# My fun day with Homeland Security **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [June 2, 2004, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-fun-day-with-homeland-security/248242 "2004-06-02T12:58:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2004, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-fun-day-with-homeland-security/248242/21 "2004-06-03T04:21:17Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > I suppose this is as good a place to ask this as any. I went to Amsterdam last Fall, and no one in the airport there checked my passport. I collected my luggage, and waltzed right past a totally unmanned customs desk and onto the streets of Holland, with god-only-knows what sort of illicit substances or explosive devices in my bags. (Actually, I had my underwear in there. Which was infinitely worse.) But, on my way there, I had a lay-over in Germany, where they _did_ check and stamp my passport. So, I was wondering if this was a function of the EU, where I only need to get my passport stamped when entering any European nation, which clears me for any subsequent travels within Europe (like travelling between states in the US), or if this was a staggering breach of security on behalf of the Dutch officials at that airport. Can anyone fill me in on this? Same thing happened to me. I was travelling from Tallinn, Estonia to Paris and I had a very short layover ('bout an hour, IIRC) in Finland. The Finns stamped my passport but I never got a stamp in France. Greedy ink-hoarding bastards :mad:. > [@MLS](#): > > To make it even more fun, in that precise week the Soviet Union was in the active process of becoming the Soviet Dis-Union and ceasing to exist as an entity. This was a very long process. One of my best friends was born in Estonia in 1979 to Russian parents. His passport says _Alien_ :eek: He’s never been a citizen of any country and he has an incredibly hard time travelling (though he’s currently in America on an open-ended visa 🆒) ---
**Author:** ![Ms\_Macphisto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b487fb/32.png) [@Ms\_Macphisto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms_Macphisto)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2004, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-fun-day-with-homeland-security/248242/22 "2004-06-03T07:52:50Z")
I had trouble with customs coming into London off the Eurostar. I have dual citizenship, so I was travelling on a British passport. I actually made it through customs all right, the guy just glanced at my passport and waved me through, so I started heading off to the Tube to figure out how to get to my hostel (no family in London, sadly), when I heard another customs agent yelling after me. Turns out the problem was that I hadn’t bothered removing the flight tags from my bag since they weren’t in the way. They thought it was suspicious that a British citizen who had flown somewhere recently was taking the train back. It also didn’t help matters initially that I was tired, so my response to “How long have you been out of the country?” was “Uh, about 10 years.” Luckily I managed to get matters sorted out fairly quickly and continue on my merry way. ---
**Author:** ![Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2004, 9:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-fun-day-with-homeland-security/248242/23 "2004-06-03T09:57:22Z")
> [@Smeghead](#): > > So what _exactly_ were you doing in this so-called “Qatar,” anyway, Mr. Dextrin? Same thing I was doing in Columbia a few years back 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2004, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-fun-day-with-homeland-security/248242/24 "2004-06-03T11:50:58Z")
I’ve never had a second glance from US customs and immigration, but I did once get a “stern talking to” from UK immigration because I had so many entry stamps into England. A shrew of a woman started asking me some very odd questions (“So, you like coming over here frequently, DON’T YOU???”, “Just what does it mean having all these trips here???”" of course the answers were “yes, and you answered your own question”). She snatched my passport, told me “not to move”, and took it back a dozen feet to a little podium where a supervisor was standing. He took my passport from her, flipped through it, looked at her, looked down at the passport again, looked at me, shrugged and had a look on his face as if to say “And…?”, then she snatched the passport back from him, stamped it on the wrong page, and nearly threw it in my face. ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2004, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-fun-day-with-homeland-security/248242/25 "2004-06-03T14:28:59Z")
So I guess the Passport Guy (in the OP) thought that if you were in Iraq you could have been meeting with terrorists but not in Qatar, Tunisia or Yeman as those countries are terrorist free. ---
**Author:** ![Elza\_B](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Elza\_B](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elza_B)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2004, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-fun-day-with-homeland-security/248242/26 "2004-06-03T14:59:50Z")
[QUOTE=The guy just pointed at random Arabic stamps in my passport and shrieked. [/QUOTE] Anyone else getting a vision of the “Auntie Em!” guy from _Airplane!_ ? Ava [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-fun-day-with-homeland-security/248242.md?page=1)