Want a Stress-Free Vacation? ‘Don’t go to the USA.’
Travel Blog • Eva Holland • 01.22.08 | 11:55 AM ET
Photo by Matt Rudd has a blunt message for potential U.S.-bound readers in the Times of London: Take your travel dollars elsewhere. There are plenty of places in the world that are just as interesting, he argues, and they come without a “preflight e-interrogation, epic queues at immigration, thin-lipped questioning from aggressive border guards, and an outside chance of a rubber-gloved rectal rummage.”
After a scathing introduction (including a suggestion that Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff would really prefer “if all we prospective visitors could be so good as to stay at home and just send our holiday money over in an envelope”), Rudd suggests alternative destinations for a handful of popular American destinations: Macau instead of Las Vegas, St. Moritz instead of Aspen, and so on.
I understand Rudd’s frustration, but at the same time, I wonder whether he’s ever tried to enter Britain without a European Union passport? There may not be a “rectal rummage” involved, but the cross-examination I get every time I pass through Heathrow has always irked me a little. Especially when you consider that my Canadian passport includes the phrase “in the name of Her Majesty the Queen.”