cabinet and top leaders are actively hostile towards what used to be ally states. Spreading lies, propaganda, insults and threatening to invade and take away our land. Meanwhile treating its own people like slaves. USA has become almost indistinguishable from Russia in that regard.
The Cabinet was all selected by DJT and approved by a compliant Senate despite historically poor qualifications. It reflects the dynamics of the Republican party, and that they won the election tells you something about America.
I completely understand why. It is difficult to comprehend how much damage is being doen to America's reputation and soft power. I feel it necessary to give the following advice:
1. Erase your phone before entering the US. Restore it from backup after arrival. CBP has the right to inspect your phone. While you may be able to refuse, likely this means you'll be denied entry and there's nothing you can do about that unless you're lawful permanent resident ("LPR");
2. Don't post on social media under your real name about topics that are likely to get you into trouble. The big ones are anything pro-Palestine or anything critical of Trump;
3. If you are an LPR, do not sign anything they want you to sign if you're detained. What they're trying to do is to get you to voluntarily surrender your LPR status [1]. You have the right to be paroled into the US. Only an immigration judge can forcibly revoke your status;
4. There's stricter enforcement of rules that always existed, particularly abandonment of residency. A green card isn't (and was never intended as) a way to visit the US freely a few weeks a year while living somewhere else;
5. If you are a visa holder you have fewer rights. If you live in the US on a valid visa, I would be extremely hesitant to travel outside the US at all; and
6. Notify friends and family of your travel plans. Additionally, if your country supports it, register your travel with your embassy. The US version of this is STEP [2]. You want someone to make enquiries on your behalf if you are detained and are unable to make outside communications. It's wild that this is where we are.
Good advice, but as an Australian looking on, I feel like it needs to be added as number one - 1. Reconsider your need to travel to the US if possible.
The company I work for has a small branch office in DC, the VP of our US option was out here in just back in December and we were chatting at the Christmas party how I was keen to head over at some point if it would be useful for a project we’re doing for a US customer.
Today I would probably politely decline and just continue meeting remotely if they asked me if I could travel over for a week or two.
Why would a foreigner visit the US when you may be detained and treated like an animal at any time for the most trivial of reasons? Furthermore, why would you visit a country that's actively undermining others around the world? Why would you provide your financial support to that? It's the same reason Tesla sales have fallen off a cliff. You can only mistreat people so much before they push back.
This at least reflects my feelings about visiting anytime soon.
I mean if I was just put on a flight back (for a tweet they found on my phone or such), that'd be kind of bearable. At least one visitor from the UK got locked up in a facility for a week.
His story is a bit suspicious to me, I believe that he was detained but I can't help wondering if the rest is fiction based on watching US prison dramas. He would not have been sent to a federal prison for one thing, and his depictions of violence are what I would expect from long-term convicted felons, not people being held for having the wrong visa.
People who are spending thousands and tens of thousands of dollars to travel are fine if they need to spend a few hundreds additional ro fly back and cancel their vacation. Or sucks but it’s in the realm of the risks you take with international travel.
However, being detained, even for 1 day, and treated like a criminal is something none of these folks want.
Willing to concede that. But he has thousands of followers and is well known in the MMA comunity. Would he throw all that away for a good story? Also there is an update: "Update on U.S. federal prison detention of MMA coach Renato Subotic who recently trained Merab Dvalishvili"
"UPDATE: I just spoke with coach Renato Subotic for a few minutes. He says he was detained at FDC Honolulu, which is a federal prison facility. He says he has no criminal record and it was a simple visa application issue. Interview later this week."
Interesting, I could be wrong then! The inclusion in his story of some very specific irrelevant details (like his cell/block number) while omitting anything that could be verified (like which border crossing and detention facility) was one of the things that raised my suspicion, but if he's sharing specifics now it raises my odds that he's telling the truth.
For business meetings, as you say, the world is a big place and if you really need to meet person-to-person in North America then you have both Canada and Mexico as options.
> Why would a foreigner visit the US when you may be detained and treated like an animal at any time for the most trivial of reasons? Furthermore, why would you visit a country that's actively undermining others around the world? Why would you provide your financial support to that?
Yes, if you click through to the substack, that article links to this axios article. But as far as Hacker News submissions, the other one was submitted earlier, and has over 300 comments.
Arguably @dang or @tomhow might ultimately combine them, but for anyone curious you'll find better (or at least a lot more) discussion on the other article.
Those affected weren't from the third world though.
I have travelled for conferences in the US several times, now I'd be worried they'd argue you need a B-1 visa instead of ESTA waiver if you visit the company office after the conference, etc.
I'll have a better look later at the methods and sources used, but given the US crack down on border policies from the previous minimal effort achieved by the Biden administration in securing our borders, this is to be expected. It's been less than three months from Trump taking office. Like the stock market this will swing back over the year. The US voted for change with borders being a top issue. It is going to take a while to come back to center from the actions to effect the change. Axios is not exactly a great objective source as rated by third-party media watchers as being left leaning, Soros funded. It would be great to see comparable stats from the UK and Canada and Germany where I'd expect the graph to be like the US Biden-era policies. Seeing how the UK and the others have been flooded with immigration this past decade, I'd expect to see similar "falling off a cliff" stats once they tighten their borders and policies. I see this as a necessary counter swing of the pendulum when you go from almost no scrutiny to normal scrutiny at the borders. It will stabilize to a norm, so I am not concerned. I had very bad border experiences in the late 80s in England and France, so I have some emotional experience to temper my opinion here. It sucks to be singled out unfairly or due to operator error in filling out forms, but how just how many Canadians have had this bad experience in the past 3 months compared to the 17 years of data previous? Was the reporting and SOPs of the border equivalent for statistical purposes?
It's one thing to refuse entry to someone who doesn't have the right documents. The fear goes to a completely different level once people see tourists getting locked up.
As someone who lived in the US for 22 years legally and most of my social and business network there, I an not taking the risk of getting locked up in ICE jail any time soon, no matter how unlikely it is.
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