Why do we put tourists through immigration interviews when our borders are open to asylum-seekers?

On a typical cruise, passengers hand over their passports at the beginning of the trip and the ship’s staff handles any and all immigration bureaucracy. The countries being visited rely on the cruise line to authenticate people and to take at least most of the visitors away.

When we arrived in Canada this standard practice was observed. The Canadians presumably had an opportunity to inspect a list of people on board, but they didn’t invest time and money to talk to each tourist and/or crew member.

It was a different story coming into U.S. waters. A group of immigration officials were flown up from Anchorage to Barrow, one of the most remote towns on our planet. They proceeded by tender boat to join us on board. The ship set up an assembly line so that La Migra could talk to each passenger at least briefly, scan and offer to stamp passports, and then go back to Anchorage by tender boat, taxi, and airplane. It was a huge waste of time and money for everyone involved.

This “screen everyone” practice might have made sense 30 years ago. But with families stepping over the southern border of the U.S. and saying “I am entitled to asylum because I live in a place that is almost as violent as Baltimore or New Orleans,” what is the point? Anyone willing to spin a yarn of violence and suffering can get set up for three generations of public housing, free health care via Medicaid, food stamps, and free smartphone. So the point of the passport check cannot be to make sure that people will go home. Anyone from our cruise could have asked for asylum just the same as someone who migrated up from Central America.

Since 9/11, a good catch-all explanation for apparently wasteful government spending is “because terrorism”. I don’t think that is the reason for screening every passenger on a cruise visiting a U.S. port, though. German senior citizens do not fit the profile of a typical terrorist. The agents who see people face to face do not seem more likely to spot a terrorist than a person with a computer looking at all of the passport data provided by the cruise line.

Readers: Now that there are so many ways to stay in the U.S. forever (and at taxpayer expense for multiple decades), is this screening process obsolete? If complete face-to-face screening is a such a good idea, why don’t the Canadians do it?

16 thoughts on “Why do we put tourists through immigration interviews when our borders are open to asylum-seekers?

  1. This is obviously not a good idea, but does anything the government does need to be so?

    The more important question is how are we going to enable people separated from our borders by vast oceans to become undocumented immigrants? Especially millions of sick people who should have the right to come here and get free healthcare?

    Will next president order the military to transport such people to our shores? Hundreds of millions of people from Middle East, South Asia and Africa would be willing to move to California and get free housing, food, healthcare and phones.

  2. A good rule of thumb to understand seemingly incompetent government behavior is not stupidity — the people who work for government are no more stupid than your average Joe, who can figure all of this stuff out — but that government employees are making money off of the inefficiency at the expense of the taxpayer and people whose time is wasted, for example the INS officials probably getting paid overtime and receiving travel and food allowances. And then they have to be supervised and monitored and need support staff and so on. That is lots of jobs and salary and benefits. But growth in government bureaucracy is not only a waste of taxpayer money but also a waste of the time and resources of those forced to deal with the bureaucrats.

  3. It’s the same mindset that leads NSA to gather “everything” with no way to analyze it, rather than focusing maximum resources on people or organizations who exhibit bad behavior.

    There is virtually no risk assessment, at least in the visible part of security theater.

    • Gathering “everything” means you can analyze it in the future. You’d probably be surprised with the quantity they can currently analyze too..

  4. It’s so very silly. Phil, I am sure you know what it takes to fly into the country in a light airplane. There we have at least 4 or 5 bureaucracies we have to deal with. If something is not done just right like we land one minute before schedule we are threatened with 10,000 dollar fines. All this at airports right near the border with a stream of migrants walking over. The liberals want to decriminalize border crossings. Do they also want to decriminalize failure to properly file an EApis? The whole situation is maddening.

  5. “Anyone willing to spin a yarn of violence and suffering can get set up for three generations of public housing, free health care via Medicaid, food stamps, and free smartphone.”

    Or put in a concentration camp losing their children in the process.

  6. How can the principles of sociobiology be used to explain the growth of government?

    Compare the process of reducing governmental expenditure to the treatment of metastatic cancer.

    How many government inspectors does it take to examine the head of a pin?

    • Government is a parasite on the society. Parasite infestations tend to grow until they kill the host organism. So do governments.

      A lot of parasites evolved mechanisns for lowering host’s resistance to infection and in many cases even make the host to act for the benefit of the parasite – for example toxoplasma gondii can only sexually reproduce in cats. Mice normally averse to smell of cat urine, but infected mice actually get attracted by it, thus exposing the infected mouse to the predation by the cat, thus increasing chances that T.gondii gets into a new feline host. Similarly, governments evolved propaganda which leads the civilian hosts to act against their own interests (such as supporting taxation and laws which end up hurting them, such as rent control or minimum wage laws).

  7. I as a AMERICAN ,even though am of Mexican and Jewish decent believe that borders should be protected. People that l know also believe think even when they are here played the game by going through immigration requirements for years trying to get their citizenship statues to become citizen. They feel that these so called (Asylum Seekers) should not be able to leap-frog others that have to wait YEARS to get citizenship or other benefits. Making at least 5 to more children should not be our responsibility. Turning them back is to benefit our country future. If you can’t feed your kids DONT HAVE THEM.

    • Good for you, I agree, we have violence and gangs here in the U.S., I am a citizen born and raised in Arizona and I want a better life also, not enough money to pay for housing, medical, dental but too much to get AHCCCS, why should get illegals and immigrants get these benefits. Yes our Country was built on immigration but our ancestors came over legally through Ellis Island they didn’t sneak in illegally, not speaking English they had to learn it they didn’t have translators and had to find work, they weren’t given all the benefits, what about our Veterans who are living on the streets who are homeless, the government cares more about making sure illegals have shelter, food, water and medical than our own people..

  8. Good for the CBP. Southern border crossers pay about $4,000 to Mexican organized crime organizations to get them across without “incident.”

    That $4,000 would go a long way towards paying for passage to a cruise ship port and a nice ride into U.S. waters.

    Illegals are always looking for a new way in. All of a sudden hundreds of Africans are flying into Mexico.

  9. Why do we put tourists through immigration interviews when our borders are open to asylum-seekers?

    Clearly the answer to his question must be that the interviews allow the passengers the opportunity to see asylum.

  10. I’m a white, American-born single mom, and I’ve been on housing wait-list for 10 years. Thankfully I’ve had enough couches owned by kind-hearted peopl lined up for me and my kiddo. It hasn’t been easy creating and maintaining those relationships while working. There is no public housing available anywhere. Go apply. See what they say. Apply for medical coverage while you’re at it, just to find out what the qualification criteria are. (Guys, if you’re single, you’re SOL.)

    I’m not sure how folk who have never touched the system can blanket say who gets benefits or not, and complain about it, but I read it a lot. Seriously, what is up with that?

Comments are closed.