Comment by AlphaGeekZulu

Around 1980, in the age of 14, I took part in an US-/German student exchange programme of my school. As a German at that time, I received a supposedly lifelong US-Visum in my passport.

Some years later, as a grown-up, I started to visit the US a couple of times, for business (visiting trade shows, conferences and customers), and as a tourist.

Around the 10th trip, the immigration officer unexpectedly crossed out my visum in the passport upon entry. I was stunned. He explained to me, very friendly, "that the policies had changed, the visum type was not existant anymore and thus cancelled, in the future I would just have to fill a paper in the airplane, welcome to the United States".

Next trip I received the questionnaire in the airplane, with one of the questions being "has there ever been an US visum cancelled for you?". That seemed a difficult question to answer. Would I say "no", that seemed like lying, because a visum had - as a matter of fact - been cancelled for me. Would I say "yes", I probably could just keep sitting in the plane seat for an immediate return. I decided to clear this up with the friendly immigration officer.

Who turned out not to be friendly, at all. Before I could even open my mouth, he noticed the unanswered question on the form, yelled at me like crazy, made me get back to the end of the line (I had spent already almost an hour in the line), told me to better not come back with unanswered questions on the form (I chose "no" on the second attempt) and then kept me interrogating for 20 minutes, all the time giving me the feeling that I would go right home. I was finally allowed to enter and spent another hour with customs.

Didn't feel the urge to ever come back to the US. That was long before ESTA. And long before I started to collect exotic stamps in my passport, some of them showing arabic typefaces. And long before Europe became an enemy of the US.

I have been to African countries (which the current POTUS would describe as shithole countries), whose administrations were less erratic and unpredictable than the US currently are.