One of the sacrifices I make for liberty is traveling to foreign lands. Previous hardship duty includes trips to Monaco, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Switzerland, and Anguilla.
I’m currently in Antigua, which is a remarkably beautiful island. But nice places nonetheless have un-nice governments.
View from my window
When I arrived yesterday, I didn’t know the address where I was staying. That detail didn’t seem important since I was being picked up at the airport.
But there was a “residence in Antigua” slot on the immigration form and the bureaucrats refused to let me in the country without knowing that irrelevant piece of information.
This isn’t the first time this happened to me. I was once detained at Heathrow Airport in the U.K. because I didn’t know the address of my friend’s flat. After a couple of minutes, though, the bureaucrat was overcome by common sense and let me through.
That was not the case in Antigua. I had to wait an irritatingly long period of time before one of the bureaucrats accompanied me into the arrivals section to find the person who was picking me up. Then, after putting the address on the immigration form, I was finally allowed in the country.
I realize I’m whining a bit (just like I did with my personal stories about Amtrak, tax returns, traffic tickets, and air travel), but what possible purpose did it serve for the government of Antigua to create an unpleasant experience for me?
After all, there’s no welfare system in Antigua, so I wouldn’t be sneaking in the country to mooch off local taxpayers.
Unfortunately, the government did recently introduce an income tax after decades of independence without that burdensome levy. So perhaps it’s just a matter of time before politicians augment that mistake with a welfare state.
US immigration officials do the same to non-nationals. They also frequently want to know if I am staying with friends of relatives. Most commonly, I am staying with my wife’s ex-husband, so I let them decide how to classify it.
Rather than stay with the immigration people, just put in Marriott or Sheraton, or if you have time before you travel google hotels and pick one to use.
What is the point anyway? They just file their paper and you carry yours. It is never checked.
What Quentin Langley said. Except it is getting worse. You now have to fill in those details online 3 days before travelling for authorisation, even from a ‘visa waiver’ country. And then prepare to be quizzed on them on entry. Since the DHS was invented, you are supposed to file a complete itinerary as well if you are not going to be staying in one place.again.
Yup, I had the same problem getting into the States when I came to speak at Cato (perhaps that’s why – engaging in subversive activity). I think I ended up inventing an address.
Then they failed to check me out properly when I left, so I was banned from the USA for having supposedly out-stayed my visa.