INS terrorising the tourists
It's official: the INS are scarier than the terrorists.
Washington - Rude immigration officials and long delays in processing visas have turned the United States into the world's most unfriendly country for international travellers, according to a global survey released on Monday.
The survey showed that the United States was ranked "the worst" in terms of visas and immigration procedures by twice the percentage of travellers as the next destination regarded as unfriendly - the Middle East and the Asian subcontinent.
The survey, of 2 011 international travellers in 16 countries, was conducted by the polling firm RT Strategies for the Discover America Partnership, a business-backed group launched in September to promote travel to the United States and improve the country's image abroad.
Good luck y'all. You want to improve the county's image, get rid of Bush and then give your international visa-handling consular staff personality makeovers.
For the record, while in the US I've had overwhelmingly positive (if often nerve-wracking) experiences with the INS. However dealing with their consular staff in South Africa is being confronted by brutal petty bureaucracy at its very worst. And you hear the same stories from many other countries, even European ones with little USA-bound emigration. They are the first line of defense in an age of extreme paranoia and immigrant phobia and as such they have been given too much leeway to be dumbasses but with zero customer-service training (unlike US-based counterparts) and have set about proving the old "absolute power corrupts absolutely" adage, with almost zero accountability.
I hope none of you ever has to deal with their like. They do things like deny entry to the US to people with valid visas, just because they can't get the required paperwork out of the stack in their arms fast enough for the . And there is no way to challenge them without risking all future travel here.
Washington - Rude immigration officials and long delays in processing visas have turned the United States into the world's most unfriendly country for international travellers, according to a global survey released on Monday.
The survey showed that the United States was ranked "the worst" in terms of visas and immigration procedures by twice the percentage of travellers as the next destination regarded as unfriendly - the Middle East and the Asian subcontinent.
The survey, of 2 011 international travellers in 16 countries, was conducted by the polling firm RT Strategies for the Discover America Partnership, a business-backed group launched in September to promote travel to the United States and improve the country's image abroad.
Good luck y'all. You want to improve the county's image, get rid of Bush and then give your international visa-handling consular staff personality makeovers.
For the record, while in the US I've had overwhelmingly positive (if often nerve-wracking) experiences with the INS. However dealing with their consular staff in South Africa is being confronted by brutal petty bureaucracy at its very worst. And you hear the same stories from many other countries, even European ones with little USA-bound emigration. They are the first line of defense in an age of extreme paranoia and immigrant phobia and as such they have been given too much leeway to be dumbasses but with zero customer-service training (unlike US-based counterparts) and have set about proving the old "absolute power corrupts absolutely" adage, with almost zero accountability.
I hope none of you ever has to deal with their like. They do things like deny entry to the US to people with valid visas, just because they can't get the required paperwork out of the stack in their arms fast enough for the . And there is no way to challenge them without risking all future travel here.