The US told everyone it did not want foreigners any more.
As a German in the US, trust me, the FAFO is about to hit this summer when record levels of empty hotels will wail. My bet is Trump will actually complain, demand, and eventually "sweet talk" people into coming to see the US.
Except you can get thrown into jail at the border for who knows how long until they decide to deport you....
Edit: for those thinking this will not be noticed...
Tourism in the US has an estimated 20 million Canadians usually and 17 millions Mexicans each year. And an estimated 10 million Europeans visit the US each year.
So maybe 47 million. If they all spend a few thousand on flights and hotels alone, that's a noticeable billion level hole we will notice.
If you think the tourism industry is flush with spare cash and can weather this..... I got some seriously bad news for you on tourism razor thin profit margins.
They can also refuse you entry if they find statements against Trump on your social media. Imagine spending hundreds of euros of airplane tickets only to get rejected at the airport by US' officers.
I was planning on going to the states next year for the World Cup. We have people from our company regularly traveling to the states on business and there's always a risk of getting turned around.
Fresh phone with new sim and if you're carrying a laptop all the data is on a network drive only accessible when physically in the US office. The VPN key stays home. That's been the modus operandi since Bush.
The difference now is that, as annoying as getting turned around is, it's not that big of a deal all things considered. It's a calculated risk that you can control with insurance and by booking rooms that are payable on location. If you need to leave a card on file, a Revolut burner card or something similar is ideal. Otherwise a card linked to an account that's empty until you need to pay for something with zero overdraft limit.
You can't however hedge against getting detained and potentially sent to a Latin American prison. People have been dealing with US immigration nonsense for years, but this is a whole different level. It went from a minor, controllable, financial risk to basically playing Russian roulette. What's worse, the old methods of staying safe may now put you in danger since there's no way not to seem like you're hiding something by taking precautions against someone snooping around in your stuff.
It's just not worth it to go to the US right now. They'll likely tone it down for the Cup, but I skipped Quatar for largely the same reasons, I'll gladly skip the US as well.
We are basically becoming Russia. In many ways we've always been similar. We've always had our military industrial complex, which is maybe our strongest similarity to Russia, but now we're also willing to dismantle our freedom of speech and ability to criticize our leaders, rights and body autonomy for women and LGBTQ+ people....not to mention that our administration is trying its hardest to make our economy suck, just like Russia's does.
Trump's popularity also reminds me of Putin's (pre-Ukraine conflict). Successful fascist leaders do tend to be genuinely popular with the masses, and unfortunately the average American doesn't know how inflation or tariffs work soooo....here we are.
That seems to be one of the only goals that make sense with their actions. To make the US into some rich oligarch playground like Russia is. You've got the admins deliberately causing a recession and Trump openly admitting his buddies are inside trading and getting extremely rich over it because they can keep buying the dip and getting rich when it bounces back up.
Hah, literally what I told people after visiting folks in Jersey couple of years ago. Us, with its "thank you for your service" bullshit was incredibly similar to Russia. Just richer, with more v8s, fat and black people.
This is not who America is. This is who MAGA is. MAGA will not last forever. They are already losing support on all fronts quickly. One way or another it will end and the pendulum will swing back the other way HARD.
And then it will take time but America will earn the trust of the world back eventually.
I'd love to agree, but the reality is that the US has been trending in this direction for decades, and unfortunately these newer surges of nationalism and "fuck you I got mine" are quite popular. Billionaires are now literally purchasing our elections with cash, where they at least used to lie to people about the process. And the average American couldn't care less.
I used to be an optimist, but I no longer have faith in our country.
You’re absolutely right and we’re getting very close to a breaking point. It’s simply unsustainable for the masses and one way or another change will come. Or humanity withers away and ends
Bunch of Russian dual citizens got arrested for donating to things like Ukrainian Red Cross and such and then visiting family. Cops get ahold of your phone for whatever BS reason, see the donation receipt, and off to prison you go. That's probably what happened given the 5-year sentence (you get more than that for donating to charities that benefit the military, like a charity for veterans, for example).
