Comment by lucozade
10 years ago
> It's better to withhold information unless explicitly requested
But that's not the question. The question is whether or not it's better to lie about why you're travelling. Now, for some percentage of the time it probably is better in practice. But it's a trade with a fairly large downside. Border agents have lots of reasons to carry out checks so you'll need to be very sure that everything else is completely fine and be lucky you don't hit a random check.
And they do check. I've had to vouch for people at airports and they've checked social media, Google etc. For the lady in the article, it sounds like what she went through was solely for flouting work laws (and being rude but that would have just affected the degree of surliness). You get caught for directly lying and they'll be all over you for illegal immigration/terrorism. I would expect that to be more lengthy and more unpleasant than the unfortunate lady experienced.
My advice? If you want to earn money in a foreign country do it legally. At the very least check with the consulate/embassy and get their answer in writing if possible.
I agree 100%. In this case she should have dotted i's and crossed t's and known inside & out exactly what the rule are governing the actions she was planning. As a longtime corporate employee, even I knew that specifying anything besides "business meetings" throws flags... but this isn't common knowledge for most people, nor are the minutiae governing specific reasons for travel to specific places. For example, if you've never traveled to a country that requires a visa but which only sells visas upon landing at their port of entry, that can be disconcerting. Will they take credit cards? What about my native currency? Do I need special paperwork? Will they stamp my passport or issue a new sheet? Can they just send me home?
Indeed. What I think is happening is that international travel is a little too easy. Not a bad thing of itself but it's easy to get caught out thinking that it's just like intranatioanl travel.
It hit home to me a few years ago when I was travelling between the US and UK a fair amount. One time I arrived in JFK and realised that all the ATMs were down. I also realised that I had travelled thousands of miles and hadn't bothered to carry any local currency. It hadn't occurred to me that this was a bit stupid because, well, it hadn't been a problem before. Was a bit of a wake up call to think a bit more in future.