<
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/25/dont-visit-the-us-it-just-isnt-worth-the-risks-right-now>
"Do you like being shackled and strip-searched? Absolutely no judgment if so,
but anyone who isn’t into that sort of thing may want to avoid a holiday to the
US at the moment. Although I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that. Unless
you’ve been hiding under a news-blocking rock (in which case: what’s the
address? And can I join you?), you’ll have noticed that Donald Trump’s America
hasn’t exactly been rolling out the red carpet for visitors. There have been a
number of recent incidents where white westerners – people who aren’t normally
targeted by overzealous US immigration authorities – have been detained,
deported or denied entry for obscure reasons.
Take the 28-year-old Welsh artist Rebecca Burke, for example. She was detained
by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) for 19 days in what her father
described as “horrendous conditions”. Now, to be fair, Burke had the wrong
paperwork: she hadn’t realised that she needed a working visa instead of a
tourist visa in order to exchange domestic chores for accommodation with a host
family. But getting imprisoned for almost three weeks over a mix-up and then
being led on to a deportation flight – in chains! – back to a country that is
supposedly a close ally, is obviously extreme. A Canadian woman also made
headlines after being detained by Ice for two weeks when immigration
enforcement officers flagged her visa application paperwork. And two German
tourists were similarly held for almost two weeks in a detention centre.
In response, some countries have beefed up their advice about travel to the US.
Last week, Germany updated its US travel advisory to emphasise that a visa or
entry waiver does not guarantee entry. Meanwhile, the UK’s Foreign Office has
revised its guidance to emphasise that you should comply with all requirements
as “the authorities in the US set and enforce entry rules strictly [and] you
may be liable to arrest or detention if you break the rules”.
Forget being careful about following the rules – just don’t come here. Why
spend your money in the US, which is threatening to annex its neighbours and
rapidly descending into authoritarianism? I don’t say any of that lightly, to
be clear. The US government is not synonymous with the American people. The
majority of those didn’t actually vote for Trump: only about 32% of eligible
voters cast a ballot for him. There will be plenty of people in the tourism
industry who are horrified about what’s happening and who may be hurt from a
drop-off in international travel.
Nevertheless, choosing how we spend our cash is the greatest power most of us
have. And choosing to deploy it in Trump’s America helps normalise an abnormal
situation. If I (a British-Palestinian with a US green card) wasn’t based in
Philadelphia already, I absolutely wouldn’t be thinking about travelling
stateside right now."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