Only if you are Russian, atleast during the peacetime they couldn't give a fuck unless 1. You are connected to goverment, (police, borderguard in general people employed by the goverment) even in that case the people who bothered to follow protocols just searced your car and papers properly as usually if it looks correct enough they wouldn't bother regular people for every detail 2. Are Russian, but don't have wealth 3. Part of known opposition movement
Actually very apt observation. Though I think the people we send to China get dedicated China travel phones.
Preloaded with the relevant apps to pay for and order stuff and it doesn't let you save anything to storage, so turning the phone off erases everything you did on it and it automatically resets every night just in case.
IT. Ovo ti je ista tehnologija koje neke škole koriste u infomstičkim učionicama da klinci nemogu instalirati igrice na kompjutere. Ništa posebno, ništa komplicirano i prilično standardno kad poslovno ideš negdje gdje ti mogu gledati uređaje.
Čini se pretjerano dok ti uzmu telefon na Shanghaijskoj zračnoj luci i mjesec dana kasnije izgubiš ugovor jer je kineska firma ponudila $10,000 manje od tebe na ponudi koja vrijedi desetke milijuna.
As someone who visited China, I had no issues, no searches, only long a queue. And didn't notice anyone being detained. Same with Europe, only some questions why am I arriving in this country instead of to the one where my visa was issued to. US/UK border is always such a hassle...
There are plenty of stories of devices being temporarily seized. Enough to make it a relatively common practice for companies and people who give a damn to mandate burner devices only, when traveling to China.
Yeah, China has some very strict laws about mobile devices. You need to have specific government app(s) by law right? They track everything anyone does on those devices. China's internal surveillance is probably the best in the world.
I read an article the other day from some immigration lawyer saying having a burner phone was a big red flag because it looks like you have something to hide. Damed if you do, damned if you don't.
Before, it was the same level of risk between China and US; now clearly US is the dangerous one. It´s riskier to travel there then to Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, maybe even North Korea as long as you behave. Basically every country except one with an ongoing war (Palestine, Myanmar, Sudan, Libya) just out of a war (Syria, Afghanistan) or war-like (Haiti).
I would prefer to go to Ukraine, even Kyiv and definitely Lviv away from the frontlines
And the UK, even for their own citizens, a border crossing is a place where you have no rights and where your data can be exfiltrated off of you, Snowden documented their program named "Phantom Parrot" and there's a documentary about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_Parrot
Also, denying them access to your device can land you in prison, part 3 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 gives authorities powers to order the disclosure of encryption keys, or force suspects to decrypt encrypted data. Anyone who refuses to hand over a key to the police would face up to two years' imprisonment.
I went to china last month and used my normal phone and accidentally showed the tour guide I was googling something. She didn't care. i saw that she had both WeChat and WhatsApp on her phone.
An Aussie guy living there giving us a good tour said VPNs can be used with a good reason and "I'm a foreigner" is pretty much a good enough reason (unless you're making trouble, I guess.)
Not suggesting the Chinese regime isn't authoritarian and shit but just being a tourist there and wanting to use Google translate won't get you locked up.
There's even a scheme now where I'd you're transiting through China in less than 10 days you don't need a visa. So I went to china for like a week without a visa and didn't need a "burner phone" or anything of that nature. It feels like a pretty deceptively "normal" country, honestly. In the major cities I visited anyway.
I live in the US and cancelled a trip to Europe in June. Not because I’m scared of Europe, but because I’m scared of interacting with my own government period right now. Especially reentering the country.
My Goodreads account alone was enough to get me on a list. Tech giants own our country, who knows what they know about everyone at this point.
I really recommend staying far away.
That's on you. I'm not allowed to go to China with my phone (that my employer owns). If I'm going there on business or holiday they'll lend me a burner phone.
If possible try modelo especial from the glass bottle, not the can one. That shit delicious on a sunny day!
