kevin_standlee: (Not Sensible)
kevin_standlee ([personal profile] kevin_standlee) wrote2012-04-02 03:14 pm
Entry tags:

I Wish This Was an April Fool Joke

...but it's dated last Monday.

US asserts authority to Stop travel from non-US countries to any North American country

Get this? You can't fly from the UK to, say, Toronto for this year's World Fantasy Convention without the permission of the US government, even though you're never going to set foot on US soil, and even if your flight isn't crossing US airspace. And you won't know if you've been granted that permission until you try to board your flight, and if you're denied boarding, it's your own problem and there's no recourse.

Somehow the US government has managed to make the UK and our neighbors knuckle under to this and effectively said that the US controls all North American airspace. What's next, a declaration of annexation of Canada, Mexico, etc.?

I've complained to my (soon-to-be-ex-) congressman, but what can I do about this? And what are Canada, the Bahamas, the UK, etc. thinking in giving away their sovereignty to the the US this way? Can you imaging how angry the US government would be if (say) the UK declared that it had the right to veto travel of anyone traveling from the USA to anywhere in the EU? The USA would say, "No you don't" and would brush it aside.

If I were the Toronto World Fantasy Convention Committee, I would be getting nervous about how many of their members from outside of the USA and Canada will actually be able to attend or will simply cancel their trips rather than deal with the random possibility of being denied boarding because their name appears on a Secret US List.

[identity profile] kevin-standlee.livejournal.com 2012-07-30 09:01 pm (UTC)(link)
The mechanism they're using bypasses governments. It's not a government-to-government thing. What the US is telling airlines is, "If you don't do what we tell you to do, we'll revoke your US landing rights." See the difference? I don't think there are any air carriers flying Europe-Canada who don't also serve US points, and those US points are almost certainly a huge important piece of their business; in most cases, probably more important than the non-US ones. So the airlines either do what Boss Sam tells them to do or they stop flying to the USA.