Originally Posted by
Often1
When you say that you don't speak with an "accent' is that French or Belgian?
I don't think that they really care.
Seriously, don't overthink these things. It's a significant % of pax bound for the US and there is absolutely nothing you can do to avoid being selected except perhaps avoiding travel to North Korea.
To respond to your question, neither -- as the accent is an American English one. And given an excuse behind these questions was that of frustrating the transport of inadmissibile persons, accents do matter at times. And given the excuse that identity matters when it comes to interdicting contraband WEIs, they are concerned about identity and often even with stories that conform or not with the prejudices of the "interrogators".
There are ways to minimize the odds of having to deal with these dog and pony show grillings for flights to the US: choose the correct non-US carriers and the odds of this kind of stuff hitting drops off greatly.
One of these American-hired characters at BRU was like "what's your emergency?" Like nothing, I just felt like going home today. All this because of the ticketing date.