Passports - and a question to the girls

[robertlouis]

Careful Bob... remarks like "to play the star-spangled fucking banner" is going to draw a lot of the haters down on your head.

It's an endurance test wherever you enter the US. Imagine what its like coming in from Mexico!!!

And even nice middle class white british folk flying into Washington run into these bureaucrats. Couple of years back my flight into Washington was late and i had to make a connecting flight. Couple ahead of me had an even tighter connection. They asked one of these nice immigration folk if they could go to the head of the line so they'd make their flight (Travel into and then across the US involves clearing customs when you first land and then re-checking your luggage so its a time consuming drag). The officials resoonse: " No. Get back in line. You miss your flight.' No apologies. No humanity. No sympathy whatsoever. Assholes.

I flew into Dallas a few years ago and was asked to go through the fingerprint checker. Now, as a pro guitarist, my left hand occasionally doesn't show any prints (if you don't get callouses on your fingertips you're not a serious player), although the right one clearly does, and did on this occasion. So my right hand identified exactly who I was.

But two goons dragged me away to the cooler two levels down. It was chokingly hot, there was no water and I quickly realised that I was the only one in there who had no connections to the drug trade. In the nine hours that they held me there were three fights, all of which threatened to escalate, and all of which wre studiously ignored by the guards behind the glass.

Add in the fact that I was different to everyone else which in itself created a lot of malicious curiosity, and suffice to say that I have joined a worldwide legion of haters of the US immigration service. Oh, and at the end, they took me back upstairs and made me join the line all over again. Cunts.

Humiliation of people coming to spend time and dollars in your country is a bad policy. Deal with it.

[Prospero]

Whoa - not MY country! They're not immigration anymore are they. Homeland Security these days, surely. Nine hours in an airport is fucking horrible.

[robertlouis]

Whoa - not MY country! They're not immigration anymore are they. Homeland Security these days, surely. Nine hours in an airport is fucking horrible.

I know they're not yours, Prospero. Mind you, I'm pretty sure there are more than just a few racist jobsworths working for UK Border Control too.

And bear in mind that those nine hours were in a dungeon with a mix of drug dealers, criminals and illegals. The friends I was staying with, who've since had the sense to move to the UK and now live near me in Cambridge, were incensed and wrote to their congressman on my behalf, but got an anodyne no apology reply. Oh well, what can you expect from a Repubtard in Tejas?

And my sincere apologies for hijacking this thread. Hope it can get back on track.

[Prospero]

Well it all relates.

I have often wondered how the jet-setting escorts girls - people like Tia Phoenix for instance - flit from country to country. I think Tia has an Indonesian passport and presumably travels on a female passport. But girls who go to places like Dubai must surely HAVE to cary female passport otherwise they'd end up in prison.

[Stavros]

But girls who go to places like Dubai must surely HAVE to cary female passport otherwise they'd end up in prison.

And surely, if they turned up with a TG passport it would be easier to refuse them entry?
I am dismayed at the dreadful experiences RobertLouis and others have had but I have never had a problem at all either entering the US or moving through it -New York, LA, San Francisco and most recently Las Vegas via Minneapolis -no problem at all. Maybe I was just lucky, maybe I am luckier still that I don't carry a guitar around and have dodgy fingers.

No gender category in Argentine passports? Interesting way to do it.

[BrendaQG]

Not neccessarily. The arrest I hear of in Dubai and other Islamic countries stem from girls who go there and then don't dress like the women do there. Walking about uncovered would get a GG a stern looking at.

My own passport finally came through. It was sent to by priority mail and got here in under a day.

[robertlouis]

Not neccessarily. The arrest I hear of in Dubai and other Islamic countries stem from girls who go there and then don't dress like the women do there. Walking about uncovered would get a GG a stern looking at.

My own passport finally came through. It was sent to by priority mail and got here in under a day.

Good news about your passport, Brenda.

However, you're not right about Dubai. If what you say was true, the jails would be heaving with every female western tourist who goes there. They wouldn't dream of destroying their tourist industry, which is all about having a fallback for when their limited stocks of oil dry up.

No, it's all to do with the muslim view of homosexuality, and they see tgirls and crossdressers etc as much the same thing.

[Prospero]

You can read all about Tia Phoenix's grim experiences in Dubai on her blog. She was arrested, out into a male prison and raped. So whenever an escort says she is about to go visit these countries I warn them to be very, very careful. The girls who do go there never advertise their presence on local websites. They tend to advertise externally - and people use those sites to contact them. There is one Russian TS girl who e-mails me often - ever since I met her in Oman - to say she is going to be in this or that Middle eastern country. If they make the mistake of advertising locally the police set traps. And as Robertlouis says it really isn't about dressing the wrong way. I've been to most of these nations and Saudi Arabia is the only place where western women get hassled by the authorities if they don't cover up. In Dubai you will get arrested for "bad behaviour" in public - ie making out on the beach - but not for wearing western clothes The place is full of fashionably dressed young women.

[BrendaQG]

[quote=Stavros;1008522]

You can read all about Tia Phoenix's grim experiences in Dubai on her blog. She was arrested, out into a male prison and raped.

Sadly, that happens right here in the good ol USA every day. If you get arrested, and your not post op, as a world wide rule your going into male jail.

Advertising escort services. That too gets one arrested here in the Good ol USA.

All I'm gonna say about that issue is this, the Islamic world is no more or less accepting of transgender people than the western world. Which says more about how crappy this life can be, at times, all over the world than anything good about muslims.

[Prospero]

Brenda - I was, in no way dissing Muslims. I love that part of the world, Arab and islamic culture etc etc.... but I DO know that TS girls and gay men get a terrible deal in certain Muslim countries. Iran,(not Arabs) peculiarly, is very tolerant of the transgendered, but hangs gay men.