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Yeah! What a useless metric. Who would want to go to China, Brazil or Vietnam when you can visit Cincinnatti! /s

I know a guy who shares a name with a one legged IRA bomber. One would think there would be some effort disambiguate name collisions. In this case a three year old could probably do it. Let’s see. One, two. Not the guy!!!

I have had some issues as someone of Indian decent despite having an American accent and native born.

Ok, so.. I don't know how to say this without sounding insensitive, but I'm a pretty traditional looking (albeit perhaps short) British, blue-eyed, white guy.

I have seriously never had a positive interaction with the US border force. Wether it's the TSA or another associated organisation (since I've been pestered by people who are not TSA).

I've been detained, questioned, randomly selected, given contradictory rules by different people, had things randomly confiscated and even been insulted.

I'm not confrontational, and I don't believe I stand out.

I have had exactly ONE positive interaction (in 2011) whereby I had accidentally travelled with a pocket knife in my checked luggage and due to the fact I was not allowed to check my luggage on the return journey (due to the train being delayed going into Newark; seriously, I understand why Americans distrust public transport) - I told the TSA agent about it and he was kind regarding it, offering condolences, but obviously destroying the knife.

I'm not sure if I'm on some kind of easing program to disincentivise me in particular from visiting the US, but I could easily see that if I was anything other than what I am in terms of race/religion/looks/citizenship: that I would presume that this was the reason.

And, for context, I've been to the US on average twice per year in the last 15 years, so this is my experience from around 30 trips, and 60-ish interactions with the international air apparatus.

It's a pretty decent country once I'm in though, though I wouldn't want to live there.

EDIT: I'm not sure why the parent is being downvoted, his anecdote is the same as mine.

I know it's normal to criticize the US now being like that, but the reality is, this is a shared vision among the 5-Eyes countries if you dig deeper. It just happens that the US is very outspoken about it. In Canada, for example as I read a couple weeks ago, individuals "having some sort of geopolitical proximity to a concern of Canada" are being put under the microscope and seen as guilty until proven otherwise, primarily from the Middle East (or West Asia if you don't like that terminology), despite the fact that there was no 9/11 or similar event to trigger any reaction, and how’s that a “proximity concern” to Canada.

https://halifax.citynews.ca/2025/08/06/immigration-lawyers-s...

Weird.

I look stereotypical MENA and haven't faced any extra screening, and I travel a lot for work both domestically and abroad, and I'm too lazy to get Global Entry or TSA Pre so I'm dealing with general TSA.

Did your friend maybe travel to an Arab country at some point in time that either faced significant instability, a country that borders Syria+Iraq, or to the West Bank via Jordan?

I disagree the paperwork is ridiculous. I don't mind racism I'm white and blue eyed like whatever. But now I have to jump through hoops to visit America? Pass.

> Everyone follows the same rules at the airport.

All travelers do but all border inspection people do not. Or if they do, they apply their discretion very unevenly in some Very Interesting Ways.

I've watched it happen twice since COVID, both times traveling abroad for work and coming back into the United States with coworkers (different coworkers each trip) who are not nearly as pale as I am. Neither of us had Global Entry or anything like that back then. Both times, I got waved through with barely a glance and my US-passport-holding coworker got grilled. "Where do you live", "why did you go on this trip", "who do you work for", and so on.

To reiterate: All of us are citizens, all of us were born here, and we were taking the exact same trips at the exact same times coming back with the usual things you take with you on a business trip.

Anecdotes from friends who are darker than a sheet of printer paper tell me this situation has not improved.

This kind of response is exactly what keeps racist systems like this going. No, it hasn't been the same for everyone.

> Everyone follows the same rules at the airport.

No they don't. Everyone does whatever TSA tells them to do, which absolutely varies by airport, country, and especially physical appearance.

Global Entry disagrees

I paid to not follow the same rules.

Had no b idea about this. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for the reminder. I had forgotten all about that. Is yet another point as to why effectively the USA does not even actually exist anymore more is the Constitution valid.

Some may be confused by reading that or even scoff at it, but it’s really not any different than any other kind of fraud by deception where, e.g., you think you have a certain amount of assets with Bernie Madoff that make you rich, but in reality it’s all just fake and does not actually exist at all.

It’s just that Americans haven’t realized that their country has being defrauded out from under them, much like how the EU just snuck in and went from standardizing trade to co-opting democratic self-determination and just swiping national sovereignty out from under the people of Europe because the ruling class said “no take backs” and that’s just how it’s going to be now.

