The US started this shit known as ESTA. People going from visa-free countries to
the US must submit a form and pay $21. Offline people are probably excluded, if
not exceptionally inconvenienced. Unbanked people probably simply cannot enter
the US (how would they pay the ESTA fee?). The ESTA includes a background check
by snooping on the social media accounts of travelers, in advance, to look for
disloyalty to the US by the traveler /or their friends/. Whereas in the past,
ICE did that snooping spontaneously at the time of entry. Now it’s done in
advance… likely to give them more time to snoop on the social media. Businesses
are exploiting the shit-show. Travel services where people book their travel
have an ESTA form on their own sites, or that of a partner. They don’t talk
about price… they just say fill it out on our site for convenience. Then they
hit you with fees upwards of us$ 100 (5 times the cost of using the gov site).
That much is a legal swindle, as they actually proxy the data for you. Then
there are countless scammers masquerading as legit ESTA processors who just take
your money. When you show up at US ICE without an ESTA, you are fucked. You must
eat your travel costs. The system is designed to make travelers fully
responsible for the shit that manifests from the shit-show. The UK copied the US
for reciprocity. Americans going to the UK needed an ETA, but Europeans do not.
Fair enough… but perhaps Europeans going to the UK will be bent over by the same
reciprocity in the future, after the EU requires UK citizens to file their
version of it. So yes, Europe is bringing in this garbage. IMO, it’s security
theater. Many people are inconvienced and have to cough up lots of money… and
many will lose their ass on non-reimbursable travel costs over this. At least EU
citizens and their family members do not need an ETIAS to enter schangen. But
it’s a shame the UK and EU don’t trust each other’s population. I wonder what
the impact will be on tourism. If I am trying to decide where to vacation, a
country with this extra annoying snooping may struggle to make my short list.
(update) Connection hell: ETIAS is required even for connecting intl. flights
[https://www.aaa.com/tripcanvas/article/what-to-know-about-etias-and-travel-to-europe-CM1348].
Wow… fucking hell. Imagine a moroccan whose itinerary has a layover in Madrid,
then Florida, before reaching Chile. IIUC, they would need a travel auth in
Europe and a separate one for the US. They would have to pay €20+us$ 21 just for
passing through… for the privilege of having that route.
In the linked post, I give some detail on the situation and the scams.
The legal scam: your travel agent or ticket seller gives a you a convenient form to take your details and apply for your electronic travel authorisation on your behalf. You might then later discover you were charged over $100 for their convenient form, when you could have paid $20 by going direct to the gov website.
The illegal scam: some 3rd party websites claim to walk you through getting a travel authorisation, and they of course charge you. But then they do nothing… they never actually file an ETA for you. They just take your money.
