🇺🇸 Is It Safe To Travel To The USA? We Talk To An Expert!

Political scientist Lee Morgenbesser joins Jonesy & Amanda to chat about the hesitancy around travelling to the USA. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Jersey and Amandamnation.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Well, it's a precarious time to be traveling to the US.
Some people are saying don't go, others are saying it's fine.
To clear things up, we thought. We chat to doctor
Lee Morgan. Besser is a political professor who says it's
time to rethink our travel plans, so much so he's
canceled his own business to the States. Lee, Hello, good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
How are you very well?

Speaker 2 (00:22):
I mean, we're hearing some scary stories about tourists being
put into holding cells overnight, being told to take berner
phones and wipe your social media history.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
What have you heard? I've heard very similar things. Unfortunately,
it's all part of the Trump administration's so called enhanced
vetting procedures, which empower customs and border agents to I guess,
ask more difficult questions of travelers and gives them a
greater powers to detain people at the border as well.

Speaker 3 (00:53):
But bernaphones, that's pretty extreme.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
Yeah, bernaphones, Burner laptops of ASO also heard of. It's
also very expensive options for travelers.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
And it is this to get rid of what your
social media history in case you're a person of you
know what what are they going to look for.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
Yeah, it's exactly that. They're going to look for criticism
of the Trump administration or its policies on social media.
So they will ask for you to enter your past
code or your face ID, and then they will scroll
through your different social media platforms.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
But wouldn't if you deleted all those hashtags and stuff,
wouldn't that raise more questions?

Speaker 1 (01:33):
It would raise more questions. It does depend on whether
you're sort of traveling for work or related reasons or
for tourism, So it does come down to it does
come to portioning down to the color of your skin
and things like that. So it's a bit it's a
bit random and unpredictable.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
So lead, if you don't mind me asking what color is.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
Your skin, it's very much white. I would be all
right on brass alone, but probably not on what I've
said about the Trump administration.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
Yeah, okay, yeah, Because when people our age used to travel,
you could travel the whole world without having an itinerary,
without having booked a hotel, without having any of those details.
But I'm hearing of people being detained because there's there's
three days at the end of their trip that aren't
accounted for.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
Yeah, absolutely. So one of the big reasons that being
detained is that not only the visa paperwork so you
may have like an error, but also the answers that
they're providing at the border are not accepted by the
customs and border officials. And that's simply because people want
to have some flexibility in the travel plans and that's
not being accepted.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
Yeah, I'm in North Korea as a kid going to America,
though my dad used to say, particularly to me, Okay,
no smarty pants comments, nothing about guns or anything like that.
So America has always been fraught when you go over there.
But I was reading about someone You've got to have
your ETZA, you know, the little electronic transferry whatever that. Yeah,
you have that, but sometimes that's not enough. You've got

(03:00):
to have an itinery printed. You've got to have what
you're doing, and particularly if you're going over there for
work like Lee might be, or a travel person, you've
got to make sure that everything's tickety boo, as they say,
and you can't lie to them. If you start trying
to be paranoid and lie, then you're going to end
up in some sort of holding cell or even where
it's just getting sent I.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
Am or even worse than a holding cell.

Speaker 3 (03:21):
You're on the holiday. Imagine that you get turned around.
That would be dreadful.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
Yeah, I mean there's been plenty of cases recently, German tourist,
French scientists, sort of the case of a Canadian trying
to leave America and get detained a bad paperwork.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
Trying to leave America. Yes, because that's you know. That's
another thing I heard is that you should have at
the tip of your tongue where you're staying, what the
details are, how long you're going to be here. When
you get off a long haul flight, that's the last
thing that's on your mind and you're trying to figure
out what you're going to be doing. What advice would
you give to people who are traveling to the States.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
I think there's four things that sort of need to do.
One is just make sure all that leads are paperwork
is absolutely one hundred full proof. The other one is
what you've said is sort of rehearsed answers in some sense,
So make sure you know the answers to the questions
are you going to ask beforehand? Burn a phone is
I think a really good option. But you know, somewhat
expensive and then absolutely the worst case scenario is a

(04:20):
fil email that automatically sends should you fail to cancel it,
so alerting people to the fact that you may have
been detained, because if they take your phone, how are
you going to contact people? And the Australian government can't
guarantee constural of support.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
Okay, traveling to the United States. So much has changed
in the last one hundred days, hasn't it.

Speaker 3 (04:43):
Just by yourself a marga cap, you'll.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
Be able to.

Speaker 3 (04:47):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
It's chilling, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
Lee?

Speaker 3 (04:50):
Thank you for joining us.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
Not a problem, you have great morning.

Speaker 3 (04:53):
Thank you, Lee, Morgan Messing The