You say that if it’s not a significant harm. If it had happened to me, it would have cost me thousands of dollars and wasted paid leave from work. That’s a significant harm to me. It should not happen for capricious reasons.
It implies nothing of the sort. They were banned from entering the country. This time. The time that they bought tickets for and had a vacation planned for.
You guys nitpicking at details like this seem to be suggesting that since they could just come back another time, this is srsly no big deal. I disagree. A security organization that apparently cannot tell the difference between a legitimate threat and a couple of kids going on vacation is a big deal. If they fucked this up, what else will they fuck up?
Because they hadn’t broken any laws. “Being a danger” isn’t illegal. Had they done something illegal, they would’ve been arrested.
Well, I guess people who can’t wrap their heads around the idea that; any border guard, on any border, at any time, can turn you back, without cause or justification, ought to just stay home. Maybe it should be printed on tickets or passports, posted at ports of entry. Everyone I know who’s traveled seems aware of this.
I think we’re all in agreement it was wrong. There was no valid reason. Someone made a mistake. It happens. No one went to jail or got deported. It’s not an international incident. It is not going to cause people to stop coming to America, even from their homeland, they will still come. It’s not going to impact the US economy. The US has tons of border crossing and numerous international ports and international airports. Thousand cross every day, at each location. Sometimes they get it wrong. Canadians and Americans and, I suspect, Mexicans deal with these kind of errors routinely.
I was a bad call by a border guard. It happens. And you know what, I can promise you it will happen again. Because they are people not damned machines.
Sorry, I’m still seeing a tempest in a teapot.
A legitimate plot to destroy the United States isn’t illegal?
Don’t blame me if you can’t get the facts straight.
As noted, they were not “banned from entering”. They were turned back at the border. Happens all the time. And it’s a nit pick to say someone was not arrested when they were not arrested. Being arrested is a big deal, legally. Being turned back at the border is not. Inconvenient, yes. But no legal action was taken.
Well, if we ever get hold of page two of that document we might find out. They were flagged as being a potential danger. That needn’t be the reason they were turned back.
I don’t know what you mean by “can’t wrap their heads around.”
I guess people who can’t wrap their heads around the idea that any time you leave the house it is possible for a random stranger to assault, rob, and murder you, without cause or justification, ought to just stay home.
Just because something objectionable can happen doesn’t mean that we ought to just accept it if it does and not seek to reform the situation so that it is less likely to happen.
And when mistakes happen, people should point it out, analyze the situation, criticize those who committed the mistakes (if necessary, lay blame and punishment if there was some violation of policy), apologize to those were harmed by the mistake, and there should be an effort to remedy the harm that was caused by the mistake and take steps to ensure that such mistakes are less likely in the future.
Missed the edit window. It’s not a nit pick…
I don’t think it’s a ‘Great Debate’ topic, but it’s more than just a bad decision by one guard. It’s a bad decision by a guard or guards that’s been officially backed up. (If it was one guard, his shift was unusually long). And it seriously is a really bloody bad decision.
Oh, I know, for all we know they could have had twenty pounds of heroin in bags labelled ‘kill the infidels’ and then both of them got naked, urinated on the Stars and Stripes and assaulted the guards while yelling ‘America must die!’ but all the DHS report says is that they (well, one of them) tweeted two innocuous jokes.
And, until he backtracked, John Mace was defending specifically sending those guys back on the basis of those tweets.
It does make me wonder if I’m going to have to check all my daughter’s internet posts for months before we go to America again - she’s 13 and some of the slang she uses is bizarre (youth slang is often meant to be obscure).
Plus, last time we were there we were accidentally in a riot and I posted about it - in a way that makes it clear I wasn’t rioting, but there’s also some criticism of the police and a comment that they looked like Stormtroopers. If the two tweets in this thread are enough for refusal, then we’re fucked, and I can’t afford to pay for a holiday that I then get turned away from.
