US makes life even more difficult for travellers.

Monday, August 20. 2007

It's no wonder that the number of travellers to the US is declining. With constant stories of mistreatment of air passengers by the TSA, people mistakenly finding themselves on no-fly lists and unable to remove themselves, and others being denied entry for petty reasons, I am not surprised at all when I hear comments from people who would otherwise jump at the chance to travel to the US saying that they really can't be bothered anymore.

Well, now it's about to get just that little bit more difficult to go to the US, with the signing into law of an electronic authorisation scheme, for travellers from 15 EU countries.

"It will require people from 15 western EU states who now do not need visas to register online and give details of their passport, travel plans and planned social and business meeting at least two days before departure"

How many travellers know the details of their social meetings before they depart? I can also imagine that there will be huge chunk of travellers who also have no idea what their travel plans will be, other than their arrival and departure dates. I can imagine now that a proportion of the travelling public will now throw up their hands in frustration and fly to Canada instead.

Not surprisingly, the EU is now thinking of retaliating, by imposing a similar scheme on American citizens.

Links

U.S. Authorizes, E.U. Considers ‘Electronic Travel Authorization System -- World Hum

Posted by Paul in united states at 11:41 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

Trackbacks

Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments

Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

That's aweful. Do you think they might add that to Canadians? I would hate to have to fill out some detailed itinerary about what I want to do... not that I have any plans on going to the US any time soon.

When I was getting my travelers insurance they asked if I was going to be there. It's funny that almost everywhere else in the world is cheaper than getting insurance for the US.

#1 Jeremy Peters (Homepage) on 2007-08-22 18:28 (Reply)

Hmm, not sure I can guess what harebrained scheme they're likely to come up with next

Yeah, insurance is higher for the US than for most other places because of the insane costs of medical treatment there. Makes me very glad to live in a country where we have a good public health system still.

#1.1 Paul on 2007-08-22 21:32 (Reply)

Add Comment

Name
Email
Homepage
In reply to
Comment	Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (word), underscore are made via _word_. Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images. E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly. Enter the string from the spam-prevention image above:
	Remember Information? Subscribe to this entry