Immigrating Dragon

Here I am, in the sunny California once again.

This morning as I made my way towards the US customs and Immigration, my passport was snatched by one of the over-zealous officials and I was directed towards the 'special lane'. Just like so many times before "I had been randomly selected for a search..." according to the customs troglodyte as she deftly pocketed my passport.

Just as randomly as the last four times I went to US, eh? Might this have anything to do with the fact that I hold a Finnish passport?

As far as I can see, all the people of colour and non-Americans have to take the special lane, where they get full body search, fingerprints and photos treatment, samples are taken from their belongings, and they get extra-nosy questions as a special bonus. Luckily once they learn that I make video games the tone tends to change, as the people start lobbying the ideas for their own games.

This time I'd anticipated the delay, and arrived really early, so there was no harm done unlike the last time when I almost missed my plane.

I have no beef with the grunts who do the actual searching -at the end of the day, they are just following orders. But I would respect the policy-makers a lot more if they owned up and admitted that it is just the black people and the foreigners that are subject to the humiliation of the search. I understand the need for security in the interest of building the confidence of the population, but this smacks as something else.