(Or you're Australian trying to get back into your country during a pandemic)

Most Western countries (except the US, as noted) now have legit visa free access to China. No e-visa, no ESTA, no advance notice, no nothing, just rock up and get stamped in.

https://www.visaforchina.cn/DEL3_EN/tongzhigonggao/327343163...

And to be clear, this is not the previous restricted "X hours transit, don't leave the city" thing, but a full blown 30 day entry permit valid for the entire country (minus Tibet), any port of entry, any port of departure.

Yes, this is a massive departure from their previous policy, but yes, it's real. Having also gone through the regular China visa process multiple times in the past, I could hardly believe it myself when I used it earlier this year.

What part are you disagreeing with? It says the US is being left out of China's expanding visa-free program, not that 10 years ago the USA was on the visa-free list for China

I and a couple of friends of mine have been to China since they introduced visa-free access for my country (low on various "passport power" lists), and it's been an absolutely painless experience. No advance notice, no ETA (like e.g. South Korea does), just buy the tickets and go. The officers at the airport were very nice too.

If anything, dealing with WeChat and AliPay is much more of a headache.

> but I remember my Chinese visa being sort of a headache to deal with 10 years back from the US

I got one recently and it's not bad, except that it needs to be done in-person at an embassy based on the state you live in, so there's a 90% chance you'll have to trust a third party business next door to the embassy to walk your documents over and mail them back to you after. I would much rather be visa-free though, it was expensive and time consuming for no real reason.

We’re not being added to it and other countries are.

I don't know Travis, and I don't want Saudi "citizenship" (a rather dubious term when applied to a polity that is neither a city nor a republic), but I can think of some possible reasons:

• Going places that have visa-free travel for Saudis but not for US citizens.

• Evading other forms of discrimination against US citizens, for example, difficulty in opening Swiss bank accounts.

• Consular help from the Saudi consulate in third countries that are neither the US nor Saudi Arabia. Right now it's Saudi embassies rather than US embassies that murder journalists who criticize the head of state, but that could reverse within Travis's lifetime.

• Owning Saudi land and businesses. Many countries have restrictions on land ownership by non-citizens, and Saudi Arabia (one of the world's richest countries in solar resources) is one of them, although it isn't completely prohibited in all cases. Similarly for starting businesses.

• Residency options in third countries. Even today, there are probably countries where Saudi citizens can live more easily than US citizens; if I had to guess, I'd guess Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco. Morocco is famous, among other things, for being where Roland Barthes lived in order to have sex with a lot of young boys. I wouldn't venture to suggest that Travis is looking for that, but all three countries also have vast solar resources.

• Living in Saudi Arabia itself has its appeals. The Line project is not someplace I'd want to live, even if a significant fraction of it does get built (Arcosanti is more my speed) but it would at least be interesting to see.

Huh, what caused the surge between 2020 and 2025?

Counting each country equally is itself a bias -- it slides the weighting 100% towards international recognition of a country. As a result, Somalia and Morocco are weighted equally, which is obviously incorrect; nobody is upset if they can't go to Somalia. A common-sense weighting would be imperfect, but almost certainly better than an equal weighting on each county. "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good".

edit: it _SHOULD NOT MATTER_, but I grew up in Turkey, am half Persian, and am very liberal. If that matters to you, please think good and hard about what kind of person you have become.

It's close, but the existence or not of some countries is sometimes disputed.

It's funny you took it that way, I took it as dismissive at Barbados for being smaller, and it's not clear which one was actually intended.

"I'll go to India for my vacation! Sure, the beaches aren't anything like the Caribbeans, but you gotta realize: it's got WAY more people."

I think it's the other way around. If you need a visa to enter, the government considers you more suspicious than those who can enter without a visa. And you will likely face more scrutiny at the border.

Some countries have visa-on-arrival schemes, which are the opposite of ESTA and ETIAS. The visa still exists as a formality (maybe due to reciprocity or as a tourist tax), but you need to do little beyond paying the fee to get one.

I have never visited an embassy to get a visa--though I did cancel a couple of business trips when it became too much of an effort because of timing relative to other trips. I've travelled to a bunch of countries where I could just go through immigration with a US passport or maybe pay for a visa on arrival.

Not true - there are plenty of countries that have e-visa (online application).

If you think the country is falling apart and people are going to flee, then yes stock market would fall if those things did actually happen.