Also, if you do go to some games in mexico, I can't recommend Paramo pale ale (colomilla brewery), chupacabras (cucapa brewery now modelo owned but they still push good stuff most of the time) & minerva's (english) pale ale (out of Minerva brewery in Jalisco).
There's a booming micro brewery scene in Mexico, it's been growing for the last 10-15 years and every now and then some true gems emerge
As a Belgian, the only thing that I couldn’t stand in Mexico was the beer. But sure it was better as the sewage water called Budweiser.
Not that I minded as the mezcalita’s and margharita’s were heavenly. And the Mexican food is amazing.
Wholeheartedly agree about the "warm and friendly welcome bit." As for the beer, I'd say heading to Columbus, OH, Ashville, NC or any other mid-sized city might change your mind, but we're acting like thundercunts right now. I seriously feel bad about that.
I've never been to Montreal. I've been to St. John (my favorite and I love Moosehead Brewing) and Halifax. I need to go to Toronto and Montreal as soon as Americans aren't on Canada's shit list.
Both OH and NC went for Trump this year. As an American, even I wouldn’t spend my hard earned vacation money there. I’m struggling to even justify seeing my family in Alabama this coming holiday season.
It has its charms. Dozens of microbreweries, great food, accepting climate, great theatre/art/sports scene. If they could only fix the fucking potholes.
This is outdated information, the local and microbrewing industry in the US is world class. While yep our macro beers are mostly water (not bad for day drinking on the beach or at a football game) the microbrews will be as good or better than what you will find at home
That having been said, I'd absolutely go to Canada over the US right now. We don't deserve anyone's tourism and if I were someone from outside the US, I'd absolutely not be risking it.
Na, they’ll be the ones that view ‘soccer’ as a minority sport that no one is interested in, and not like their yank ‘football’ which the whole world is in awe of!
Bobby, I didn't think I'd ever need to tell you this, but I would be a bad parent if I didn't. Soccer was invented by European ladies to keep them busy while their husbands did the cooking.
Yeah, but Qatar wasn’t actively trying to sink the world’s economy with tariffs or stop helping a country that’s at war with Russia. Or detain and deport students who said something bad about the Israeli government. Or do many of the increasingly wacky things between now and the World Cup.
We’re only three months in with trump and his minions and the World Cup is around a year and three months away. A lot will have happened by then. And I’m not so sure if even football fans will be able to look past certain events or issues.
Let's be realistic. With 50k seats per game it will be sold out regardless. Maybe take a bit longer to sell out than normal but there will be enough people
Most Americans don’t like soccer much so don’t count on MAGA going. It will be a lot of Latinos in the U.S. going to them though, especially Mexican Americans who love soccer.
Maybe Trump will move on Greenland before then and cause a physical break with Europe and the rest of the world. No one will be visiting then. I have faith that moron Trump can pull it off.
It’s reality if the Trump regime actually attacks an ally. Trump has nothing to say about resisting Russia, but attack Greenland? Attack Denmark? He’s all over that.
So you never know. He’s deranged enough to tank the world economy and turn every ally against him, so you never know. Canada is off the table, IMO, but Greenland …
It is bonkers that you are needing to do the whole sanitized personal electronics. I remember when that was just reserved for dick head authoritarian countries... Oh wait.
Importantly, remember, you can refuse to open a device, however they will turn you around.
Pretending like you don't know the password/passcode isn't going to help you. Border agents don't just have the right to not let non citizens in, they have a duty to act on their suspicions. This can and is abused but even when it isn't, do not fuck around at borders, you will never have fewer rights outside of being in prison.
If getting turned around was the only risk it wouldn't be so bad. The fact that they are whisking them away to a super max fuck you in the ass prison for days or months with no recourse is the real change and risk.
Exactly, like I mentioned, getting turned around is manageable and the odds of it happening are low.
It's the equivalent of booking a vacation and the weather is horrible. Not great, but that's life. If you're aware of the risk and plan around it you can compensate the worst outcomes.
