PTravel

I'm not sure whether this as addressed to me or HRHMom. The last time this happened, I read the Immigration inspector the riot act. I don't recall exactly what I said, but it was along the lines of, "How dare you? Who do you think you are to talk to my wife that way? It's racist, offensive, and I'm going to talk to your supervisor." And I did speak to the supervisor who apologized and took my complaint though, as I indicated, I never heard anything further about it.

I want to be clear, as well: the number of problems I've had with Immigration officers is very, very small -- off the top of my head, I can think of only 3 or 4 incidents that would be worthy of comment (though at least one other incident, involving my wife, was truly outrageous). And I've never had any problems at all with the Customs side of things. I've even had purchases we made overseas shipped home (by air and, a couple of times, by sea) and handled the Customs clearance myself. Virtually without exception, I've found the Customs officers to be efficient and polite, and almost always friendly and helpful. I'm not looking for trouble when I travel. Quite the opposite, I am polite and cooperative (unless my Constitutional rights are violated). I have noticed, however, that many people seem to be terrified or, at least, in awe of, Immigration officers. An anecdote:

Once, I was returning from Canada through Vancouver. That particular day, there were two separate "feeder" lines that converged at a single Immigration officer's position (usually there were two positions open at this location, but today there was only one). The officer manning the position was only taking people from the second line and completely ignoring the first, which happened to be the line that I was in. There were about 10 people ahead of me in line, all Canadians, judging from their passports. After about 10 minutes, when it became clear that we were being ignored in favor of the second line, I excused myself, went to the front of the line and said to the officer, "Excuse me . . . are you going to take anyone from our line?" The officer barked at me, "I'll get to you." I don't like being barked at, so I barked back, "When?" He growled, "Don't worry about it." I replied, "I will worry about it. I have a tight connection to make -- you should be taking people from both lines." The officer mumbled something, but then called the first person from my line and alternated lines after that. During this exchange, I noticed that the Canadians in front of me literally cringed. A couple of them whispered "thank you" to me. It was as if they expected a platoon of Marines to suddenly appear and drag me off to Guantanamo and, if they acted as anything other than docile sheep, they would be dragged off with me.

This is supposed to be America, not Nazi Germany, and Immigration officers are supposed to be the visible face of the government, and therefore the people, of the United States. I'm not quite sure when they (or, at least, some) started to become indistinguishable from jack-booted thugs, but I will not stand for it.