Infuriating: US Immigration Is A Complete Disaster

That’s what you get with massive government bureaucracy. That’s what you get with government workers earning excessive salaries, benefits and with unions preventing actual efficiency and competence. People think that because 1 guy is elected President it is going to change the trajectory of big government agencies and departments. Nothing further from the truth. As we have seen with more socialist Spain and Italy, more government and “free” health systems didn’t save them from the virus.

People use the example of Nordic countries as to how efficient and beneficial socialism can be but they don’t realize that a country of 5 million mostly racially and ethnically homogenous people with the same culture and way of life is a lot easier than in a country of 326 million. Canada is touted for cheaper drugs and it’s healthcare system but Canada has 35 million people. And let’s not forget these countries like Sweden and Canada throw away their advantage of limited population with excessive immigration from non western countries. The mass increase in violent crime especially against women, drain on benefits and dissemination of low culture as a result of African and Arab migration has hurt Sweden. The dangers of an open borders policy was evidenced by the SARS outbreak in Toronto years ago. It wasn’t western tourists for the most part who spread COVID-19 from China and other countries to the west. It was ethnic Chinese who live in the U.S. who had families they visited in China and then brought it back to the U.S. It was ethnic Iranians who visited family in Iran and returned to Italy, the U.S. Canada and other European countries. Remember the Ukrainian airline plane crash in January where many of the victims were ethnic Iranians who lived in Canada. Tourism is great and It is very easy to shut down tourism. It is very hard when people have familial ties to foreign non western countries and pose a big risk to the western world.

@ Spruce Goods, @ Raoul Speingsteen

Every single airport facility is supposed to have 'contingency planning' - be it for fire, flood, structural collapse, terrorist-related activity, power outage, labor strikes, etc.

The same 'should' be in place for TSA, Homeland Security (under the authority of United States Customs and Border Protection ).

I'm pretty certain that a bucket-load of money has been spent by these organisations supposedly training 'senior management' to anticipate and thent execute.

Where are those responsible and why are they not being held accountable?

Regardless of the political strip of 'The Administration', these are basic requirements expected of competent management. Where is the demand for 'accountability'?

(OH, WAIT! THIS ALL HAPPENED ON A WEEKEND!!).

For those complaining as to why the President is being blamed, let me help you.
1. He talked down the threat for almost 2 months
2. He then proceeded to put a religious nutjob in charge of the entire exercise
3. After disbanding the Pandemic Response Team (name might not be correct) he puts Jared Kushner as his point man for the response.
4. Provides half baked ideas just to say hes doing something, but has not thought through any plan of action.
5. The buck stops with the President. Even if he is an orange skinned dotard

I just can't believe how a beautiful country can be managed so poorly for so long. At every visit I am amazed by the bad airports, inefficient and incompetent handling of passenger flows and the poor infrastructure in general. Not to mention the totally overpriced 'health care'.
This last example of the mess in airports was totally predictable and shows that 0 preparation was in place.

My hopes for improvement are low. As it looks you guys are going to be forced again to make a choice between 2 incompetent idiots in November. Unless you manage to break this disastrous 2 party system, my hopes remain low and my prediction is that the US will continue to fall behind.

@Thomas,

The issue with Trump is that the historical actions he took (disbanding the pandemic response team, cutting CDC budgets) and his more current actions of calling the virus a hoax, classifying information, downplaying the virus, trash talking Democrat’s, the testing kit debacle and his inactions have directly contributed to wider spread and the loss of American lives.

Your failure to acknowledge this and instead trash talk people of different political leanings is not “working together”. Practice what you preach, focus on people and keep your politics where they belong, to yourself.

I flew LH FLR-FRA just before the nationwide lockdown was enacted in Italy. All passengers were required to complete a form detailing our itineraries and contact information. No such information was collected on my UA FRA-ORD flight. Temperature scans were taken at FRA to transit between concourses, but this seemed to be a local policy, not a UA/US one. The load was quite low on the flight and a flight attendant decided to greet me and have a chat given my status with UA. I described my recent travel travails as I had recently had flights cancelled in the UK and Italy. Later in the flight she took it upon herself to collect my itinerary and contact information on the back of a Polaris service flow document. Clearly neither UA nor the US government had any policies in place regarding passenger tracking related to COVID-19. Do they not care because the NSA already has all of this information? In ORD Global Entry was working normally and had no lines. I was able to make a very tight connection on the T1 C concourse in about 15 minutes after re-checking my bag, even with waiting for the crummy shuttle bus (there was not a single other passenger in the Clear/TSA PreCheck line). The virus surely spread among the crowds at customs yesterday. Will clearing some boomer liabilities off the books be so bad?

To JetAway:

If government is not the proper agent for intervention, how do you envision the invisible hand of the free market stopping a pandemic in a manner that leaves that very market unaffected? Markets are heavily influenced by peoples’ collective states of mind. So what is the mechanism by which the free market continues unaffected, or solves a pandemic by means of it’s invisible hand, and yet be detached from actual human beings’ states of mind? Serious policy question. If not the government, then who?

I came back from LHR to LAX yesterday on BA. First line is to get to immigration - about 1 hour (no Global Entry or Mobile Passport were allowed - and each person was taking at least 2-3 mins to go through this check (some more). About 1/2 the desks were open. If you have been in Schengen area in last 14 days you were sent to CDC screening (temp check and questionare + contact details). There was lots of CDC staff there - and they were friendly, efficient and quick. But then, unbelievably, you had to go back to the back of the line for immigration AGAIN. What idiot is in charge of immigration at LAX ? This was another 1 hr + wait. Not sure what the purpose of the second check was - they asked you for address and email - which you already provided to CDC and (at least the address part) to them on the computer system previously. Cutting this extra step out (or having a fast check lane for people coming out of CDC line) would have cut the waiting lines down by at least 1/3. It's not the wait so much that is the objection - it is the efficiency of the process - not very well thought through - and the fact that you then have lots of people from supossed hot spots waiting next to each other for 2 hours more than necessary. Guys, come on, I know ICE agents are just doing their job - but their management could have figured this out much more efficiently in my opinion.

