Originally Posted by TravellingChris

The reason "privileged Western travelers" have not needed to "gather a zillion documents" and visit an embassy for a tourist visa to the UK is because they don't abuse the privilege of visiting the UK. This is not true of the citizens of the countries who require visas--that requirement was imposed because visa-free status leads many travelers from the Third World to claim asylum or attempt to work illegally in the UK. This is exactly what happened recently with Jordanian citizens who enjoyed the ability to enter the UK with an ETA rather than a visa. The benefit lasted all of a few months because Jordanians were wildly abusing it (claiming asylum, for example.)

No American, Canadian, Japanese or Bruneian citizen is going to claim asylum in the UK. This is why the entry requirements for citizens of such countries wishing to visit the UK have always been much lighter than for citizens of other nations.

The problem with the ETA is not that it is equally onerous to applying for a tourist visa (it isn't, nor should it be) but because it attempts to solve a problem that doesn't exist. The citizens who are affected by ETA are not the people the UK needs to worry about. For crying out loud, the UK is being swamped with boats of illegal arrivals and yet the government thinks it is providing "national security" by slapping an ETA on Western tourists.