The joys of transit flights via the U.S. and American immigration services.
For most of us westerners who don’t have names like Mohammed or Ayesha, without a skin any shade of brown, international travel has become almost mundane in its simplicity: buy ticket, get on plane, get off plane, go to bar, get drunk etc. Our complaints might be limited to the lack of in-flight vegetarian meals or how come some airports are so damn stingy they make you pay for wi-fi? However, once in while circumstances can conspire to open a brief window of insight into the joys of travel for those that don’t fit the required security profile for immigration services.
As much as anything, this is a tale of divine retribution for my own hubris in taking far too much for granted. Quite why the alarm bells didn’t start ringing in my addled brain when Sky Scanner revealed the word American, in American Airlines, as the most financially advantageous response to my search for a flight from Quito to Trinidad, I’ll never know. It’s not a mistake I’ll be making again.
God bless America
Online, flight searching services may have revolutionised ticket buying but they have also added to the ambiance of utter normality to international air travel, while crucially, removing the fount of knowledge that a good sales person used to provide. The words and numbers, “Miami Airport waiting time 3 hours and 20 mins”, free of annotation, the colour red or any indication that these symbols demand any more than anything other than a momentary perusal, convey a reassuring simplicity to the ticket buyer.
So, at the check in desk at Quito Airport it was with much bewilderment and consternation that I responded to the question, “do you have your ESTA form”? No doubt, some of you are, at this very moment, shouting, “you cretin”, at the screen of your treasured fondle slab or computing device and I can only sympathise with your sentiments. With my interest in world affairs I certainly was aware that the honour of stepping outside of a US airport onto blessed American soil was, by no means a pre-ordained right, even if my name wasn’t Mohammed. But simply transiting through an airport? Yes, it seems that since 2009, just transiting through God’s favoured state demands special dispensation, even for citizens of the visa waiver programme like myself.
American Airlines kindly informed me that I could reschedule my flight for the princely sum of $200. Although annoying, I of course had to take responsibility for my failure, so some penalty was only appropriate. A closer inspection of my e-ticket revealed right at the bottom, in the smallest of small print, that I might require an ESTA application. In the enormous number of carbon spewing flights of my travels I have only once encountered the need for a transit visa, where I also missed a flight, because the airline didn’t feel it was necessary to make a big deal out of the fact that I would have to leave one airport in Russia to go to another, nearby one, to facilitate the transit, thus requiring a transit visa.
Am I alone in thinking that the provision of words like, “some passengers may require a transit visa”, or words to that effect, would hardly be the most demanding of technical concerns on flight search results? Or, how about putting the words, “some nationalities may require a transit visa or similar to pass through this airport”, immediately under the flight details of the e-ticket, in a font size larger than microscopic?
Me doing my ESTA application
Marginally refreshed the next morning, I set about the ESTA application and all was going well until the question, “have you traveled to or been present in Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria or Yemen on or after March 1st 2011”? Regular readers will of course know that my answer to this would be an undoubted, yes. Particularly confirmed by the entry stamp from Erbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan. I knew at the time that this would deny me automatic entry to the US in the future and was happy to take the risk, of course not being aware of the transit issue. If I had no intention of going to the US I might have been tempted to just say no, risking the slim possibility that the Kurdish authorities shared immigration data with the US. Having cousins and an old friend in L.A. that I was hoping to visit later this year, lying would have put my visa application in serious jeopardy, so was not an option.
On the expiry of the 72 hours processing time, having heard nothing, I phoned American Airlines to see what my flight options were, only to discover that all seats were booked for any flights to get me to Trinidad in time for Carnival, the central reason for the trip. So having lost the entire value of my ticket I then had to buy one from a different, less American airline. In the meantime the costs had gone up by the best part of $200. At this point I uttered a long string of words that are traditionally symbolised by a series of asterisk in more cultured publications.
On deciding to enquire about my ESTA application I chanced upon the words, “you will not receive a separate notification about whether your application was approved”. So, in an era when an automatic email reply is a prerequisite for the most insignificant of online interactions, the US immigration service can’t even be fucking bothered to provide one, such a great honour it is for us to make such an application, to have our feet bless the soil of Miami Airport for three hours and twenty minutes! To round matters off they had decided that I was not deemed worthy of gracing the holy ground of Miami airport anyway. As tempting as it might be for some to blame Trump for this kind of thing, it was Obama that brought in the restrictions for these countries. Trump just made life more difficult for the aforementioned Mohamed and Ayesha.
The first thought that came to the mind of the official processing my application
Not that I was unduly surprised. I have negotiated immigration staff in some of the world’s most despotic regimes, who, while being as thorough as you possibly could, managed to remain polite and civil. But, without doubt, the most obnoxious, rude and helpful immigration staff I have ever encountered have been at US airports. Their performance only closely followed by that of Israel. No wonder their governments get on so well!
It was with great relief that I finally boarded my flight to Trinidad. However, due to technical issues my baggage wouldn’t automatically transit through Caracas airport in Venezuela. So I had to go through Venezuelan immigration and check in my bag. Of course I am now the proud owner of a Venezuelan stamp in my passport, just as Trump launched the latest in the US’s long series of regular regime change operations in South America. Which is going to look fabulous alongside my stamps of various Islamic regimes and terrorist host nations when I come to make my US visa application later in the year.
So, here I am a bit wiser than a week ago. Embittered and poorer but nevertheless wiser.
