Never going to Tijuana again

[PCinSD]

^^^

Always the Nattering Nabob of Nincompoopery.

[spdrun]

Guess when you have nothing else to say, you resort to ad-hominem attacks.

Oh right, and two can tango. Creepy cretin of conformity.

[Anonymous]

I would never cross if I didn’t have a Sentri. Even with Sentri it can take up to an hour on Sunday nights.

I think things got worse recently when they created the new “ready” lanes for passport card holders. Now there are three optional lines with regular, ready and Sentri and I don’t believe it is well organized.

[temeculaguy]

The posts about passport cards not being different from regular passports are inaccurate. They are absolutely different as they allow you into the ready lane which is usually a fraction of the regular lanes when crossing on foot. For park and walk, I’ve never waited more than 10 minutes to come back. I have crossed probably a dozen or more times in the last 12 months, probably 9 on foot and 3 by car and also 3 by sea but those 3 weren’t TJ. In the last few months they changed the lanes and gave more preference to redi lanes, but once I took the wrong street and ended up in the regular lanes and it took 45 minutes. Passport books are worthless for land/sea travel in North America and the Caribbean. They are the equivalent of a drivers license and a good story and you will wait hours at any time of day.

There are websites that give average wait times and they vary wildly, just like traffic stateside. Plan your next trip, just like you would not choose to traverse Los Angeles freeways at 4pm on a Friday. Border “rush hour”is not the same as our traffic “rush hour.”

It’s another country, a foreigner stuck in chargers traffic on friars could say the same thing. Always check the soccer schedule and the Mexican holidays as well.

I’m a big fan of the passport card if sentri isn’t warranted based on your trip count. I used my passport card in the Caribbean, Yucatan peninsula of Mexico and for TJ crossings all in the last year and it was a breeze because your info is read and run before you walk up to the customs official, due to the chip. The analog passport book is still the only thing used for air travel internationally and it is much slower (card only works for land and sea travel in north america, caribbean and some other islands like the bahamas). BG was right, at renewal of the book, the card is only $30 more, applied for by itself it’s a little more.

One note, if you go with other people in a car and 1 person is without a card, none of you can use that lane. On foot you are stuck waiting for the one without a card. My policy, if you don’t have the card you aint going with me!

[spdrun]

Wow, that’s retarded. Passport books have had RFID since 2007 or 2008, just apparently, their equipment can ONLY read the card, or certain state driver licenses.

Not sure if it’s about our booberment being completely out of it, or if it’s about ass-raping people for an additional $30. If they put an RFID chip in the book, shouldn’t it be able to be used?

[all]

[quote=spdrun]
It’s amazing — I’ve flown within Europe in the last few years. No shoe check, barely any border controls once in the EU, no backscatter in some countries, all without begging their governments for permission not to be humiliated.

America! YEAH! Land of the free! HAHAHAHAHA![/quote]

The orthodox Jew with a wife and 6 kids got full treatment at the Zurich airport few months ago. Including stripping, patting, emptying the luggage and testing powdered baby formula for explosives. My bag was on the belt until his was cleared, first row seat. It felt very unnecessary, but he did not blow up the plane afterwards, so yay!

[spdrun]

There are exceptions to be sure (maybe they saw something on the x-ray), but the shoe/ID/etc carnival is much less common over there than here. Most Americans don’t get that type of treatment either — this would have been special attention in either country.

And if 0.00001% of flights get blown up, so what? Part of freedom is some level of risk.

We jibber and thump our chests like enraged baboons whenever someone discusses taking our freedom to own guns away, even though 30-40 thousand people die from firearms every year in the US.

But when there’s a remote possibility of a plane being blown up, when an illegal immigrant with no more likelihood of killing someone than the average American might get into the US, or when more drugs might get into the US we say … “yes. please. master. take our rights. it’s for our own good. for the good of our country. please, sir.”

Hypocrisy driven by a government and media in bed with corporate interests. There’s big money in selling guns, even to people who shouldn’t be handling so much as a Super-Soaker. There’s also big money in security technology, ID technology, policing, imprisonment, etc. Follow the money, and you’ll realize how corrupt we are.

[Author]

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