Who is going to the USA, who has changed their travel and what will you do differently?

burmans said:
Qantas clearly think there has been a drop in people going to the States with their big drop of those Classic Rewards there! But hey, what do they know.
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To be realistic, those of us who aren't in marketing in Qantas can't know what those who ARE in marketing in Qantas are thinking. Or what they are taking ...

Most likely sales are down, and/or they predict sales to go down.
But there could also be some marketing reason they've done this, eg. maybe they want people to think sales are down so that they'll compete with each other for the fares which exist?
 
As always, the dialogue betweeen @RooFlyer and @justinbrett has been an entertaining read.

Arguments on both sides are strong, however, I’m sure @justinbrett understands that there are always going to be examples of a discrepancy between the law as written and the law as practised.

I could probably think of a dozen examples off the top of my head, but here are a couple:

  • At the risk of stating the obvious, no-one is going to be fined for driving at 61kph in a 60-zone.
  • I’m old enough to remember when it was illegal to record TV shows for personal use at home, or to make a copy of a music album for personal use. To my knowledge, of the millions if not hundreds of millions of TV shows recorded on VCRs or PVRs for watching again at home later, there was not a single prosecution.
  • If regulations for carry-on on a flight are something like 30x20x15cm, has anyone been refused for bringing on an item that’s 30x18x16cm?
So it seems to me perfectly reasonable and legitimate to want to explore what’s actually happening on the ground in practice. And it seems overly simplistic to say that the (written) rules are always the ultimate arbiter. Most of the time they are; for complex reasons, sometimes they’re not.

Sometimes, in fact, it can be quite safe to ignore the law as written, in the knowledge that it simply hasn’t caught up with current practice. I knew the Copyright and Intellectual Property laws well while I was recording shows, but I knew for a fact that it was safe to ignore them. It wasn’t that I considered myself to be breaking the law: it was that I knew the actual (practiced) law was not the written law.

Having said all that: would I enter a TSA line in the USA without a passport? Definitely not!
 
Human said:
As always, the dialogue betweeen @RooFlyer and @justinbrett has been an entertaining read.

Arguments on both sides are strong, however, I’m sure @justinbrett understands that there are always going to be examples of a discrepancy between the law as written and the law as practised.

I could probably think of a dozen examples off the top of my head, but here are a couple:

  • At the risk of stating the obvious, no-one is going to be fined for driving at 61kph in a 60-zone.
  • I’m old enough to remember when it was illegal to record TV shows for personal use at home, or to make a copy of a music album for personal use. To my knowledge, of the millions if not hundreds of millions of TV shows recorded on VCRs or PVRs for watching again at home later, there was not a single prosecution.
  • If regulations for carry-on on a flight are something like 30x20x15cm, has anyone been refused for bringing on an item that’s 30x18x16cm?
So it seems to me perfectly reasonable and legitimate to want to explore what’s actually happening on the ground in practice. And it seems overly simplistic to say that the (written) rules are always the ultimate arbiter. Most of the time they are; for complex reasons, sometimes they’re not.

Sometimes, in fact, it can be quite safe to ignore the law as written, in the knowledge that it simply hasn’t caught up with current practice. I knew the Copyright and Intellectual Property laws well while I was recording shows, but I knew for a fact that it was safe to ignore them. It wasn’t that I considered myself to be breaking the law: it was that I knew the actual (practiced) law was not the written law.

Having said all that: would I enter a TSA line in the USA without a passport? Definitely not!
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I'm not sure this qualifies as a debate.

The question is "Is an Australian DL acceptable ID for US domestic flights" / "Do you need a passport for US domestic flights"; not "If I was in a situation where I had my passport lost or stolen, is there anyway I could still travel without a passport?". At no point have I said there is 0% chance of travel if you don't have a passport.

"Acceptable ID" has a very specific meaning for the TSA and muddying the waters for edge cases - which in no way makes the DL acceptable, but may still permit travel - risks confusing the issue which has a very simple answer:

Bring your passport!
 
Back perhaps to the original topic, what is hard to understand with all these stories is this new or is it just more of the same that's going on for all of the modern era? At the borders, I'd always (perhaps cynically, perhaps not) assumed that immigration personnel profile people (based on race, age, physical appearance, tidiness, travel history, luggage etc) that are seeking admission, whether to US or almost every other country around the world What has changed?.

