1. it's still "visa-free", but increasingly countries are making that shit by requiring an "electronic travel authority" which is not technically a visa but is a bit of imaginary paper you get in exchange for money (e.g. Australia and the US)
2. the US already requires EU citizens to do this exact fucking thing to enter the US: https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/
3. the US refused to even grant visa free access at all to some EU citizens (those from Romania and Bulgaria): https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/news/eu-visa-reciprocity-wi...
it is unfortunate that ~2003 may end up being a high point for ease of travel for citizens of rich countries
Imagine the mad house if friends and family could accompany a traveler to the gate, or wait for their loved one to arrive?
Are Romania and Bulgaria part of the Schengen Area?
Seems like the grandparent comment just didn't bother checking their facts first and jumped the gun on blaming the US for this, while the US doesn't really have anything to do with it.
Like if you're in Switzerland and you just feel like hopping on a train to Italy on a whim. You used to be able to do that, now you need a pre-approval I suppose.
As instructed on the website we didn’t print anything out, so we just brought our passports and immigration was completely without any problems in Miami. Our passports also weren’t stamped as seems to be common now.
When we got into an immigration check near White Sands national park (closed road and checkpoint next to the road) the guards checking us were nightly confused that our passports weren’t stamped and we didn’t have a visa or any kind of printed documentation. And we were confused that we needed any of that?
One guard went to check on us with his computer, I guess, and everything seems to have checked out. So we didn’t need anything after all, it just seems that when you get into an immigration check those checking you might prefer to not go check with a computer, so printed documentation of some kind can get you going faster. (The guard also told me that we should have printed out documentation that we paid for ESTA?! Which seems confusing to me since presumably if we didn’t have paid we wouldn’t have been let in.)
I'm somewhat organised, but didn't really knew I need for for AU. Filled while checking in, but got it 8 minutes after gates closed.
Edit: kinda feel should be integrated with flight booking. The amount of bureaucracy, esp. during covid era, travelling across many countries, with a big party - it's maddening.
The thing that makes me truly sad, as a UK citizen, I will also need this to travel to Europe since Brexit. It isn't a US-centric requirement, which the headline suggests.
I don't think it's surprising that a radio network that serves Americans and is paid for by Americans in part with American taxes should tailor its story for an American audience.
Do you also complain that the BBC is too British?
Would take you about five years to get naturalised though.
In the past a passport was sufficient on both ends, as far as I understand it. Now Canadians will have to do this same thing.
But only when flying commercial.
The US, given its popularity as a destination, believes that people will deal with it. It has always been like that, traveling to the US from anywhere is generally annoying. Not sure how American tourists will feel about this friction, even if fair in theory.
We are allies -- but it is not a symmetric alliance.
You used to have to fill out in writing if you'd ever been affiliated to a communist party or done, drugs, where are you staying, how long, and be interrogated. I almost got deported a couple of times for saying I hadn't figured which hotel or how long I was staying.
The kiosk at the airport also balked.
When I went to talk to a human, he casually asked me if I had a visa/ETA. This totally perplexed me as I didn't remember having to do anything in the past. He told me I'd just need to fill out a web form and "they usually approve it within an hour".
Minor panic while I tried to fill out a complicated web form on my iphone at the airport with shaking hands. Ultimately it was approved within about 20 minutes and I had no issues with my flight. Lesson learned! I guess on my previous trip I used my company's travel portal and it must have done the ETA for me automagically, so I never had any awareness I needed such a thing.
Several years ago I got a new passport, and thought to use that to check in online for an intl flight. The app had my old passport and would have worked fine, but puked on scanning the new passport, and suddenly I was not / could not be checked in.
I started going to the airport, to arrive at my usual 1 hr before, but got delayed by traffic. Only by miracle of begging supervisor to reopen check in did they allow me to do it.
I should've just went with the old passport in the record that worked, and changed it out at the gate/checkin counter when at the airport.
Lesson learnt I hope!
Even priority security often takes that long (or longer!) discounting every over queue you have to stand in at an airport.
