One bonus - they won’t be spending any more money in the US.
I don’t know who needs to hear this but – DON’T COME HERE. The only thing these morons will listen to is money.
Please collapse the tourism industry.
I honestly kind of feel bad for Hawaii TBH. They need to gather the courage to secede and declare independence. Most of them voted Democrat, and as a chain of islands right smack-dab in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, they deserve better than to bear the consequences of all this insanity far away.
They found it suspicious that we hadn’t fully booked our accommodations for the entire five weeks in Hawaii
Fuckin seriously? We all know what backpacking is. I’ve never pre-booked an entire stay when traveling internationally except when it’s for work.
Yeah wtf… I even traveled to countries where I had no place for the night, but knew I would get one spontaneously. Not great in certain countries, and you gotta know that, but 5 weeks?
Both of you are crazy. I’d never book a trip anywhere without the accommodations secured several months in advance. If I had to deal with the stress of finding the perfect hotel after I’ve already arrived at my destination, I’d probably have a panic attack.
But that’s not backpacking. It’s a journey without those limits to allow you freedom to change your mind.
I didn’t do it much but when I backpacked I tended to avoid public transport (hitch hiking) and would often just sleep in a city park or railway station. Different times now but it was part of the journey
Doesn’t have to be the perfect hotel. Slept in a repurposed restaurant kitchen for ~5€ one night in the Taiwanese countryside. Damn I miss being 20.
My children, at the time ages 20 and 22, backpacked around Europe. They stayed at hostels and didn’t have reservations. (Their favourite was Amsterdam. Scotland was a close second!)
This was when I was backpacking in Europe. These days it would stress me out too.
Not that this justifies the response of the US, but the phrasing is ambiguous. Wonder if they mean this in the sense of, they had booked accommodations for some but not the entire of their trip, or if they mean, they had booked none at all so their entire trip was open.
Backpackers commonly book no accommodations ahead of time. I’ve done that plenty.
Arrive at airport. Get cab. Drive to hotel number 1 and ask about room. Drive or walk to hotel 2 and ask about room. Repeat as often as desired. Return to hotel with best deal.
I can’t count how many times I’ve done this, having zero specific plans about where I am going to stay. Sometimes I just take the first hotel and then on the next day go look for something better. This is totally normal backpacker behavior.
They did not send them to El Salvador btw, they’re back in Germany now.
But the description of how they were treated is still harrowing:
Pohl and Lepère were interrogated in Honolulu International Airport for hours and allegedly subjected to body scans and strip searches before, finally, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents denied them entry to the country and said they would be deported, according to the outlet.
Officials became suspicious of potential illegal work intentions after learning the teens had not booked accommodation for their entire five-week stay in Hawaii
So everytime I travel I’m a potential terrorist? That’s what (many) backpackers do you dumbasses.
The women said they were placed in a holding cell beside some other detainees who were accused of serious crimes. The teens alleged they spent the night on moldy mattresses in a freezing double cell.
On March 19, the young travelers were allegedly taken back to Honolulu International Airport in handcuffs, where they requested to be sent to Tokyo, Japan.
Now imagine how much worse it is for all those so-called “illegals”, and still how much worse when they get to El Salvador.
It’s not entirely unwarranted, they WERE planning to work on a tourist-visa, which specifically and clearly not allowed in pretty much any country.
The horrible treatment is, of course, completely unwarranted, but denying entry isn’t.
It’s not entirely unwarranted, they WERE planning to work on a tourist-visa
[citation needed]
They said they wanted to travel spontaneously. That is, they had their first hotel booked, then would’ve booked another hotel, or left the states early.
Maybe Americans just don’t understand travel that’s not an organised five-day trip.
Where did you get that information? Because all it said in the article was:
Officials became suspicious of potential illegal work intentions after learning the teens had not booked accommodation for their entire five-week stay in Hawaii,
How not booking hotels for their entire trip equates to “potential work intentions” escapes me. If you were planning on working for five weeks, wouldn’t you book a hotel near where you were planning to work? Was there a job lined up? Are we supposed to believe that in the middle of a round-the-world graduation trip, these girls wanted to spend 5 weeks working?
