US Immigration
Going into LAX a few years ago (2004)I was asked for my passport by the immigration guy who then started to question me as to why I had bothered to get a visa from my embassy. "Because I was arrested for underage drinking when I was 17" was my reply. "Why didn't you just get a 90 day visa waiver?" "Because the embassy said I had to apply for a visa if I'd ever been arrested". He informed me that only felonies excluded you from the visa waiver scheme and I must have had a reason for applying for a full visa. "I don't I understand what your getting at" I asked him. This just made him very angry and he kept repeating, "Why did you get a visa?" I asked to speak to his supervisor who simply asked for my onward ticket, and sent me on my way once I produced it. Are the immigration staff at LAX mentally challenged? Surely going to the trouble of going to an embassy and going through a stringent vetting would mean I have nothing to hide? Not according to this guy. Every airport I have travelled through in the US on that trip and every one since have subjected me to embarrassing and very inconvenient searches and questions. No one else in my group is ever questioned. Just a hint, if you get a bunch of XXX's printed on your boarding pass, standby for annoying delay's. I am told it's a computer generated mark for random searches. When I told immigration that every boarding pass I had been issued since 2004 had these X's (about 12 of them) I just got an "I don't know" response.
Hate flying in the US