Todos Deseamos La Paz

I have trav­eled quite a lot since Sep­tem­ber 11. Actu­ally, to be more accu­rate, given that I turned 18 that year, my world trav­eler career only boomed after that. I am a pure prod­uct of the mod­ern terrorist-hunt era, there­for I should be flu­ent with air­port and travel security.

But I still don’t get it.

I remem­ber that right after 9/11, fly­ing was not pop­u­lar, and ticket prices were at a all-time low. Planes were also quite empty: I remem­ber hav­ing a whole four-seats row for myself on my flight back from Hong Kong to France, and then from France to Mex­ico! I can’t remem­ber any spe­cific reg­u­la­tions at that time. I’m sure some were being imple­mented, I just wasn’t aware of them.

Now, for­ward a cou­ple of years. I was liv­ing in Canada half of the time, in France the other half, always look­ing for a way to extend my work visas and already plan­ning to apply for per­ma­nent res­i­dence in Canada. I was going back in forth on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. At the time, the cheap­est flight avail­able was often the Toronto-Philadelphia-Paris one, with Amer­i­can Air­line. I didn’t mind the stop-over in Philly: I was a stu­dent and I was broke. If the stop was going to help me save a cou­ple of hun­dred bucks, it was good for me.

But at the same time, US air­port secu­rity and immi­gra­tion pro­ce­dures were get­ting tighter and tighter, and the rest of the world was soon to follow.

One thing a lot of peo­ple don’t know is that when your flight stops in the U.S.A, whether it is for a cou­ple of hours or for a day, you are not really con­sid­ered as being in tran­sit, as any­where else in the world. You need to pick up your bags, go through immi­gra­tion, and then check in again. To my knowl­edge, the U.S.A is the only coun­try with this pol­icy. Usu­ally, as long as you stay in the air­port, you are in an inter­na­tional zone, so you don’t go through immi­gra­tion and you don’t pick up your bags, which are typ­i­cally checked all the way to what­ever des­ti­na­tion anyway.

The U.S no tran­sit pol­icy con­fused me to no end. I’m lucky though, because as a French cit­i­zen, I do not need a visa. Upon arrival in the U.S, I just have to fill up the visa waiver pro­gram form (the famous I-94W green paper), have a lit­tle chat with the immi­gra­tion offi­cer (that can range from very straight­for­ward expe­ri­ence to extremely unpleas­ant one) and the form is sta­pled in my pass­port. I have to give it back when I leave.

Now, when you go through the U.S, you still have to fol­low that process, even though you won’t be going out­side the air­port. Some­times, the immi­gra­tion agent does not under­stand we don’t have an address or an hotel in the U.S. Which is very logic since we are not trav­el­ing there…! Some­times, we are given the visa waiver form, sta­pled in the pass­port, and give it back 30 min­utes later upon board­ing the next plane. Stu­pid if you ask me.

Since Jan­u­ary 12^th 2009, there has been new require­ments imple­mented for pas­sen­gers trav­el­ing to or tran­sit­ing to the U.S.A under the Visa Waiver Pro­gram. We are required to apply for an Elec­tronic Sys­tem for Travel Autho­ri­sa­tion (ESTA) no later than 72 hours prior to depar­ture. You then receive a response deter­min­ing whether travel to the US has been autho­rized. If the appli­ca­tion is not autho­rized then a visa may be requested through the US Embassy.

I haven’t apply for an ESTA yet because I’m scared of the sys­tem. I have noth­ing to hide and there is no rea­son why I shouldn’t be allowed. Yet, what if…? What if the com­puter sys­tem screws up? What if, what if, what if? Am I going to be banned from trav­el­ing to the U.S? As a Cana­dian res­i­dent, it would be very tough. Because a lot of flights go through the U.S, whether we want it or not. Most Latin Amer­i­can bound flights from Canada go through the U.S, as well as a fair share of Europe bound flights!

