Why I Will Never Go Back to the United States
U.S. Immigration agents are trained to look for certain traits in visitors: nervousness, unusual or inconsistent answers to questions, history of visiting certain countries. Any of these characteristics trigger an automatic escalation in the interrogation process.  This individual, albeit sounding perfectly innocent, unfortunately triggered several hot buttons and the hapless agents were too unimaginative, uninformed, and inflexible to give him benefit of the doubt and let him pass.<p>99.9% of visitors do pass, because they are consistent with certain profiles--business visitor, tourist visitor, never-been-anywhere-bad visitor. Even for them, it's a rather unpleasant and rude experience that leaves a bad taste.<p>There's no question that our border control and immigration system needs an overhaul.  The stupidity and counter productivity of the agents who scrutinize every incoming person (except for a few thousand Mexicans every day, but that's another topic :) inspires little confidence that they would actually recognize a terrorist, who would undoubtedly be carrying a false or sanitized passport to avoid just such questions.<p>I'm sorry that happened to the submitter, and I hope he'll give us another try some day. If his story gets out to the right person or persons, it might even make a difference. I'm not convinced that Border control people will ever hear about it if posted here, but he can contact them directly:
<a href="https://help.cbp.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/175/~/complaint-of-rude-and-unprofessional-treatment" rel="nofollow">https://help.cbp.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/175/~/complaint...</a><p>By the way, this kind of profiling or over-profiling is not confined to U.S. Border Control agents. I have seen identical behavior by Canadian agents, too.  All I had to do was mention I was going to take a class, and the guy made us go into an interrogation room where he asked repeated, annoying questions to try to entrap me into admitting I was in Canada to work or some such thing.  I was born in Canada as it clearly states on my US passport, and he asked me where I was born, then looked at my companion with a sneer on his face as though to show his disbelief.  It was entirely unpleasant, but in the end we passed.  I learned not to say I was there to take a class.  Just visiting.  Hope to spend lots of money.  Ok, have a nice day!