War on Terror? Nope, it’s a war on tourists. Heck, *I* worry about traveling in my own country. When my mom died and I had a one-way ticket to Phoenix since I didn’t know when I would head home, I got the full search (not strip searched, thank goodness). I was crying my eyes out at the airport, upset enough over my mom’s death and then having to go through the search procedure. When the U.S. is afraid of a 45 year old American housewife, we’ve officially gone over the edge. TSA is a joke, a nightmare for travelers, and a waste of money and resources.
And now they are destroying our tourism industry.
America’s war on tourists – 28 Apr 2007 – NZ Herald: World / International News
In a recent poll of international travellers, commissioned by Discover America Partnership, a coalition of US tourist organisations, 70 per cent of respondents said they feared US officials more than terrorists or criminals. Another 66 per cent worried they would be detained for some minor blunder, such as wrongly filling out an official form or being mistaken for a terrorist, while 55 per cent say officials are “rude.”
Such fears are fuelled by the horror stories. Earlier this year a friend of mine was detained for hours and strip-searched at LAX for a minor visa infraction. He was finally allowed to enter the US, on the condition he departed the next day. “I won’t be coming back,” he said.
In a January Listener article New Zealand journalist Marilyn Head described how she missed a flight after being treated like a criminal by US airport guards.
“I left the US vowing never to return,” she wrote. “I’m not alone.”
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