# Welcome to America

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/welcome-to-america/431029>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [December 23, 2007, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/welcome-to-america/431029 "2007-12-23T17:39:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Saintly\_Loser](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saintly_loser/32/4045_2.png) [@Saintly\_Loser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saintly_Loser)\
**Post date:** [December 24, 2007, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/welcome-to-america/431029/21 "2007-12-24T16:47:58Z")

</div>

[QUOTE=GorillaMan]  
Anyone from Britain has known to not mess about with security questions for decades, not just since 9/11.  
[/QUOTE]

True enough. I was detained years ago (1990? Can’t remember exactly) at the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. I was held for about 24 hours. I’m a US citizen. At that time I was living in France.

In retrospect, I guess, it was understandable. I was crossing the border on a motorcycle with expired US documentation. I had nothing but a French tourist visa, which I’d already overstayed by close to a year. My surname is a common one in a county in the Republic which was often a staging area or hideout area for the IRA. My surname is also the same as one of the H-Block hunger strikers (who was in fact a somewhat distant cousin).

Still, it was scary.

[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/welcome-to-america/431029.md?page=1)