I was about to add that we look like the most innocuous people on the planet, so maybe that’d help, but emo-haircut-boy and bleached-blonde girl also look like the only crimes they’ve ever committed are against fashion.
Yeah. It’s a weird disconnect. If they did something illegal and/or dangerous then the sanction should be higher than sending them home and - as both Chessic and John Mace have pointed out - allowing them back any time. Ooh, you’re so dangerous! Come back next week!
I know you don’t mean ‘happens all the time’ to mean a very high percentage, but if even 1% of European tourists were being turned back for reasons as spurious as this then Euro-US tourism would take a dive. The reason it hasn’t is because stuff like this doesn’t happen all the time. Hopefully it won’t do in the future either.
Bear in mind that it’s not like the examples of driving over from Canada for a day trip; these holidays cost several hundred in airfares alone, and it seems the tourists are getting charged a few hundred more for being sent back.
Would you say there’s a chance that we’ll never see your “page two”, because it might consist of nothing more than “Rather than admit that we held these two in custody for using common British slang and quoting a popular American series, which would make us look like idiots, we’ll just boot their asses without getting into specifics.”?
You should try quoting the entire line.
What an odd thing to say. It seems as though you are arguing that law-abiding travellers should anticipate the occasional refusal of entry on capricious grounds as a normal and acceptable state of affairs. I, my family, their friends, my friends, their family, etc. have between us hundreds of experiences of travelling to and from the United States and other nations. Not once in any of those journeys has mine or their entry to a nation been refused on arbitrary grounds by a law enforcement official. Had it occurred - even once - it would have been a significant and memorable disruption. Perhaps my anecdotal experience is exceptional in this regard, but I tend to doubt it.
I think your perception of this event being “no big deal” may be somewhat attributable to your proximity to the US/Canadian border, where it is not unusual for some individuals to cross over the border several times per day in either direction. Flying in from 6000 miles away to be turned away for, as stipulated by myself and others in this thread, innocuous online comments is a “big deal” if you’re the one who’s personally affected. As a goal of public policy, it should not happen at all.
I actually do expect there to be some cause or justification if I’m turned away at a border and refused entry to a country. I would think that most people would expect the same.
Do you have a cite for this? Because I’m having a hard time believing that a border guard could turn a person away just because he didn’t like their face/skin color/choice of ceremonial headdress/body odour etc…
You mean put it into context? Pity the immigration people didn’t do that.
Given as page one was published by news sources on the internet, and it’s likely the copy the two travellers had. I think it’s fair to say that the travellers had page 2 in their possession.
Do you think only page 1 was published in order to hide what was on page 2? Or is it more likely that page 2 really didn’t have much more to say about the situation? I think it’s the latter, honestly.
Bwhahahaha. Sorry, but this sentence just cracked me up.
I’m not sure what the numbers/statistics are overall, but I’m friends with a lot of people who travel frequently, for various reasons (business, pleasure). Many - in fact, most - of us have opted to go to places other than the USA for vacation, even when interesting or good deals could be had, because it’s a hassle. When making international connections, we often choose to pay a little more to connect in a non-US airport because we don’t want to deal with the insane TSA and CBP process in the States. Just this week, I opted to pay $100 more for a connection in London (to go to Manchester) rather than New York.
Several people in this thread have alluded to this… it’s happening. It might not have a big impact overall - or on you, specifically - so you are free to dismiss it if you like, but airports, airlines and the travel industry will feel it and you can’t deny that that is still a lot of Americans being affected by these types of decisions. The more ridiculous it gets, the more this will happen, and the larger the impact.
When the rest of the world tells you something, sometimes it’s a good idea to listen.
Yes, and people were going to move to Canada if Bush got elected, too.
You are really not bringing your A game to this thread, are you?
Packing up house and moving to a new country: unbelievably expensive, time-consuming, and complicated.
Choosing one country over another for vacation: Trivially easy.
And a few may may have, although I’ll concede that the vast majority just stayed and suffered.