Alternate explanations:
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the “work” they were doing was shooting video of their adventures and posting it on YouTube in the hopes of establishing a career as travel influencers, so they can travel the world for a living. Basically, this trip was an investment in their future.
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border agents got pissed off and jealous of two rich girls traveling the world, and decided to fuck with them
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the girls became indignant at being treated like common illegal immigrants, and mouthed off, and agents decided to teach them a lesson.
Frankly, the real story is probably a combination of all three.
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Yeah, with you on this. I know in the past these arrangements have been very lenient but the recent political developments just show this isn’t the case anymore. It is very silly right now to admit you wanted to work on a tourist visa.
About having no bookings yet, that part was always sketchy. I went 15 years ago to the US for a 4 week trip and had only lined up the first hostel for a few days, the rest I had not planned yet, luckily got no questions but worried about it back then already… Guess this is a thing of the past now.
The treatment however is definitely over the line.
About having no bookings yet, that part was always sketchy. I went 15 years ago to the US for a 4 week trip and had only lined up the first hostel for a few days, the rest I had not planned yet, luckily got no questions but worried about it back then already… Guess this is a thing of the past now.
Huh? You base “was always sketchy” on your personal feelings doing that yourself 15 years ago?
I really don’t see what’s sketchy about not booking four weeks ahead.
I’m more of a planner, but my grandparents get in their car and drive through and around Italy without a single stay pre-planned.
I don’t see how that’s suspicious or sketchy at all.
I am saying that from the view of border control. What I read back then as advice was very mixed and seemed to depend on you having luck that the person in front of you didn’t care. Already back then without the political climate we have now.
It is very silly right now to admit you wanted to work on a tourist visa.
Where did they admit that?
It’s not in this article, there were plenty of others posted where it was mentioned.
Could you perhaps share one?
I’ve been stuck in customs for “not having enough money on me”, despite credit cards and ATMs existing. It depends HUGELY on which individual you get in the US.
It also depends on whether your particular border piggie hates your sort of person or not.
My wife was on a green card when we lived in the US. Whenever we traveled together, no problem. But when she’d enter the US on her own, odds were high that some CPB asshole would harass her. And it didn’t help that she’s not a person who will put up with shit. Once she was held for six hours because they asked her what she’d been doing outside the US.
“Travel. I visited three European cities with my sister.”
“Why were you travelling?”
“It broadens the mind. I recommend it.”
Now I’m on the UK green-card equivalent (ILR) and all I get from the border agents when I enter is some friendly chit-chat.
I used to teach a unique culinary technique, and had clients visit me from all around the world for training, including several Muslim countries. Only one client had a serious problem at the border, a young Muslim guy from India. His dad was a major Bollywood director, and was fairly wealthy.
He had gone to college in America, so he was using this trip to both visit me for a few days for his training, then going on to Miami to meet up with his American college friends.
His visa said he was here on a pleasure trip, but for some reason he was pulled aside for grilling. They demanded his phone, and looked through his texts, where they found messages between him and I, making arrangements for his training.
That lit them up, and they started claiming he was coming here for work, not pleasure. He explained that he wasnt being paid, he was paying me, and it wasn’t work. It was educational, if anything. It was really just an expensive experiential vacation adventure for a rich kid, which was something I’d experienced before. Some clients really wanted to learn this technique to expand their culinary portfolio, while others just wanted to try it out for fun, and had the time and money to do it. If you came to America to learn to scuba dive, or surf, would it be considered work, or even educational?
The fact that he was here for education or work wasn’t the point, the point was that the visa was for pleasure, so they were claiming it was a violation, even though most of the trip was with his friends (3 days with me, 2 weeks with his buddies).
Then they focused on his money. He was carrying about $2600, and they acted like that was an outrageous amount of cash for a rich young man to carry on an international trip. They demanded he tell them exactly how much cash was in his wallet, which they were holding, and had searched. He told them the exact amount, because he had counted his money on the plane, after they had landed. They told him he was lucky he knew the exact amount, or they would have kept his money and sent him home.
Eventually, they grudgingly allowed him to leave, and he got his training, and visited his friends, but he went home with a very negative view of the US government.