Perhaps (if it's not just an excuse) the concern over fentanyl is heightening attention on certain individuals with certain travel patterns (eg transiting Asia to travel from Australia to US, or making very short light luggage trips to Australia from the US and back), and/or age and/or race and/or physical appearance - that fits the profile authorities have determined you would be at risk of being a candidate for moving drugs around.

Also, there are reports of people having anti-Trump messages on their phone/social media. As the old saying goes correlation doesn't always mean causation, and we don't know if they were pulled up for some other reason, and this was just a coincidence.

For now, I'm certainly not afraid of, or planning to avoid travel to the USA. There are plenty of place around the world that have strict immigration, and/or are not exactly a beacon of democracy that I'm still reasonable comfortable travelling to. For example places like China, UAE, Qatar and even the place I currently reside in - Singapore.
 
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dajop said:
Back perhaps to the original topic, what is hard to understand with all these stories is this new or is it just more of the same
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Well, who knows, but you must admit that this Administration is new. And by all reports, they are doing some new things (not all of benefit to foreigners or DEI, etc, apparently). So, it may be possible that some agents at the borders are interpreting guidelines (or worse) from the new Govt with some additional zeal, but, again, who knows.

I know that I won't be testing it anytime soon (at least not before my death). And as I have said previously, I've spent a little time in the USA (mostly pre 9-11), having flown more than 2.5 million paid miles with UA, so I'm probably not exactly a babe in the woods here.

I guess everyone makes their own decisions about visiting the the USA, and that's fair enough. In my view, it used to be a decent place for foreigners to visit, but now I'm not so sure.
 
dajop said:
There are plenty of place around the world that have strict immigration, and/or are not exactly a beacon of democracy that I'm still reasonable comfortable travelling to. For example places like China, UAE, Qatar and even the place I currently reside in - Singapore.
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I'm curious, have any tourists to those countries been detained for weeks at point of entry for, in the worst cases, minor issues?
 
Phoenix-1 said:
I'm curious, have any tourists to those countries been detained for weeks at point of entry for, in the worst cases, minor issues?
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It's hard to know because it's my understanding that DFAT and those providing consular assistance in some countries will often advise that people do NOT go to the media, as this can be counterproductive. Even after the event, people could legitimately fear for relatives, acquaintances etc and decide that it's best to keep silet.

This is one of those times when we may need to wait months or years for the dust to settle before we get the full picture. In the meantime, we may need to do some reading between the lines (small changes to Smartraveller advice, nationals from other countries, what statistics we can get our hands on and, just possibly, anecdotal evidence).
 
scaredeycat said:
In the old days "incriminating" just meant plotting terrorism or coughography. Now it includes expressing a political opinion.

Jesus wept...
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They've probably got a big black mark against my name then seeing as I continually repost various things on facebook making fun of their great leader.

The way things are going it won't be long before Egypt is withholding aid funding to the U.S. due to the U.S.'s civil rights record instead of the opposite happening...
 
RSD said:
They've probably got a big black mark against my name then seeing as I continually repost various things on facebook making fun of their great leader.

The way things are going it won't be long before Egypt is withholding aid funding to the U.S. due to the U.S.'s civil rights record instead of the opposite happening...
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If I add a like to this, will government data scraping find it and add me to the naughty list?
 
BrianQQ said:
Damn, guessing I'm taking a big risk going to New York in May then huh...
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A "big risk"? No way. Tens of thousands of people enter the USA every day, and despite all the media attention there are only a few cases of detention/deportation that we know of and none from the past couple of weeks.

The article below is the latest I've read, but note that it cites only three cases. Of those three, one is from late February, one is from March, and the other is not dated (but it links to an SBS article published on April 6).

Entering the USA is not a stress-free experience (it wasn't for me, anyway). But if your paperwork is in order and your background is clean, to say it's a "big risk" is, in my view, going way too far.

www.smh.com.au

Entering the US has become more fraught. Here’s what you need to know

Planning a holiday to the United States? Here’s an overview of the strict new Trump administration-enforced immigration border measures.
www.smh.com.au www.smh.com.au
 
Reading that US travel bookings from Canada is down over 70% year on year. We're also starting to hear the big companies talk about drops in demand from Europe as well in both directions (supposedly US are also less certain for travel with uncertain economic situations).

Some quiet cuts by airlines for US travel as well it seems for the summer.
 
My monthly SPAM from China Airlines arrived this morning, specials on Aus to Taipei ... and to the USA.

*edit*
Oops maybe this belongs in the "US airfares to drop" thread instead.
 

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