I typically fly United and have their lowest tier frequent flier thing (silver), which means I get priority access baggage check for when I am checking a bag (go to kiosk, scan boarding pass, tag bag, drop at baggage drop). But even without that, you sometimes wait 5 minutes for a computer to print your bag tag.
For international flights, of course, it's more. Usually 1h+ before boarding begins.
Amusingly, my 3 worst experience were when I arrived super early and still barely made my flight. One was an Uber driver from Valparaiso Chile to the Santiago airport, who could NOT find where to drop me off, and I was trying to guide him, but I didn't know any Spanish. No joke, we drove around the runway multiple times.
2 others were on the same trip and both in Germany. Berlin Brandenberg, arrived exactly 2 hours before departure as EasyJet told me to do (counters do not open until 2h before). Bag drop took all of 2 minutes, and then I stood in a security line for at LEAST 1h20mins. Absolutely pants-on-head-insane. Other one was flying out of Frankfurt, opted to splurge on a taxi instead of public transit because I was excited to begin my journey home. Arrived at least 2 hours before the flight. Stood in a Lufthansa bag check line for well over an hour, it went absolutely nowhere. Panicked, found baggage check to have moved to another terminal for international flights (the adjacent bag check windows across the hallway were closed for construction) .. checked bags quickly, and still ended up having to navigate MULTIPLE lines for security that appeared to be correct but were so long (hundreds of meters) that they curved past other signage directing me to other places. What an ordeal.
And that's how I got stranded in Ecuador for the rest of the vacation . . . .
It's splitting hairs not calling this a 'visa'. If you have to pay a fee and fill out forms before arrival IT IS intended to regulate foreign entry, which is the definition of a visa, since you're exchanging information with immigration authorities before they let you in.
Its also great timing for them with the massive uptick in tourism they’re seeing
Whatever definition you'd like to use for it applies to ESTA as well
Sounds more and more like a visa.
I've been reconsidering my position lately, as I've traveled places where biometric registration is compulsory, and the US surely has some deal in place to scoop up all that data.
I walked up and within 1 second of getting to the US border agent he said “hello Mr.botos, passport please.”
I’m here on hacker news so I’m both not surprised at the speed of technology but it’s jarring.
He knew who I was before I could even read his name badge. I don’t have global entry, but I do have precheck.
If you are a natural born citizen and have a passport the government has your picture. If not, there's the one in your driver's license. If not, a Google/Facebook search might dig one up.
So if you don't have a passport, or DL, or social media presence at all then I agree, don't sign up for Global Entry. But otherwise...
A travel authorization is not a visa, visa free travel for US citizens will remain.
OF course it is, it's just a very accessible temporary one. Let's look at an uncontroversial definition of a visa (from Wikipedia): 'A visa is a conditional authorization granted by a polity to a foreigner that allows them to enter, remain within, or leave its territory.'
Just because you give things different labels doesn't make them actually different.
Because the only thing that my US tourist visa allows me to do is to show up and ask politely to enter the country.
A US visa also does not give you permission to remain within the country, an I-94 does.
This is just a semantic trick to make people that there is still a visa free travel but this is no more the case.
Soooo, they just create something that walks and talks like a visa without calling it one because the treaties never bothered to define what a visa is or isn’t.
Lots of people online annoyed at having to pay a fee (7 euro) to travel but this is what it's actually about.
Curious to know if EU governments are limited in what they can currently do with passport entry/exit data and if this expansion allows them to do more?
https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/c06...
I’m kinda confused by the whole “entry-exit” aspect because I thought my passport was scanned in and out of the Schengen already.
ETIAS announcements pushed me to start that process and now doing the waiting game.
Decades? The pandemic is only a few years old. I guess the writer had to shoehorn the pandemic into their piece somehow.
Countries can make whatever restrictions they like; we don’t have to support them. That’s the power of choice. Has nothing to do with entitlement.
At this point, I live with the expectation that my biometrics are available for sale in some 3rd party data broker, and try to live with having that kind of threat model in my mind. Something something, adapt and survive.
I’m also taking about a tourism, not immigration.
It just doesn’t mean much when everyone has a copy of everyone else’s.