This all happened during the first MAGA administration.
a young Muslim guy from India
Well there’s your problem. The rest is just an excuse
I get it. Frankly, i was surprised that ALL my Muslim clients, who also came from India, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, South Africa, and other countries, didn’t have problems of their own. I also had people from many other countries luke Vietnam, Phillipines, Russia, Serbia, England, etc. None got hassled at all. This one guy just won the Border Patrol Lottery. Yay!
The closest I saw was when one got pulled over by a local cop, who kept asking him over and over “Who else is in the car?”, when it was easy to see that the guy was all alone in the vehicle. The only thing i could think of was that in order to get from my shop to his hotel, he had to travel through a small zone that is known for prostitution, and a lone brown guy in a car tickled that cop’s lizard brain. That area is also a MAJOR tourist/ convention zone, so its not the only reason to be there. 99.99% of the people going through are there for perfectly legitimate reasons, including just getting from here to there. My client didn’t even know about the prostitution angle, and was horrified when i told him.
Everyone who is going to USA for vacation is an idiot.
My friends are going there in June. They had booked the trip before Trump was even elected They have little kids and look as Aryan as it gets so they should be fine. But honestly in their place I would still seriously consider cancelling.
I don’t think that “looking as Aryan as it gets” will keep cutting it with the US. They are treating their own Citizens like this after all.
Yes, but mostly PoC so far, from what I read.
In german media (Rostock newspaper) the girls said that (they planning to work) was put into the documents without their knowledge.
It seems like a bit of a stretch to frame two teenagers wishing to go island-hopping as part of their post-graduation world trip as “intending to work” 😜
Deportation appears to be about as appropriate here as sending the SWAT team after someone who dropped a candy wrapper.
It seems like themselves admitted that they intended to work?
They did not. It was put into the interrogation documents without their knowledge.
Work for their foreign clients with foreign companies. Remote work. While they were backpacking.
Still Tax fraud and visa fraud. Works like this in most countries.
Not that I agree with these extreme measures. Most of Europe doesn’t care but still: as ilegal in the US as it would be if an American tourist did the same in Germany.
Like if I work for Intel and I’m on travel visa, I can’t answer some emails or do a zoom meet with my team for updates or something?
It seems like themselves admitted that they intended to work?
In what capacity?
They’re teenagers. Probably they’re secretly doing a bit of brain surgery on the side to get walking-around money during their backpacking trip.
I don’t know but that’s what the post you were replying to stated and you just ignored it.
I don’t know but that’s what the post you were replying to stated and you just ignored it.
I do tend to ignore posts that come without references or explanations, that’s true.
But that’s beside the point I was raising - I’ll rephrase: I find it hard to believe that there is anything two Middle European kids vacationing in Hawaii could ever do to even remotely approach any sane definition of ‘working without a permit’ to warrant immediate deportation. Whether they did or didn’t actually intend to defraud the Federal Government over 20$ in beach bar tip money taxes doesn’t really factor into that argument, does it?
So. Fucking. What? This world is retarded and you’re definitely doing your part.
But at the time, we didn’t think it was happening to Germans
Then you didn’t pay attention, cause it happened to other Germans already.
And the Auswärtige Amt (German Foreign Office) has updated their travel advisory for the US with new warnings.USA has never been welcoming at immigration
My mother got questioned when she was in her 70s And got followed to the baggage area… she was travelling with airline cabin crew and didn’t know the hotel, they didn’t believe her
I look forward to Hawaii’s tourism economy being destroyed by fear of being deported
‘We had already noticed a little bit of what was going on in the U.S. But at the time, we didn’t think it was happening to Germans,’ Maria Lepère says
Welcome to the real world. Pity they had to find out this way, but maybe it’ll rattle them enough to !boycottus@lemmy.ca and !buyeuropean@feddit.uk
At least they learnt to not sign some shit the immigration officer wrote down on a whim. I guess everyone needs to learn that immigration officers can be hostile.
Hostile immigration offices remind me a hack from long ago dubbed “Chinga la migra”. I think that was when 4chan hacked ICE.
‘We had already noticed a little bit of what was going on in the U.S. But at the time, we didn’t think it was happening to Germans,’ Maria Lepère says
Maria Lepère is either a certified idiot or lives behind the moon and/or in TikTok.