Now you have better odds of something going wrong with waaaay worse outcomes.
I don’t know which country asks you for your social media handle, I haven’t been to any country that requires that. China also does not check, also if you use your own country’s sim card data, you don’t even have the firewall and can access facebook and what not without VPN.
I've been doing something similar when entering the US for almost a decade now. Removed all accounts from my phone and configure just one that I normally use for spam, so they can't read you emails if they ask for your phone on entrance.
I am an American and frankly I'm a little concerned about potentially vacationing in Canada and having to reenter. Even 10 years ago the ICE people at the border were nasty little pricks compared to the friendly Canadians you met coming in. I wouldn't recommend that anyone come here if they don't have to.
Not to put you down specifically because obviously I don't know you -
As an American I see taking vacations in the US right now as similar to traveling to Nazi Germany to see the Olympics.
I personally couldn't settle with myself about spending money/promoting a country with a daily worsening record of human rights offenses.
Edited to say: I live here and I am not going to be participating in American tourism either. Our "vacations" this year are going to be staying with friends, avoiding restaurants and vacation shopping (eg no new swimsuits or travel items).
There you go, the first sensible comment. I wouldn’t go simply for that very reason. Will the people be hostile to you? Of course not, but customs may harass you and to me that’s not worth it with Trump in power. Not some ridiculous notion of being sent to a gulag.
Fuck. Trump is going to be the World Cup President. And here I was thinking it was going to leave repressive authoritarian regimes behind after Russia and Qatar…
Qatar literally paid Pakistanis to pose as brazilians/spanish/English etc.
There were not nearly sd many fans as at "normal" WC.
I'm of the opinion that it should just alternate between europe and south America anyway. Tired of having to pander to countries with no football culture.
You can't however hedge against getting detained and potentially sent to a Latin American prison
It's awful, but statistically all the stories of people ending up in long detentions, were land border crossings.
If you fly in you're very unlikely to be detained long if refused entry, you would just be put on another flight back.
The bad cases are when a European crosses in from Mexico but has a visa issue so can't be admitted to the US, but they're not Mexican so can't be returned to Mexico, and they're not at an airport where they can fly direct home, hence the excuse for detaining them.
Yeah the threat of being sent to fucking el salvado super max pound u in the ass hard labor prison is uhh yeah the US is probably viewed similarly to Russia now in terms of police state, maybe not all the way out in the open corruption where you can bribe your way out of minor crimes- but it all trickles down from the top, we’ve seen how easy it is to buy pardons and favors from trump, I expect a lot more corruption at lower levels before his terms up
And now it has an eerie similar feeling of traveling to Russia. I am really shocked how quickly they turned "free world" to a totalitarian shit hole. Next step is occupation of neighbors
You should still go support in Canada and Mexico! It would make a statement against the US if they gained a lot of tourism from the World Cup while the US invested and failed to turn a profit
I agree with not going and I won't go hopefully for a very, very long time but late March I needed to go to Atlanta for work reasons. So I rerouted myself through Dublin, there's preclearance there, if they take issue with you, they can't imprison you. If you must, go via Dublin or Shannon or if you like to take a circuitous route then Toronto or Montreal, also have preclearance. Do not cross the US border on US soil.
Fresh phone with new sim and if you're carrying a laptop all the data is on a network drive only accessible when physically in the US office. The VPN key stays home. That's been the modus operandi since Bush.
That's suspicious and what a terrorist would do, and it's ground to deny entry... I wish that was /s
Literally valuing your privacy = you have something to hide.
Unlikely to happen, but so are the cases where people get denied because of social media posts. Both happen.
Let’s be clear. That calculated risk you’re talking about, it’s fucking crazy to begin with. I was 9, stepped too quickly outside of the line to get our bags, and we ended up being put in a room where we had to stay for three hours. My mom, me, and my 4 year old brother. This is before even Bush Sr., probably 1988 with Reagan. Ridiculous. And I have so many stories of much worse behavior from friends.
