Tag Archives for immigration.
When I was a junior in high school the state finals of debate were at San Diego State University. My team went down to San Diego the night before, and a group of us – mostly 16 years old at the time – decided we might as well go to Tijuana.
Back then you didn’t have to carry a passport to enter Mexico, or return to the U.S. For a land border crossing a drivers license was sufficient.
Currently up to one in five passengers flying out of airports near the U.S. southern border appear to be migrants. Based on the difference between arrivals and departures each month from specific airports, people are leaving and not coming back.
Some anti-immigration Republicans are now calling for a boycott of Delta Air Lines after a commentator filmed the carrier flying migrants from Phoenix to New York.
Normally the complaint is that undocumented immigrants crossing into border states like Arizona and Texas overburdens those states and so they want them moved to New York (or Martha’s Vineyard)?
The U.S. is losing millions of visitors due to absurd wait times for visas. Last year we saw them get 14 times longer than they were before the pandemic, in some cases nearly three years. Make make it difficult for talented people to come here for work, too, and after a short time we… kick them out.
And we don’t do a great job even figuring out who ‘we’ ‘want’ here in the first place.
A passenger off of a transatlantic flight to New York has shared what happened when they were accidentally directed straight out of JFK airport – instead of being directed to immigration.
They were sent a note by the airline that they had to return to New York JFK airport the next day and given a specific time to do so in order to present themselves to the U.S. government.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency is proposing to require that all passengers on flights in and out of the United States provide a U.S. address; two phone numbers, and an email address – or be denied boarding.
Foreign visits to the U.S. are down substantially compared to pre-pandemic times. That’s bad for airlines. It’s bad for hotels. But it’s bad for the entire U.S. economy, too. And it’s an own-goal, with the U.S. government slow-walking people who want to visit here from around the world.
There’s speculation that migrants could be headed to President Biden’s home next, based on filed flight plans for one of the planes that was chartered for the Martha’s Vineyard trip.
Did you know that foreigners cannot visit the United States and then make Canada or Mexico their next destination, at least if they’re from a Visa waiver country in Europe or somewhere like Australia (and not actually getting a Visa, something almost no one does)?
One Australian learned the the hard way that the rule is onward travel must be to somewhere “other than a contiguous territory or adjacent island unless they permanently reside there.”
Friday afternoon’s United Airlines flight from Dubrovnik to Newark was delayed about an hour and a half on departure. On arrival passengers were let off the aircraft and staff opened a door into the terminal instead of directing passengers to immigration and customs.
The mistake was caught quickly, and as one passenger on the flight put it, the airline worked to “round up all of the people that headed off into the terminal.” Passengers were then held “until they figure out what to do next.”
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
