WHBM

The perception over here is that virtually every week the US authorities feel the need to announce some fresh restriction or difficulty on tourism to the US. Notably it's been combined with a complete elimination of all the former advertising here for visiting the USA.

This week's stories are about proposed new 5-hour checkins for Transatlantic flights so all your data can be sent over to the US authorities for approval before departure, and that we're all going to be fingerprinted on arrival. In Britain as in many countries being fingerprinted means being treated like a criminal.

And the stories about queueing, rudeness, harrassment and abuse of arriving visitors by the multiple layers of US bureaucracy have become daily fodder for the newspapers here (just like they have on FlyerTalk). Particularly how any tired, travel weary arriving passengers who don't follow all of the barked instructions seem to be immediately threatened with arrest. So don't be surprised that people don't come so much. If I acted like all this when people visited my home, don't you think I'd see a drop-off in visitors too ?

It's such a shame. The normal Americans we meet seem so friendly and completely different.