Welcome to the USA - NOT!

[jim_douglas]

After a 9 hour journey from the UK I was forced to stand in line for an hour and a half in order to get though immigration at Miami Airport. It was bad enough for me and my wife, but for those families with young children it was a nightmare.

Then I nearly got sent to the back of the queue because I (supposedly) hadn't filled in my entry form correctly.

This is no way to treat guests bearing tourist dollars

Jim Douglas

[mikelly]

Sorry... It does raise the question as to whether you should be treated any differently than citizens. Try going through a metal detector if you have had a hip/knee replacement.

Maybe it will get better someday...

Mike Kelly
Houston, Texas

[rach1966]

to other countries, just depends on how many planes have landed within that hour.
not sure why so many people rush through customs just to have to wait at the luggage carousel.

Rachel

[jchambers]

Having the wait before luggage collection is a good idea, as the theory is that during the wait, the luggage can be thrown onto the conveyors.

As for the long wait, I don't really understand it. I passed through Heathrow the other weekend - a weekend that claimed to be the busiest in London's history for air travellers and there wasn't a big wait through customs. And London, with it's 5 international airports is the busiest city hub in the world.

Hope the rest of your holiday in the US is fine. If you go to Phily, try the cheese steaks.

[tradescant]

Have flown to the USA maybe half a dozen times. Yeah the queues were always long, but I found they moved quickly and the immigration people couldn't have been more friendly or proffesional. In stark contrast to the miseries who man the desks at my own UK airports! Give me the US immigration guys (and girls) any day.

David.

[thresholdprod]

Hope the rest of your holiday in the US is fine. If you go to Phily, try the cheese steaks.

Good luck getting one at the airport the only one I could find was at tgif's and it was horrid but beat airplane food only slightly.But if you have an hour or two lay over hop in a cab and have them take you to a local street vendor. Its well worth the extra cost.Now wait a minute..... airport food cost vs. cab ride plus food cost, its really about the same.

Bill

[defsan26]

This is no way to treat guests bearing tourist dollars

Ssup!

I have been to Miami last year ( from the Netherlands ) and i must say nothing but praise, friendly immigration and the que went quick.
Maybe it was just one of those day's 4 you ..

Greet|Z Daniël

[parklifer]

Sounds like a lot of unecessary grief as well as the easiest way of encouraging people not to bother to take a holiday in the States.

You probably got lucky with your apparently incorrectly filled in form though. And not getting sent back to the queue was a miracle. Because they are very picky about forms and vital need to rely on forms rather than common sense in some cases! A friend of mine - with a green card -who had been working and living in New York for 9 nine years came back here for a brief holiday and discovered, on his return, that someone at the airport hadn't recorded his departure. Some form or other had gone missing. So, on the grounds that without the form in question, he obviously couldn't have left the USA, immigration weren't originally prepared to let him back him again...despite him standing there, large as life on the wrong side of the gates to the promised land. That "someone else" might have been reckless with a form was an almost heretical suggestion...!

[jbviajero]

I've had good and bad experiences in the US. Miami was quick (as one expects at 5:00 am). JFK was a nightmare. But heathrow really is the worst airport that I have encountered. It is consistantly tedious, queueing for hours to get in or out (especially out), and immigration interview all foreign travellers on the basis that they want to enter the country on a false passport and live a life of violent crime. Even the ones that are leaving!

JB

[england]

I travel a lot with work, and have had similar experiences in JFK, and Chicago. But I have also been messed around by customs people in Toronto, Kuala Lumpur, Seoul, and worst of all Zurich (opened all my luggage up and held me up until all the cabs had gone from the rank outside!). From 7 years and 350,000 miles experience I would say going through customs and immigration is a matter of luck.

Don't judge a country by one group of difficult customs officers (can't be much fun when everyone they see is going on holiday, and they are not!). In all of the places I have mentioned I have met great people (well maybe not Zurich? - but I wasn't there long)

For the record, best I ever found was Tangiers - I arrived at 2am and the customs men were asleep on the tables - the quickest and the quietest customs hall ever (was 25 years ago - I guess things may have changed)

[opus1]

The world has changed since 9-11.

As someone has already said, don't judge a country by its Immigration lines.
By the way, the worst run Immigration on earth has to be Hong Kong. I lived there for 4 years and on its best day you couldn't get through in under a half an hour.

Imagine if they plowed a couple of planes into London Tower or Buckingham Palace....get it now?

[pixelate]

The world has changed since 9-11.

As someone has already said, don't judge a country by its Immigration lines.
By the way, the worst run Immigration on earth has to be Hong Kong. I lived there for 4 years and on its best day you couldn't get through in under a half an hour.

Imagine if they plowed a couple of planes into London Tower or Buckingham Palace....get it now?

Yeah....what HE said! Especially the first line. You're right on target, Opus1!

[ukexpat]

I am a British citizen living in the US, but I do have the advantage of also being a "resident alien" aka green card holder. This means that I can use the citizens line at immigration. Sometimes this is a benefit at other times not...

If you think your experiences in Miami were bad, how about this. I attended CES in Las Vegas in January -- http://www.pbase.com/ukexpat/cesmodels2004. I left on the red-eye back from Vegas to Philadelphia at 12:35am on the Sunday morning -- no problems with security checks at that time in the morning. A couple of my friends decided to fly back at a more sensible hour on Sunday morning and the wait for departing passengers to get through security was 3-4 hours!! The Las Vegas chamber of commerce was livid about this as it is a threat to the huge income that CES brings to Vegas...

[formanm]

Few into Sydney from the Middle East last week........immigration 10 mins......luggage colection 10 mins. Ohh, this is Gods country!!!

Mark

[lobster7]

It applies to Americans coming home too. I waited in Detroit for almost an hour to get through customs. They only had two lines open. Nice.