I heard DFW and ORD were even worse.

There's actually no need for a China style lockdown, just for much more testing in order to track the virus and do targeted quarantining. Look at South Korea. They have only a few thousand people quarantined and their new cases figure is down to the 100s. Not many people have died from the virus there either... I think I read about a 0.7% death rate.

Another point I want to make is that the US government needs to be run by competent people rather than shunned for private companies. I don't think a national emergency can be handled by any entity other than the Federal government. Thus the damn thing needs to function a lot better than it is now!

For those saying this was inevitable, no this was not. This is a result of kneejerk policy decisions that could have been planned for (this is literally the kind of contingency that governments are supposed to draw up plans for), but wasn't because policy decisions are made by Jared and Stephen Miller 90 minutes before the President goes on TV to give a speech to announce it without coordinating with anyone.

The first thing you would do is game this out WEEKS ago. If you know that closing borders or restricting travel is a possibility, you think about what it takes to execute it and any consequences that will result.

You work with ports of entry and the CBP to draw up and implement protocols to keep people at a safe distance from each other, a screening protocol for people entering the country from different areas.

You understand that, in order to keep people a certain distance from each other and implement screening efficiently, you need to limit and space out the number of arrivals at any given time.

So maybe you work with the airlines to plan for and help cover the cost of additional capacity, added frequencies, to be spaced throughout the day. Maybe you help airlines plan to run flights that are specifically O&D into major markets, where people can be screened and processed in a hangar, or at least at a different time so as not to create an additional bottleneck at TSA checkpoints. I don't know...these are just ideas. The point is, you have to THINK about these things.

If you need to, you ease arrival curfews, and work with regulators in places like the UK to plan additional arrival and departure slots, knowing that many slots are not being used right now.

This takes time, but it is something that can be planned and coordinated.

This could have been foreseen. This should have been a contingency that was thought through weeks ago. That's why you have a DOT and and FAA who regulate airlines, who can communicate, draw up plans in partnership with airlines and regulators in other countries.

But what you see above is what happens when you have someone at the helm of the (rudderless) ship who refuses to acknowledge that there is, in fact, an iceberg right ahead.

I am surprised people say this is due to how China handled it. Actually it’s not. I have little Good to say about China but how they contained this should be commended. People were traveling before they knew really what was going on. Once it was determined they completely force quarantined the city and shut down all transportation. It’s those draconian measures which actually slowed the spread down. Only when it went to the EU and US who bumbled quarantining etc because you know why would we force quarantine anyone. Land of the free right.

Like I said, China is largely a shithole but give credit where credit is due.

If the Chinese government would have done the right thing by blocking in their borders two months ago, none of this would happen.

To this day, they still have not done what they were supposed to do. Furthermore, they are now showing off how "great" they are controlling the virus and mass brainwashing citizens thru all kinds of media that America is responsible for the virus.

I am not a fan of Trump either, but let's be objective people and point the arrow at the right target. However, don't be racial and xenophobic toward Chinese/Asians/Italians/Europeans/etc. We are all victims at this moment. The only coward is by the name of Xi in Beijing.

Looking at this from the UK, it seems to be mind numbing stupidity. Without the political filters our US friends have, all I hear is a President looking to blame anyone but himself rather than acting Presidentially.

Why is the US so low in infections? Because they haven't been testing at the rate/ratio of European countries. You simply don't know, because you haven't been allowed to find out. If UK models from our testing apply, there are probably 100K+ cases in the US.

The travel ban has meant that thousands of Americans, probably quite a number with infection, have now been corralled in airports, spread the virus and then distributing on their connecting flights around the country.

An ill conceived, badly implemented plan from a President who doesn't listen to advice (Donald knows best) who wants to be seen doing something, anything, so he won't take the blame.

Leader of the Free World no longer.

I was flying on United on 9/11. I was on one of the first flights back from Europe to the US after the US started allowing in common carrier flights a handful of days after 9/11.

There were no such massive lines at US airports of entry in the days after 9/11. There were no such massive lines at US airports of entry last week or at this time last year. But this weekend, Trump’s DHS/CBP has created such massive lines at US airports of entry that it’s worse than the worst lines that I have ever seen at airports anywhere served by US common carriers.

People need to stop with these pointless criticisms. What would have been a better approach? It’s not just the US that is quickly shutting down travel. Most of Europe is as well. So this crush of returning travelers was largely inevitable, irrespective of decisions made by the administration. From a public health perspective, we likely should have down travel even more quickly. We certainly should not be delaying shutdowns now just to ease the crunch on airports or for traveler convenience. Everything we are doing today should have been done yesterday. Time is not our ally.

The people who waited in the long lines yesterday should be relieved that they are back and should promptly do their part and self-quarantine. That’s how we will get through this, and hopefully safely and quickly.

There's no evidence other than their bald statement that this is being done to slow the rate of spread of disease. Having people go through 13 funnels and then fan out across the entire country guarantees community spread with multiple epicenters for future spread. Doing this at ORD & DFW guarantees the Midwest will be hard hit.

Economic collapse for the many is a buying opportunity for the few. Follow the money. Never attribute malice to stupidity. When someone's actions keep putting money in certain pockets, that isn't some crazy coincidence.

I read The Fifth Risk @Marcus. Good book.