As a person with a foreign national husband (then-boyfriend) of several years, I can tell you that even the visiting process for foreigners has gotten worse since 2006.
We looked into him moving to the US and it was beyond ridiculous. So I moved to Austria.
Yeah, by "foreign national" I meant Austria. Nothing like coming back home from your trip to Vienna and being questioned for 10 minutes about where you met your boyfriend, and where did he grow up... like I have been. What could I have gotten up to, sneaking in 10 pounds of pure, medical grade schnitzel?
I agree with the article's premise. The xenophobia in the US is astounding, and getting worse.
> As a person with a foreign national husband (then-boyfriend) of several years, I can tell you that even the visiting process for foreigners has gotten worse since 2006.
But as far as I know EU citizens (which most definitely includes Austrians) do not require a visa to visit the US for up to 3 months - is that incorrect?
Without a visa though you are at the mercy of the highly paid and highly educated experts on international affairs and terrorism that man the passport desk at the airport.
If they think you have stayed too long, visited too often or they just don't like you - you are denied entry. Once denied entry you have to jump through all sorts of hoops to ever be allowed to visit the US.
Even EU citizens had to fill out special paperwork on the plane, and then get your fingerprints and iris scan taken.
Now you have to fill out special paperwork online, and get a "preapproval for travel" (it sounds so draconian, you can't believe), and fill out paperwork on the plane, and scan your iris, and give a fingerprint, and they can still reject you at the border for no reason.
It's fucking nuts.
There was a case not long ago at Dulles International, in VA (but really, the major airport for DC), with an Italian law student arrested and sitting in jail for nearly 2 weeks for no reason at all. He was visiting his American girlfriend and his English was bad, so they tossed him in jail on suspicion of wanting to overstay. They would not let him return to Italy on the next flight, they just tossed him in jail, in a foreign country.
If his girlfriend's family hadn't been well-off and connected to the state senator, who could say what would have happened?
That's the airport I fly through. My husband speaks perfect English, but how scary is that?
(And, on a personal opinion note - Dulles is really the airport for the nation's capitol, but it's more like the nation's asshole. I have been to almost all major city airports in the US and it is by far the worst. It is staffed entirely by horrible, unthinking, semi-literate power-crazed thugs - men and women. They yell instead of putting up guides or signs. They yell louder if you do not understand English. And that's where I got questioned for 15 minutes after returning from Vienna. And this is the face we show to hundreds of thousands of foreigners every year, traveling to witness the greatest country in the world.)
I didn't know it was that bad, I have visited the US last in '97 and have traveled extensively in other countries since then (I also live in Vienna BTW).
I assumed that as long as you are not coming from some 3rd world country it wouldn't be significantly worse than entering the EU, but now I am rethinking previous plans of visiting the US.
I don't need to go there that badly & risk that sort of madness.
We looked into him moving to the US and it was beyond ridiculous. So I moved to Austria.
Yeah, by "foreign national" I meant Austria. Nothing like coming back home from your trip to Vienna and being questioned for 10 minutes about where you met your boyfriend, and where did he grow up... like I have been. What could I have gotten up to, sneaking in 10 pounds of pure, medical grade schnitzel?
I agree with the article's premise. The xenophobia in the US is astounding, and getting worse.