B747-437B

It's a long story but it was resolved a few years later with the intervention of a friend at the State Department. I received an apology and consider the matter closed. Very little point in posting details of another isolated incident as ammunition for the anti-US crowd.

LuvAirFrance

Are rights greater in other democracies? Just curious.

PlatinumScum

Wirelessly posted (Treo: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.1-update1; en-us; Nexus One Build/EPE76) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/530.17)

He (or she) is probably one of those weirdos that believes people should be treated courteously and respectfully. With an attitude like that, the OP's concern is understandable (and probably justified).

König

I don't know about the actual rights, but the US entry process is the most invasive and ridiculous compared to many other countries, not just democracies (I take you meant 'western' countries?) Not only with respect to foreign nationals but one's own citizens. Actually, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa have similar entry procedures to the US one.

LuvAirFrance

I chose democracies, meaning all of them, so that we wouldn't have to deal with whatever autocratics states come up with. So, no, not just western. Anywhere that the people elect the government in an open election.

tcm

Agree with the above. Although all multi cultural societies now, countries with Anglo-Saxon origins tend to have very unwelcoming immigration agencies. May be it is because they are immigrant nations. The U.S., Canada and Australia have become rather arrogant in this respect.

Fredrik74

In my experience more so than the countries of the former Soviet Union.

LuvAirFrance

I think countries in the cross-hairs of the jihadis are bound to bristle a little more than those who are sitting on the sidelines.

GUWonder

Like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Canada and the US, for US citizens' entry to the same?

Meanwhile Communist China and the former Soviet republics are much more of a walk in the park on arrival on entry for US citizens with a visa or exempted from visa requirement.

RichardKenner

I'm not sure that style of government would dictate the strictness of entry procedures and the extent, if any, to which a visitor has a "right" to enter the country. I'd suggest instead that the desirableness of the country as a place for illegal immigrants is usually what determines how strict they are. If a citizen of country X is likely to want to try to illegally stay in country Y but a citizen of country A is not likely to want to illegally stay in country B, I'd expect country Y to be much stricter when examining person X than country B will be in the examination of person A

Teefaf

This has become a really interest thread, and my thanks go out to those that have contributed a great deal of interesting information. One of the reasons for posting in the first place was to put my mind to rest by understanding more about the process and what happens at each stage. So again, thank you to Firebug and the others that have contributed.

My personal circumstances are complicated (whose aren't) - by all of my background, previous travel history and current travel plans. As I said before, I don't have a problem with being questioned, so long as it is done courteously, and so long as CBP do what they can to help me make my onward flight. I do expect to be admitted, the questions are just over how long it takes and how I'm treated. I'll post back here once I've been through the process.

Also, for others who find this thread in future, I came across the following article which makes the entire process crystal clear - very helpful indeed: http://www.cavanaughlegal.com/immigr...l-airport-lax/.

travel69

I do not in which country the right is better on paper.The worst is US ,and English common law country such as Australian, Canada,UK , etc regarding visa and entry process. their immigration law system is same and visa and entry process is established in intensive personal invasive cross examination. The Russia is follow. Their system is invitation system, and they learn some worst part from US with their soviet era system ,and charge ridiculous price like US and introduce migration card based on US I-94.The plus is you do not need answer question and only need to pay. The best is Germany and shengen country. Visa and entry processing is based documentation you present without much question. You do not need to fill out any form on the border like US I-94 and Russian migration card.

Teefaf

I entered Australia a few days ago and it was as easy and quick as intra-EU immigration checks. Couldn't believe it - she glanced at my entry card, stamped my passport and waved me through without a word. If only it was always that easy!

B747-437B

The key difference between the US immigration system and that of most other countries is that whereas in most systems the issuance of a visa establishes bonafides for the purpose of admissability (and hence the PoE requires only to establish identity and that the bonafides are still valid), the US system requires that a full independant assesment of bonafides is made at PoE starting from a default assumption of inadmissability.

The US would improve their non-immigrant visa system a lot by simply getting DHS/State to stop getting into a turf war over who has the right to do what. Detailed inspections are best conducted at consular posts (where resources - and time - exist to verify third party references thoroughly) rather than the PoE which is best equipped to simply verify identity and prima facie variations from conditions of entry imposed.

Firebug4

That is a great idea in theory but reality is much different. The consular post does not do a bang up job at verifying information at all. Many times the consular post has foreign nationals working in the system which has caused problems in the past. This idea also doesn't address countries that do not require entry visa's. I would also point out that it is by no means a turf war the system was set up this way for a purpose. The powers that be want the checks and balance that currently exist in the system.

You would also still have the procedures in the entry systems to deal with Custom issues that would not go away either.

FB