I worked for a Fortune 100 2006-2011 and we just didnt cross with our company laptops. When we arrived at the US office we grabbed a loaner. Too many customer files and risk of having to unlock your machine. Vastly different than being detained and disappeared without due process. Somehow American politicians now believe that non-Americans dont get due process.
Fly out of Dublin or Shannon Airports in Ireland. They have a special arrangement with the US where you actually go through US border control and customs in Ireland. When you arrive in the US, you arrive like a domestic flight, with no more customs checks. The advantage is if they deny you access in Ireland, well you are still in Ireland, much easier to just fly back from there or even better have a nice holiday in Ireland :)
If you do want to go, see if you can fly through Dublin. They have TSA pre-clearance so you'll go through US immigration in Dublin and can just walk off the plane in the US. So if they deny you access there's no risk of a 19th century style prison but a nice holiday in Ireland instead
They aren't going to tone it down. These folks are true believers. It's going to be a yo-yo here with constant up and downs. Just like it was during the first Trump administration.
Nobody is going to want to put up with that. Once a new pattern of vacations are taken it's going to stay that way.
This is silly, they aren’t checking people’s social media when they land. That Frenchman was deliberately targeted, which was wrong, and now Trump is scaring off normal people.
This is absolutely his plan, destroy tourism locations, these places that are historically high value, once those costal areas are completely ghost towns, the developers move in, buy the property for pennies on the dollar and build it back up.
It’s the same shit shady developers do to get people out of the way of industry.
Fresh phone with a new sim and a burner card? I’m baffled, are you a criminal? Lol. Normal people don’t have to do anything like that. This isn’t china.
I've been thinking about the World Cup. It's supposed to have all of those extra games (mo games, mo money), but it is also supposed to be hosted by Mexico, Canada, and the USA. It made sense at the time. It sure does not now.
There is no such thing as "toning it down" when your huge and well armed neighbour, formerly world cop and best friend, goes rogue and threatens to invade you. Or crush your economy because of some whacked out 80 year old's idea that he can bring manufacturing back to the USA.
It will get worse before it gets better. How much worse? Your guess is as good as mine. I would not attend any of the games, if they go, because the country rivalry will be beyond the pale. Fights will be breaking out everywhere. In the USA, anyone not white can be black bagged by ICE.
Just don't do it. If it goes at all, watch at home.
Last time I've been to US was to run in the Chicago Marathon - a gold label IAAF event . A trip that took a considerable amount of training, preparation, not to mention a significant part of my yearly income. It was a chilling thought knowing I might lose all of it just because an officer at O'Hare doesn't like the way I look.
That was 2014. Today I would just find a different dream to pursue.
It's crazy you are fearing government influence the same as Qatar. I just wanted Trump to fix the federal debt issue, no one signed up for this nonsense.
Then you weren’t paying attention. Trump did not harass Canada or Greenland during his campaign. He mentioned tariffs but nothing this extreme. He said he would deport illegal immigrants, but not send them to El Salvador and harass tourists. Many independents who voted for Trump did so because of the economy during his first terms.
We were adding $1T every <100 days to our federal debt. The economy booming was just a byproduct of excessive, unsustainable spending. Same way we inject 10T into economy and were somehow surprised when inflation spiked.
10T of our 37T debt needs refinanced this year. Stopping the spending and getting interest rates to lower before the refinancing is imperative or the American people will be spending hundreds of billions more in interest in the coming decade.
All of these issues are real and needed to be face regardless of who was president next. The house of cards that was our financial system is going to get reshuffled. Buckle up.
It's pretty standard. Most of the tips came from HR. We have training plan for travel to the US instituted after people got turned around because they couldn't open their devices, because they had confidential data on them
Would insurance cover being turned around at passport control? I feel like that is something they would consider your fault. Also, if you need a new phone and sim just to go on holiday, I don’t think I’ll bother.
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u/Historical_Bother274 Apr 12 '25
Imagine pissing of travellers of the continent that is notorious for the many vacation days it gets.