apias:
Carlos from Spain:
RC:

My wife gets "flagged" every single time when we enter the US, so we need to go to the immigration officer and re-do the whole thing. Why? She has a double first name with a dash between the two names and the system cannot read the dash, so it "flags" my wife and we have to go through the person to person check. Smiley Great technology. LOL

Same thing happened to my wife the last time we visited the US. My daughter and I have US passports but my wife is spanish and therefore has a compounded first & middle name and two last names (first from father and second from mother). Well apparently the inmigrations officers take the first name only and the second last name as the last name, which should be the opposite, first & middle are one single name, and then the real last name is the first last name, not the mother's side last name. Long story short its not her name they use and it comes out to be a be very general comon name in spanish language, equating to the typical "John Smith" in english. So it gets flag because apparently there is a "John Smith" on the blacklist obviously, there must be hundreds. Ironically her real last name is very very rare. ...

This is crazy. 

It was a pretty crazy picture, neither me or my wife broken the law ever, with a child sleeping in her arms after a long flight, in Orlando airport coming for a vacation to DisneyWorld, with hotels, tickects everything to show for it, two of us US citizens, her with ESTA and previous visits to the same airport in the past... and there we are detained on that room with my wife feeling like a crimminal waiting to be cleared that she is not that "john smith" they have on their list. Its like from the twilight zone.

The inmigration official was nice though, he could see that it was ridiculous, but like he said, he had to follow procedure or he could get in trouble. So got a bit special treatment, like being able to use my cell phone there (which wasn't alllowed, they repramanded another person there for pulling his cell out) and even allowed me to grab my bags from the carrousell which wasn't allowed either.

But still... not exactly a great welcome, especially because it was so pointless and unnecesary. Like I said, I will be going back this year again to the same airport, a family on a 20$k vacation on walt disney world, and I'm afraid its going to happen all over again...


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⇒ Carlos - Porsche 991 Carrera GTS