Several times now I have been invited to the US by couch surfers I hosted and even by other people. Most of them are stumped at first when I tell them that I’ll probably never take them up within my or their lifetime due to the political situation. It almost sounds like a bad motto from the cold war. Not so. What I am referring to is the way travelers are are being subjected to – euphemistically speaking – a level of scrutiny that quite frankly appalls me. The land of the free and home of the brave has decided, sometime after 9/11 (2001, I should add) to lock down their country and treat visitors as criminals. The only thing that is worse is the way the EU countries (and others) seem to follow suit.
Turns out most of the US citizens I meet are very understanding once they here about it, or know about it already and acknowledge the problem.
While before the first world war virtually all borders where toll borders and didn’t much impair traveling, we seem to get to a point where traveling freely 1 becomes virtually impossible in the near future. So much for globalization, eh?
// Oliver
- as in unencumbered by ridiculous treatment of some border control officer [↩]