Beijing Discovery Tours

Having just returned from a 3-week vacation back home in Oklahoma, I just read one of the travel newsletters that I subscribe to to try to keep up with what is going on in the industry even though most of it doesn’t apply to Beijing tours and tours of China. One of the articles that I just read, from my daily ASTA (American Society of Travel Agents) newsletter, talked about reasons that the United States is losing out on international tourists (you can read the article here: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/369774_tourism07.html ). First and foremost, and the article mentions this as one of the main reasons that we are losing out on tourism business in the U.S., is the unfriendly and downright rude behavior of our U.S. Customs Agents and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and I can speak of this through numerous personal experiences with these unfriendly people, who are often the first people that visitors to our great country encounter. Since I don’t have all day to write about my numerous bad experiences with these surly black-uniformed, jack-booted customs agents, I’ll limit this writing to my most recent experience with them in Vancouver, Canada (yes, the American Customs Agents operate in Canada at a “pre-screening” checkpoint, which at the time that I went through was an absolutely un-funny joke, for all people traveling on to the U.S.) Our flight of around 290 people arrived on time from Beijing; then we were herded and separated into passengers staying in Canada or traveling on to the U.S., so there were probably 150 or so of us traveling on to the U.S. We had to go down some stairs into a narrow glass-enclosed hallway to wait our turn to go through U.S. customs, which had so thoughtfully decided to staff this jammed checkpoint with 1 or 2 officers (it varied throughout the time we were there but there were never more than 2 of them.) We never could figure out what the holdup was, but these guys were incredibly slow, taking about an hour and a half to get us all through customs, causing many of us to miss our ongoing flights. Once we were fortunate enough to step up to the non-smiling customs agents after waiting for what seemed like forever, the agent that I dealt with curtly asked how long I had been out of the U.S., then dropped my passport back to me and I had to rush to go claim my bags, which had been sitting beside the baggage carousel for an hour and a half, then hurry to re-check my bags and make my departing flight for Denver, which was leaving in less than 15 minutes. Already harried for having to hurry and disgusted (as was everyone else) at having had to stand in line for so long to get back into my home country (even though I was still in Canada), I was stopped by a cocky little TSA agent who chose me for a random check - which involved not only a 3-minute search with the hand-held metal detector but also a hand pat-down, even though I told him that my flight was leaving in 5 minutes. This TSA guy acted irritated that I even mentioned that I was going to miss my flight and that I pointed out that I had just been thoroughly searched with the hand-held metal detector (he said “that’s right, I was the one the one that told him to do it”) - what was the point of a pat-down by hand? Unless he just enjoys doing that kind of thing…..anyway, I look about as threatening as Mickey Mouse but I was treated like a criminal by an officer of the U.S. government on foreign soil (still in Canada), and I really didn’t appreciate it. Not only did I miss my flight, but my bags didn’t even make it on to Oklahoma City until the next day because of that hour and a half delay caused by the slow/undermanned U.S. Customs checkpoint. Plus it’s always nice to be automatically treated like I am a criminal and tht I have done something wrong when returning to my homeland. This treatment stands in stark contrast to the friendly reception that I usually receive when I return to China, even with the heightened security now at the Beijing airport because of the Olympic Games only being one month away. Kind of makes a person wonder which is the “free” country - Communist China or the United States of America? I am sick and tired of rude treatment by U.S. Customs Agents and TSA “officers”, nearly all of whom seem to get off on a power trip performing their duties rather than trying to keep us safe, which is what their job is all about, not about seeing how many people they can get to jump through their ridiculous hoops. I should not have to feel like a criminal when returning to my homeland, especially when it gets to the point that I get anxious every time I come back home, just because I have to go through this unpleasant experience every time (with rare exceptions, Chicago’s O’Hare seeming to be one of them, at least in my experience.)

Now I know that some people (if anyone ever actually reads this) will say that these people are just doing their jobs and defending our country from terrorists, and that they should be held up as heroes, not villains. Maybe people who have not repeatedly returned from abroad to come back into the U.S. and put up with consistently rude and unwelcoming treatment can say this (and even my own parents say that), but there is a huge difference between protecting us from terrorists and acting like little Nazi dictators throwing around their far too encompassing power and authority. To be fair, I have encountered friendly officers from both U.S. Customs and TSA (I wish that I knew their names so that I could commend them here), but they are very few and far between. I am sick and tired of being treated like a criminal simply because I choose to live my life abroad. I overheard an older American couple while we were standing in the eternal line to pass through customs in Vancouver talking about some British friends of theirs that refused to even travel in transit through the U.S. because of rude treatment and draconian security measures. The article that I linked to above bears this out, and it is destroying what little positive image the U.S. still has left in the world. It is absolutely ridiculous that the “land of the free” bullies those people that are our friends abroad when they come to visit our great country, and something needs to be done about it. There is no reason that these front-line ambassadors for our country can’t at least smile while performing their duties, which are unpleasant enough for people unaccustomed to such treatment when simply visiting another country, and if they can’t do that because they don’t like their jobs or for whatever reason, then they need to find another line of work.

Perhaps this is not an appropriate posting on my business blog but I feel strongly enough about it that I feel more people need to complain and get something done about poor treatment of both U.S. citizens and our foreign friends that come to visit our country. It makes me feel embarrassed that so many people who like the U.S.A. enough to spend hard-earned money to visit but then are subjected to unfriendly border agents, and I feel truly angry that I am forced to feel like a criminal every time that I go home to visit my family. I would encourage anyone else that feels the same way to get the word out in whatever way possible, and maybe eventually someone that has the power to do something will enact some much needed changes to create a more pleasant experience when people enter our country.