PS COLUMN ARCHIVE

December 23, 2009

Immigration checks of the USA

Last week, I visited Los Angeles, California USA, on business for the first time in two years. I lived there for two years about thirty-five years ago; naturally it brings back happy memories. This time I stayed there for a little less than one week; the weather was perfectly clear with temperature nearly twenty degrees centigrade, so I could enjoy warm days unlikely for December.

Nowadays, however, visiting USA does not necessarily make you feel happy. On this visit at Los Angeles airport, I had to stand in a long line in front of the passport control booth to have taken me over an hour to get out of the airport. The immigration checks have been tightened-up to take five-finger prints besides examination of photograph. In past days, it took only a few seconds at immigration by just answering simple questions, “Where are you going from here?” or “What did you come to the US for?”

It was the same thing on the way back to Japan. Exactly like immigration checks, I had to queue up in a long line at embarkation procedures that required not just luggage examination but I had to take off my shoes, which naturally took a long time for checking just a passenger. Although there were plenty of staffs around, even that number of the staffs was not sufficient enough to deal with a lot of passengers, which forced passengers to wait in a long queue.

This is all supposed to be due to preventing terroristic activities, which must cost a lot of money. In considering a low rate of uncovering terrorist plans in such a way, I had but to think of cost vs. efficiency in coping with a crisis situation. Besides, making passengers wait for a long time must spoil the feelings of pro-America people, which will never be favorable for the US in the long run; not a good thing for America.

As compared to the States, it’s much easier and simple to travel to Europe from Japan. At any airport in Europe, you can go through passport checks by simply showing it and never wait in a long line. Why is the US alone so severe as mentioned above? Easily imagined is attributed to the multiple acts of terror on September 11, 2001, but eight years have already passed since then. And yet, even today no clue to fundamental solution is in sight yet; that’s why they are so tightened-up in procedures for passengers in and out of the country. Unless there is reached, at an early stage, a compromising agreement between the US and Islamic countries, America will long remain an unfavorable country for foreign tourists.

(Translated by The Planetary Society of Japan)

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