04.04.2017 05:24 PM

Trump declares war on his allies 

Get a load of this.

Visitors planning getaways to the U.S. might have to relinquish their cell phone contacts and passwords under new ‘extreme vetting’ procedures being developed by the Trump administration.

The tightening could even be applied to longtime allies who are part of the State Department’s Visa Waiver program, which provides expedited admissions without a visa to residents of a list of 38 nations including allies like Britain, Australia, and France.

Among the tougher new measures: Visitors would have to answer questions about their ideology, hand over social media passwords and financial records, and their contacts, the paper reported.

Homeland officials said tougher procedures would be applied not just to prospective refugees but to visitors and other would-be immigrants.

The Journal reported that the changes might even apply to the Visa Waiver Program, where nations agree to passport controls and other security measures in exchange for ease of movement. 

I would expect and hope that the Canadian government will protest this latest Trumpist xenophobic insanity. 

But I’m not holding my breath. 

9 Comments

  1. Ronald O'Dowd says:

    Warren,

    What a goof. He misread the memo: he was supposed to apply these measures to his gilded White House, so that 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue would finally stop leaking like a sieve.

    As you were, Monty Python.

  2. Ridiculosity says:

    Trump’s Certified Insanity is going to kick the shit out of US tourism, among other things.

    When planning our upcoming vacation we made a conscious decision that, in lieu of visiting the US, we’d fly over it instead.

  3. Miles Lunn says:

    Reading it, it looks like Canada would be exempt. When I flew through LAX from Lima recently I noticed Canadian and American passports went through the same line, another for visa waiver countries, and one for everyone else. Still sounds a lot like Leitch who plans the same thing which is ridiculous. I’ve visited a number of countries whose politics I strongly disagree with including US, Hungary, Turkey, Cuba, China, Vietnam and I am right now applying for my visa to Russia. As long as someone is planning to visit as a visitor and follow the immigration rules and is no security risk, it shouldn’t matter what their political views are, the only country who I think vets people on their political views is North Korea, which is the last country anyone should be learning from.

  4. sean mclaughlin says:

    Yeah, I don’t know why any foreigner would book a holiday in the US now. Tourism is/was a half trillion dollar a year industry in the US, something you might expect a hotelier to know and care about.

    I’m curious about how the ideology questioning goes. Do normal people have one? Is “peace, order, and good government” an acceptable answer?

  5. Eric Weiss says:

    I’ve already decided I won’t set foot in the US as long as Trump is POTUS. I usually go to NYC, Vegas or San Fran every couple of months. I’m sure I’m not the only one.

  6. albertaD says:

    I decided to avoid the US almost immediately after Trump was elected. I’m good with that decision and I’m sticking to it. I personally know several people who have changed plans to avoid America completely. I also enjoy telling telephone spammers who are trying to get me to agree to a trip to Disney or Vegas that until Trump is out of the White House, they are wasting their time.

    Individuals who want to make a statement that actually impacts the injustice of Trump have few options – withholding your tourism money will send a real message if enough people do it.

  7. MississaugaPeter says:

    Wasn’t it during Obama’s first term, June 1, 2009, that for Canadians a driver’s license and a birth certificate were no longer acceptable means of getting into the United States? That a passport was required.

    BTW, I suggest you watch the show “Border Security” on TV. They already can and do check cell phones of folks entering the United States.

  8. Kevin says:

    Seems like cell phone checking is the latest shiny object that some people are finding distracting. Border checks of cell phones is such a trivial aspect of travel and has been for years. If you must have a cell phone when you travel, get a burner phone at your destination. Problem solved. You’re welcome.

    To me the important aspect here is the mindset behind threats of “extreme vetting”. Paranoid and belligerent. A waste of billions of dollars subjecting everyone to this instead of focussing on those likely to pose a threat. It assumes that I’m one of those threats. Why should I pay you to treat me like an unwanted intruder? Not bloody likely. I’ll go to Curacao instead. Florida can have Mar-a-Lago, the rest of us can go to the Caribbean.

    But I’ll wait and see what actually is put in place – it may all be swagger and bluster. Some years ago I went to Washington to give a talk to a group about forensic IT investigations, and I brought some equipment and tools for a “show and tell”. This was a few years after 9/11 when the US border checks were supposedly very stringent. I got through the US checks at Dulles airport very smoothly. Coming back into Canada was a different story. I was stopped by Canadian security, questioned, hauled aside and searched, and some tools were confiscated.

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