US citizen here. I recently returned from my first international travel in a few years, and I was unpleasantly surprised by how easy it was to get back into the country.

In the returning citizens line, everyone was directed by an officer to one of three tablets each on a stand about 3-4 feet high. You stuck your face in the right spot for the camera and the tablet turned green. And that was it, free to go. No conversation with a human about where you went, no human verifying your passport, no need for the passport at all. Just a face scan (presumably matching a database of digitized passport photos) and you’re done.

Makes me wonder what the bar is for various local law enforcement or different federal agencies to get access to the database and hook in with surveillance cameras.

  • trailee@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
    10·
    5 hours ago

    Do you presume I’m a white male because I seem to have the privilege to find this immigration database problematic rather than living with daily oppression in all sorts of other ways? Perhaps that’s true.

    • IninewCrow@lemmy.caEnglish
      10·
      5 hours ago

      Personally, I’m a brown skinned long haired Native Canadian. I fluently speak English and I’m as Canadian as anyone that’s lived in this country all their lives.

      I’ve also done quite a bit of traveling over the years. My wife and I have been too Europe over a dozen times, Caribbean, Asia and South America.

      She’s white and always breezes through immigration anywhere. About half the time, I get held up, questioned longer and a few times taken aside to be searched.

      My favorite was arriving for a transit stop in Halifax on our way to Toronto. Almost the entire 300 passenger flight was older retirees … all of them white Canadians. They all got through security, but four people were singled out to be searched … myself, a black couple and an Indian woman … we were the only ethnic looking people on the whole flight. The Indian lady was a second generation Canadian who grew up in Toronto and she gave everyone shit and berated them as they made us open up our luggage.

      We delayed the flight to Toronto and when we boarded, they all looked at us like it had all been our fault.

      This is the reason why I asked about your ethnic background and sex. Racial profiling is a very normal thing in security and immigration … and most people don’t notice it unless you are part of an ethnic group that is considered questionable.