TBF, that’s normal. People tend to consume social media in their own language and don’t get the full brunt of what’s going on in the US. People want to stick to the idea that the world is just as normal as it was 10 years ago.
Well, thankfully I’m not normal.
Also, I have partial understanding for these backpackers. They were already traveling around the world, and my experience is that you consume less news or social media while traveling. Much less.
My experience is that travelling around the world is basically a full-time-job where you spend at least 2 hours every day gathering up-to-date info about your upcoming itinerary.
But maybe I’m weird that way. When I’m travelling with others, I usually slide into the role of travel guide automatically.You’ll still read enough about Trump and the US, even if you read in your native language. I see enough news about Trump every day, no matter what platform. The lady is just super naive and thought: nothing will happen?
I had a discussion a little while ago on Lemmy about someone saying “why should I care about US politics”. Well, add this to the reasons why.
They say, international tourism to Usa plummets by 10%.
So there are still 90% certified idiots.
I mean, a lot of people aren’t willing to outright cancel their already booked trips, since they don’t wish to waste potentially thousands of euros, so they may as well take the risk
Aaand this is why the national governments in the EU should already have issued an official travel warning… or simply state on camera: “Don’t go to the fucking USA!”
Well, the German government has. It’s just that some people think “It won’t happen to me” until it does.
She’s just a kid who recently finished school. But I hope she learned an important life lesson there.
Travel to the USA is a risk sport like running in front of a bull in Pamplona streets
But the bulls will only either kill you or break a few bones if you don’t get out of their way. Here, the “bulls” make sure to corner you and pummell you down, just for the thrill of it.
Also, it’s not bulls. It’s pigs, but the RPG kind of murder-pig with metal plating and steel-tipped tusks.
You mind doing me a favour? Please.
Stop calling cops pigs. It’s idiotic, ridiculous and insultuous towards actual pigs.
If you feel the need to throw insults, do so; just make use of some imagination. Don’t be afraid of being baroqe.
Call them door kickers, grave fillers, trigger jockeys, wall jumpers… Say they’re as sharp as an army boot or that they’re a waste of fresh air or unneeded space filling.
Just make it an actual insult, not a comparison to an animal that does not deserve it.
Or better yet, despise them to such a point that you make the word cop an insult by itself.
It’s a universally accepted term we’ve been using for over a century. Get over it.
Nope. Grow a mind and learn proper insult, hot breath.
Then continue to be upset, dipshit. No one’s stopping on your behalf, so I guess have fun writing these paragraphs every time you see it used.
Someone has a tender spot.
You have a point. It was a joke to redirect the bull metaphor to a different animal, force of habit.
On the other hand, the term “pig” for Cops has become rather detached from the animal, just like Motherfucker doesn’t actually imply incestuous sexual relations.
But you have a point all the same.
With the World Cup a year away…
“These travelers were denied entry after attempting to enter the U.S. under false pretenses. One used a Visitor visa, the other the Visa Waiver Program,” CBP Assistant Commissioner Hilton Beckham said in a statement. “Both claimed they were touring California but later admitted they intended to work – something strictly prohibited under U.S. immigration laws for these visas.”
Provided that that’s true, and I’m not saying it definitely is, that would be a valid reason to deny entry.
Even if they admitted that “later”, when exactly? After a night in the cold cell with a choice of being detained longer or immediate deportation if they admitted that?
That’s not in the article and those people were in Hawaii, not in California.
Sorry that was from a different article. Same incident.
Curious, that article mentions that “The incident was first reported by Ostsee-Zeitung, a major German daily newspaper.” and links to this article.
That original article contains the following passage:
Teil der Reisepapiere waren die von ihnen unterschriebenen Verhörprotokolle. „Da standen Sätze drin, die wir so gar nicht gesagt haben“, sagt Charlotte Pohl. „Die haben es so hingedreht, dass wir zugegeben hätten, dass wir illegal in den USA arbeiten wollen.“
Part of the travel documents were the interrogation protocols signed by them. “There were sentences in there that we didn’t say at all,” says Charlotte Pohl. “They twisted it so that we had admitted that we wanted to work illegally in the USA.”
Yet usatoday only reports the allegations, not the denial.
