This morning friends in New Zealand forwarded me a link to this sorry tale of an experience with US Customs & Border Patrol.

Obviously bekitty had a much worse time of it than I did. As I have said, the CBP officers that I dealt with were very sympathetic. I was very lucky. However, strip away the abuse that gets handed out to suspected illegal immigrants in Los Angeles and you are left with a fairly similar story. Except that bekitty had a perfectly legitimate visa.

This is the sort of problem I am facing. Even if you have a visa, CBP can and will make life difficult for you if you come and go too often. They can and do deny people entry because they suspect them of traveling for purposes other than those stated on their visa. And the key word there is “suspect”. If they suspect you, no matter how wrong they may be, you are guilty until such time as you can go back to your own country and spend a lot of money on lawyers to prove your innocence.

I also note that the visa descriptions are drawn so tightly that it is pretty much impossible to avoid violating their terms if you travel regularly and for more than a few days at a time.

Hopefully this will help explain why I am taking things slowly and carefully. I don’t want to waste any more money on lawyers or plane fares until I’m pretty certain that I will be allowed to travel.

As many of you will already know, Peter Watts had his day in court yesterday, and has been found guilty. He now faces the possibility of up to two years in prison, although the final sentence could be a lot less (possibly even non-custodial).

Much outrage has already been vented around teh intrawebs, but before you add to it I strongly suggest that you read Peter’s remarkably measured and calm analysis of the case.

There is a tendency, especially amongst those of us who have training in IT or science, to think that laws are something simple and fair; rules by which one can easily be judged guilty or not. That’s often far from the truth, especially when cross-border issues and/or juries are involved. Often laws leave massive room for lawyers to argue a point. Cross-border issues tend to bring out the worst in people. And whether someone is “guilty” or not can often depend very heavily on the views of the jury members (see this article about the Christopher Handley obscenity case for another example).

Peter’s case is, in most ways, much more serious than mine. He has already faced massive legal bills, and could face much worse. Two things, however, we have in common. Both of us have a chance of being on the Hugo ballot in Reno (both through Clarkesworld in different ways) and won’t be able to attend the ceremony if we are. And both of us are caught in a situation where, regardless of the rights and wrongs of the case, we are going to be deemed guilty because it is a border issue and people get very irrational over such things.

In such situations, all you can do is go forward as best you can, and make as much lemonade as is possible of the lemons that life has thrown you. Judging from his blog post, Peter is holding up fairly well. I wish him all the best and hope he can stay that way.

There has, inevitably, been a small amount of speculation around the blogosphere about my travel problems. On the one hand there are the people preaching doom and gloom about how the Evil TSA are Out To Get Us All. On the other there are people muttering darkly that I must have done something Very Bad. We do love our dramas. The reality is much less interesting and also far more complicated. I’m not sure that I understand it myself. But now that I’ve had a chance to decompress I’m going to try to explain what the problem is.

Entry into the USA is controlled by two different government departments: Customs & Border Patrol (CBP), who man the desks at airports, and the State Department, who run embassies and issue visas. These two organizations have different, and sometimes competing, aims.

The CBP generally dislikes the visa waiver scheme, because it means letting people into the country without any proper vetting. Their job is to protect the US from undesirables, and visa waiver makes that hard. State, on the other hand, is constantly besieged by people wanting visas. Anything that they can do to cut down the size of the queue is good, and from that point of view they love visa waiver.

An additional complication is that CBP and State have rather different views of what constitutes “business”. As far as the CBP is concerned, anything that isn’t obviously tourism is “business”. If you are attending a conference, or a board meeting, or doing anything for a charity or non-profit organization, that’s still business, and potentially suspicious. But State is concerned with the economic welfare of the USA, and will only grant a “business” visa if what you are doing obviously involves trade.

Then there is the question of visa categories. There are many of them, and they are all very tightly drawn, so if the purpose of your travel is anything out of the ordinary you may find it very difficult to find a category that fits you.

The final piece of the puzzle concerns the rules for visa waiver. There are certain things that prevent you from using the visa waiver system. Many of you will have had a good laugh at the questions about being convicted of genocide or being a Nazi. But it is also absolutely forbidden to use visa waiver if you have been denied an ordinary visa by State. Because, after all, if you were denied a visa then you must be a potential danger to the country.

So here’s the problem. In late 2008 the CBP says I travel back and fore too often for their comfort, and they want me to get a visa. I talk to a lawyer and in early 2009 I try to get a visa. State says that the sort of travel I am doing is exactly the sort of thing that visa waiver was designed for, and in any case I don’t fit into any of their neat visa categories so they can’t give me one. They tell me that I should carry on using visa waiver. So I follow their advice, and that appears to work. I am let in twice during 2009, once after a lengthy grilling that doesn’t once mention any visa application.

Then, last week, I get hauled in front of CBP officials. My records now say that I have been denied a visa and consequently a) I can’t use visa waiver and b) I have told a lie on that little green form you have to fill in on the aircraft. As far as I’m concerned I haven’t told any lies, I have done exactly what I was told by State. But proving that is likely to be a lengthy and very expensive process. And even if I do manage to clear my name, I have now actually been denied entry, and can no longer use visa waiver. And I can’t apply for a proper visa because there is no visa for the sort of things I do when visiting.

The net result is that I am totally screwed. As I’m sure you can see, much of this is due to the way in which the system is set up. Changing it, however, is an uphill struggle, and any attempt at reforming immigration laws is liable to get the froth-at-the-mouth brigade very excited. I’ve been talking to an immigration lawyer who campaigns for change in the system, and I hope that my story will provide her with useful ammunition. As far as I’m concerned, however, the only things that are likely to get me back into the US are a) if I become very rich, or b) if I manage to start making a living from the science fiction industry. The former requires a lottery win, and given that many of our top writers have to keep their day jobs because they can’t make a living out of writing novels, the latter is almost as unlikely.