Recently, another blog­ger wrote a post crit­i­ciz­ing my atti­tude towards U.S secu­rity poli­cies. Her mes­sage was sim­ple: if you don’t like the way we do it, don’t come here. Yeah, well, I don’t really have the choice. As I explained before, I com­ply to any require­ments to enter a coun­try that I’m vis­it­ing, because after all, I don’t have to come if I don’t like it. Now, I don’t have the choice on where I will be in tran­sit, and since I live in Canada, I sim­ply can not avoid being in tran­sit in the U.S.A quite often. Yet, I’m aim­ing for direct flights until I — hope­fully — get my Cana­dian citizenship.

But this is only the tip of the ice­berg. I used to like fly­ing. I don’t any­more, because it’s such a has­sle, no mat­ter which air­port, no mat­ter which country.

First, what can you put on your bags, what can you put in your carry-on? This is not clear to me. I usu­ally travel light, with a back­pack and a small ruck­sack. I used to pack a few items for the first night of travel in my carry-on bag, in case my checked-in lug­gage is lost (yes, it does hap­pen). But I have to con­sider what con­sid­ered as safe. I would never think of car­ry­ing an ice pick, a sword or a saber, items which are all — under­stand­ably — on the pro­hib­ited items list. On the other side, I do fre­quently have small scis­sors, lithium bat­ter­ies (for my cam­era) or tweez­ers, which are pro­hib­ited items as well!

As for clothes, the TSA web­sites advise you to “avoid wear­ing cloth­ing, jew­elry or other acces­sories that con­tain metal when trav­el­ing through the secu­rity check­points: cloth­ing with metal but­tons, snaps or studs, metal hair bar­rettes or other hair dec­o­ra­tion, under-wire bras”. I should call the air­port for fash­ion advice because most of my clothes do have metal but­ton (jeans) and I won’t even men­tion my bras. For­tu­nately, my hair is short… so no barrettes.

Since Sep­tem­ber, 2006, all liq­uids, gels and aerosols in their carry-on bag must be in three-ounce or smaller con­tain­ers. They must be placed in a sin­gle, quart-size, zip-top, clear plas­tic bag, and each trav­eler can use only one. It has to be removed from the carry-on and placed in a bin for sep­a­rate X-ray screening.

Now, I check in every­thing. In my bag, I only have my cam­era, my wal­let and a book. But it’s not good enough appar­ently. Ooops, for­get the lip balm in my inside bag pocket, next to my tam­pon. Ooops, my cam­era has lithium bat­ter­ies. Ooops, I smug­gled a knife… actu­ally, not. But the X-ray — wrongly — said so.

Once I have taken off my shoes, belt, change, coat, scarf, ziploc bags or sample-size toi­letry, thrown away my bot­tle of water, I am hope­fully allowed in. Not so fast: I am always the one pull on the side for the body search (how nice) even though I am only wear­ing a skirt and a teeshirt (scarf, coat etc. being in the X-ray bin).

Don’t get my wrong, I’m not against air­port secu­rity. I just find the cur­rent poli­cies more ridicu­lous than effi­cient. I feel it basi­cally dis­cour­age peo­ple from trav­el­ing, and for the rest of us that still do, it’s a huge has­sle. Sep­tem­ber 11/9 was a tragedy for the U.S.A and the rest of the world. Yet, we have to admit ter­ror­ism can strike any­where, and no mat­ter how tight the secu­rity is, there will always be loop­holes. What’s next? No weapon-like objects, no liq­uid, tight pas­sen­ger screen­ing and… and what? The day a lunatic stran­gles some­one on board we will have to have our hands cut?

We flew to France yes­ter­day, and after our trav­els in Latin Amer­ica, where air­port secu­rity is straight­for­wards and quite basic, it was a shock. Secu­rity in Mon­treal was very tight. We flew from Paris to Nantes, my home­town, and even for this domes­tic leg of the trip, we had to remove our shoes, have our carry-on X-rayed and searched etc. The woman in front of us almost wasn’t allowed on the plane because she was trav­el­ing with her kid who had an Amer­i­can pass­port (dad was Amer­i­can she explained) while she had a French pass­port. Phew. Come on guys, it’s domestic…!

Any­way, we are in France and it’s all good. Gotta go eat some cheese and drink some wine now.

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