Try travelling with a Pakistani passport these days. As a single man in my thirties. Immigration officials see me and think “Jackpot !!!” and “promotion”,!!!
Yeah, but they think that just from looking at you anyway. I have a UK passport and I’ve managed to escape “random” additional screenings just once in US airports.
I don’t look like a stereotypical South Asian*:D, its usually my passport which set off alarm bells; once the genius took aside a turbaned Canadian Sikh gentleman I had been traveling with and waved me forward. Of course the combo that you have is probably even more “dangerous” these days; is your name one which might not be readily identifiable as Hindu (IIRC you said your family was from what is now Pakistani Punjab).
*My sister is even worse, she is quite swarthy, but has blue eyes, it makes the poor buggers head hurt, the conflciting signals. Everytime someone says that profiling is not happening makes me want to laugh, and laugh even louder when someone says that its effective.
No, I lucked out there - my stepfather is Multani, but my own family (and my name) are Marathi. What’s funny is that the profiling gets proportionately worse as my clothing gets better; if I wore a suit on a flight, I’d probably be asked to leave the plane. If I wear a band T-shirt with shorts and flip-flops I usually don’t get bothered much at all.
Are random screening really that bad? And were you coming into the US or departing from the US?
Well when I had the honour of being given a secondary screening at JFK, I was escorted by the CBP officers to a side room where I waited for a hour to be asked the exact same questions as I had answered earlier. I had been up at this point for 24 hours and was dog tired. It was annoying and yes a little scary. On the plus side I did not have to wait for my baggage at baggage claim, they removed it and placed it to the side.
At Istanbul when I got secondary screening I did not even realise that I had been selected until it was over and my friend (who had not been selected) asked me where I had been.
I’ve only flown in/out of NYC and DC once each, and I suspect things would be a lot worse if I went that way often. When I’ve been pulled aside it was just for some bonus wanding and inspection of my carry-on. I’ve never had to go to a side room.
With a name like AK84, no wonder you get searched!
I once got searched nine times, three of them in the same queue; I’d also had to open my suitcase before it was allowed on the belt (not weight, it was security). My flight had been changed by the airline (we were supposed to go Philly-Paris-Madrid, they changed us to Philly-NYC-Barcelona-Madrid), but so were the flights of two dozen other people and they didn’t get more patdowns than a cheap whore… once or twice, ok, but nine times? And the contents of my suitcase were terribly boring unless you’re really, really, excited by whisky-colored, no-lace female underwear.
Actually, I am slightly curious as to how your underwear got to be whisky-coloured… OTOH, probably none of my business.
Ohhh, madame, I think we need very VERY close screening… 
You kidding? Half the known Universe would open fire upon you on sight. Most of the other half would doublecheck first *then *open fire.
You might think so, but I’ve recently been peripherally involved in a case where the Canadian Embassy was shockingly indifferent to the trials, literal and figurative, of one of its citizens, Neil Bantleman*. It turned out that Neil was also entitled to a British passport. Both the US and the UK ambassadors did far more to support Neil than the Canadian diplomatic community did. I have to say, I was really proud of how the US Ambassador to Indonesia stood up for justice, even when none of the victims were American.
*If you try to learn the story by Googling, be forewarned that it is very complicated and a lot of what you read may be out of date or incorrect. This CBC documentary has few inaccuracies but it’s pretty good: Neil Bantleman : Nightmare in Indonesia - the fifth estate - YouTube I think the Bantlemans even mention somewhere in the film that they couldn’t understand why the Canadian Embassy did so little to help, but I may be conflating that with something I saw elsewhere.
Dunno. It used to be the case that some of the country stamps in your passport might impede or prevent your entry into other countries. Turkey/Greece/Cyprus was such a case.
Interesting that the “Passport Index” site considers how many of 193 countries one can travel to without a visa and saying that the US is join top with 147.
Two years ago it was reported that the UK, Sweden and Finland were joint top with 173:
And then a year ago Sweden, Finland, the UK, the US and Germany could go to 174.
One wonders what has changed. I wish they’d say that.
There’s a good article on why Americans abroad are giving up their citizenships in record numbers on the BBC news site. My main reasons for giving it up are the pensions issue and the inability to open new investment accounts.