One Ignorant American In Line at Customs

I would like the record to show that when you get your US passport in the mail, there is no instruction manual.  There isn’t any sort of leaflet along with the passport that tells you to please visit the YouTube Channel for the country you are visiting to see what you will need at the customs desk. There is no PDF to download that gives you information about what questions you will be asked, or what documents you should carry. You get the passport and are basically told, “good luck!”. Indeed!

I probably could have looked all of those things up ahead of time, but honestly, it did not even occur to me to think about any of it. I assumed that once I got to customs, they would tell me what I needed to know. I assumed, wrongly, that if I intended to do no wrong, there would be no issue getting into the UK on a US passport. Au contraire!

It’s not like I’ve never entered a foreign country before. I traveled in Europe when I was in high school. I’ve traveled to Mexico and the Caribbean and Canada, all requiring a passport and a trip through customs. These trips did not adequately prepare me for the disdain I encountered upon arrival at the Edinburgh Customs desk after disembarking my plane.

I would like to provide this short list of thing you can do to prevent the inquisition:

1.     Print out your flight details. Even if the airlines you’re flying with has the fancy new smart phone scanning technology, go old school! The use of phones is not allowed in the Customs area (this is not something that any wants you to know until you get there and all of your flight details are listed only on your smart phone and you have to tell the customs agent that you can only show her an email from your airlines with the flight details, which she will begrudgingly write down), and you should have a piece of paper that shows exactly when you are planning on leaving the country.

2.     When asked how much currency you’re carrying, do not give a precise amount. Just say, enough for my needs. Really, they cannot force you to say how much currency you’re carrying, unless you have more than 10,000 pound. Otherwise, you do not have to declare an amount and they can ask you, but you do not have to tell them. If they ask you how much you have, you can legally say, “less than $10,000” and they can’t really hassle you about it.

3.     The only other thing I can think of is maybe put a change of clothing in your carry on so that when you get off the plane you don’t look like you’ve been on a plane for 10 hours. I did brush my hair and teeth, but I’m sure I looked ragged. Not that I was the most raggedy person in that line, I’ll tell you.

4.      

Actually, I’m not sure what to do when they start asking questions that you are legally not required to answer. At the time, my feel was, this lady, no matter how huge the bug is that is up her ass, has control over whether or not I enter the country. So I played nice. Even when she called my “story” about having a friend come to pick me up “half cocked”. Even when she told me that she didn’t want to find me pan handling outside Marks and Spencer the next day. Even after she made me sit on the Bench of Shame, while I waited for every other person disembarking three different planes to go through customs. Even when she said she’d put some sort of stamp on my passport indicating that I was “trouble” (there is nothing on there that I could see that said “trouble” in any language, but who knows?). I just smiled and said yes ma’am and no ma’am. And finally, after calling my friend who was indeed waiting outside the International Arrival Gate with her two small children (one of whom was screaming now) to verify my “story”, she admitted me to Scotland.

To be fair, her accent put her as a Brit, not a Scot. And everyone I met after that seemed perfectly friendly. Maybe she knows something I don’t, eh? I could have been starting international scandal and not even know it!