Aggression landing at SFO
 

Hi All

I would like to vent if i may regarding an arrival into San Fransisco from Hong Kong.

My husband and I are both in our late 40's and Australian. I have been to USA 3 times previously and my new husband never. Due to him having a conviction for dope (had a bong and a little for perdonnel use) at the age of 18 we had to get a special visa for him. To get the necessary photos, paperwork, apply, fees etc it was $400 but we thought do the right thing even though nothing shows up on a police clearance as it has been cleared due to 30 years passing.

We landed in SFO and went through immigration no problems. Lady who stamped our passports called over a supervisor who was fine, and told hubbie that his passport was getting full, some information in regards to his one year visa and off we went.

Further down was a guy collecting our customs cards? I was fine to go but hubbie you go over there and pointed. He says i may as well go with him as we are travelling together.

Get called to the counter and the woman goes Passport! No hi no please just barked, so hubby handed over his passport.

Then she starts barking why have you been sent to secondary? Now we both have travelled extensively but have never heard of secondary. Hubbie asks what is secondary? And i am looking up to see if it says customs on the wall but there is nothing i could see. She says dont give me attitude why have you been sent to secondary? Now the only attitude was coming from her. We know to keep mouth shut and be polite as these people can make your life a living hell if they so wish.

I then say to her i dont understand, what is secondary? Her reply was to shut my mouth or she would bounce me straight back out of the country?
She barks at me for my passport but of course with no please or thank you. Rude does not begin to explain this woman.

She has a look at my passport and keeps it on her desk.

We then get barked at why have you been sent here!
By this time i am getting really angry about being treated like a piece of dirt and keep my cool and say the guy who checked our card told us to come here.

Then i get shut your mouth or i am going to bounce you straight back out of the country. Hubbie and i are looking at each other in disbelief.

She then picks up my passport, yells at me while pointing at one of our bags and i am told to get out! I take my passport and bag she told me to take and i am in tears by this stage and leave. While walking out i ask another of the officers how do i put a complaint in about this woman. I ask for her name and he advises he cant give it to me due to privacy. I said a few words to him and stormed out into arrivals and waited.

For 1.5 hours this woman held my hubbie up. He was searched, everything in the bag was searched. Why was he here? Where was he staying and on an on it went.

He finally came out and explained the above and also the woman thought we had been in an office or something.

Never have i ever been so rudely spoken to or made to feel like a criminal or a piece of dirt. By the time hubbie appeared i had been in tears the whole time and my head was pounding as i was so angry. I was so angry i said lets forget it and catch the next plane out. I dont want to be here! Hubbie said no we are visiting friends and to calm down, we are in now.

Had it not been for the fact we were busy visiting friends i would have said fine you bounce me back. If this is how your country treats people i dont wish to be here or spend my money here.

No one deserves to be treated like this when visiting a country. 6 months on it still makes me angry and i am sticking to my guns regarding never visiting the USA again. There are many more places to visit and lucky our friends visit other countries and we will meet them there.

We spoke about our treatment to others while in America and they were very blaise. Sorry but thats how they treat you. We Americans get it as well! No one knew what secondary was either!

The only funny part was the officer told me to take my hubbies bag and i was not about to say another word. My hubbie now is a international, cross dressing drug smuggler lol She had to search my bag lol

My niece is marrying an American and moves there next month and i have already told her i am sorry, i refuse to spend a cent in America and wont be visiting.

I read about all the trouble with the TSA groping, stealing etc from people and i have to say i find it amazing there is not a uproar going on.

I find the people we met friendly, but not enough to make me want to ever go back through that attack ever again.

Caz

"Visit America: It's Easier Than You Think"

http://travel.state.gov/visa/visa_5735.html

Maybe the State Dep't should talk to other gov't agencies before spending money on such campaigns

Some CBP folks are fine. Others, like the one you got, have a real attitude and shouldn't be working in a public-facing situation. I saw one at IAD (that's the closest "international" airport to Washington, DC) thoroughly and totally berate in a loud voice an elderly asian woman who spoke little English. Her mistake? She got in the wrong line to exit Customs. Even told her that if she didn't speak English she should not come to our country.

