Do you visit the US often?

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02 April 2004 @ 01:43 pm

I know some of you visit on a regular basis, and this caught my eye because of

zorac, naturally. Apparently our ~~paranoid~~ lovely government has gone through with the plan to photograph and fingerprint visitors from allied countries. It says this plan will "take effect by September 30th," so I don't know if that means you could have it happen to you sooner than that. You have no choice in the matter (which I have decidedly mixed feelings about, I must say), but at least you know that it'll happen and to expect longer wait times in Immigration at the airport. The joy.

Here's the list of countries: Andorra, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brunei, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

If you want to read the full article, click here.

I feel: working

working

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tobymalfoy on April 2nd, 2004 11:57 am (UTC)

Yeah, well. At least they are not sticking with the original plan, which would have required everyone who does not possess a passport with bio-data chip (digitized fingerprints and photo), which would be practically everyone, since there is no country on that list that issues such passports so far, to get a visitor visa for every single visit. -.-

Oh boy, that sentence is long.

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pengolodh_sc on April 2nd, 2004 12:35 pm (UTC)

Particularly since those visas require personally showing up at the embassy for an interview - for many families in Norway that can quickly mean that the interview alone will cost US$1000 in travel- (and often hotel-) expenses, plus loss of income from taking one or more days off from work.

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kay_taylor on April 2nd, 2004 01:54 pm (UTC)

Hey look, it's another reason for me not to visit the US!

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hermorrine on April 2nd, 2004 02:01 pm (UTC)

Hey, the government sucks but us people are generally nice and there are lots of cool places to visit! But yeah, I'm not thrilled with it. On the one hand I'm like, well, passports will soon have both fingerprints and photos on them, so what's the difference? But on the other hand, I think it's really Big Brother and lame as hell.

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kay_taylor on April 2nd, 2004 02:37 pm (UTC)

People = nice and places = cool, but on the other hand:

1. The chocolate isn't very nice,
2. You get fingerprinted!
3. People visiting will only encourage the government not to spontaneously combust of shame. I'm slightly hazy on how this works, but am convinced that every time Bush's aides tell him that Kay Taylor is continuing her six-year boycott of his country, he starts to smoke a little.

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hermorrine on April 2nd, 2004 02:57 pm (UTC)

*laughs* Not all the chocolate is bad - Hershey's is the real crap, and you can avoid it. Besides, you'll need to get fingerprinted for your passport eventually. The whole smoking of Bush thing - I'm not sure if it works, but it would be nice if it did!

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altricial on April 2nd, 2004 02:00 pm (UTC)

...-.-

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dramaturgy on April 2nd, 2004 03:13 pm (UTC)

Yet another Very Good Reason to vote Democrat this fall.

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lissannej on April 3rd, 2004 03:40 am (UTC)

I can't say I'm all that fussed about it. If I want to get into the US, I gotta follow the rules, good or bad. I'm a good girl, haven't done anything illegal, so they can take my prints.

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