I had a conversation with my elected officials, but don't know if anything came of it.

The best way to handle it is to ask for a supervisor right then and there. Yes, they may delay you. But there is no reason that anyone trying to visit the US should be subject to abuse.

I strongly encourage you to share your story with as many people as possible. There's no excuse for anyone to be subjected to anything like what was done to you.

The more the world knows about the USA's abhorrent abuse of our guests and citizens, fewer people will visit. Eventually, the paranoid swine "in charge" of "security" will stop harassing guests and citizens when there is widespread rejection and condemnation of these unnecessary practices.

Yeah, it's odd how they often treat people like shite in US Airports.
After all, that adds to frustration, resentment and diminishes the "security"
that they keep obsessing over.
I mean, right?
Who ever thought 911 would evolve into nasty, bitter clerks and ticket
agents?

OP can file a complaint with the DHS Inspector General if she wants. Won't matter. Likely secondary because husband's record contains notations about why he needed special visa review. The mistake here seems to be that the original control Officer should not have sent the wife over to secondary because there was no reason to and the secondary screener couldn't figure out why the wife was there.

The time to assert yourself is not at the FIS. The CBP Officer could have excluded OP for almost any reason or no reason at all.

Aggression landing at SFO
 

I would contact your embassy if you're still here or the foreign affairs office in Canberra. Also, write to your MP and senators. Let Qantas know that you won't be buying trams-Pacific tickets anymore and state the reason.

I can't apologize on behalf of the American People, but I just did.

There is no excuse for the attitude of CBP. None. Even if she were excluded, it could and should have been handled in a better manner.

To me, it's not the matter of a secondary, it's the way the OP was handled.

of course, nobody deserves to be treated rudely, but if I never returned to places where I've had a negative experience, I'd have to just stay home. Rudeness happens everywhere. Reasonable people understand this and try to enjoy their trip anyway. Try not to let the actions of 1 person taint your view of the other 300 million of us. People on the front lines of customs/immigration (of any country) are hardly representative of everyone.

However, many of us do not condone the policies that enable the treatment of guests like the OP.

There are plenty of wonderful, friendly, hassle and harassment-free places on the planet where this kind of nonsense never happens. I'm happy to blacklist places (obviously a little tough to blacklist my own country right now) that engage in such practices and instead go where I and my money are both warmly welcomed entering, while visiting, and upon exit. There's no valid excuse for any other kind of treatment.

Nobody here has condoned or defended the rude behavior. But boycotting an entire country because of one experience makes about as much sense to me as "I once had a cab driver with really bad BO, so I no longer take cabs".

Not at all. We're not talking about private citizens here. We're talking about government functionaries. And this is on top of the hassle and harassment that guests already receive before they even get here: onerous and expensive visa process and being treated like a criminal by immigration.

The United States should be condemned and boycotted by all international visitors.

Bad advice.Good advice.

ICE agents have wide discretionary power, including not calling a supervisor just because you want one. If you're a US citizen, yes you can push back at the risk of wasting a few hours of your time; otherwise you might well find yourself on the first plane back where you came from.

if it was US Gov't policy and practice to treat every visitor (or citizen) as rudely as the OP experienced, you'd have a point. But you have to acknowledge that front line employees don't always live up to the expectations or standards of behavior of the dept 100% of the time. That's not excusing the behavior, it's just a realistic acknowledgement that not everyone is going to get Disneyland-caliber customer service 100% of the time. CBP overreacted with the rude behavior. The OP overreacted (IMO) by boycotting the US based on a single incident.

Could not disagree more. There should be zero tolerance (immediate termination) for CBP who acts in this manner. But the underlying problem is the "security" culture that has infected the USA in the last 11 years that fosters such inexcusable rude and harassing behavior.

Not only should the OP boycott the USA, so should the rest of the planet until the USA gets its act together and stops acting like a nation of sniveling cowards.