Same.

Yep. I skipped a tech conference in Feb where we announced a major partnership with a Canadian company (I’m from South Africa). I do not want to travel to the US in the current climate.

There have been multiple reports here on this website about exactly this happening to people in recent weeks. I understand that the fear is surreal but it’s happening to some.

Don’t go. Your anxiety will make the entire duration you are here very uncomfortable. Although the probabilities are very low like you said, you’d probably want to take baby steps, not jump straight into a conference with many people that can be an easy target for a mass shooting. You’re going from a country where a mass shooting is practically impossible to one where it’s a daily occurrence.

I'm mid-40s, and I've yet to actually see a firearm discharged outside of a range or skeet shoot, and I've never personally known anyone to be shot. And I live in a major US metro area.

I mean ... it could be pretty easily. Just try to invade the U.S.A. See what happens. :shrug: :grin:

definitely more burning li-ion

Where are you getting "since the trump adm." from? This is what OP wrote:

but in the last 10 years or so, it seems to me that there has been a huge increase in violence, and I have huge fears about guns.

They do not mention Trump at all, and don't even vaguely hint at this being a problem of the last two months.

Math is off. Total number of people detained in 2023 was 270k out of 66million annual visitors. 0.4% chance. Chances of dying in a plane crash are roughly 1 in million (Google tells me so, not sure of the source). The ones I listed are the publicized ones but the story is the same.

I'm not sure how to account for / compete with folks measuring risks via say news outlets or even wikipeida pages. The fact that there are that many shootings is terrible.

That "terribleness" doesn't mean you're at a risk that is worth worrying about, or worse, worrying about that and not something that might be far more of a risk.

But nobody can compete with purely an emotional response to bad things.

It certainly wouldn't be an ideal outcome.

I would expand that to a general risk of being hassled, physically intimidated, or even threatened. I've personally seen (either as the target or as a bystander) a steady rise over the past decade of total strangers out in public jumping from a minor mistake or a bit of carelessness straight to political accusations, slurs, etc. Occasionally it even happens without any inciting event (e.g. based only on appearance).

That's not how humans work.

I 100% agree. I mentioned that in my first post.

But then we recognize our emotional responses and even superstitions and we think about it and sometimes by doing so improve our lives.

In the end of course this is OP's call to approach this how they wish.

Risk is all about perception. I traveled in China, and felt completely safe. In Africa, in one place I see more armed guards, and I feel less safe than in another place where there are very few guards. At the same time I follow german news and not a day goes by where I don't read about some attack, people throwing rocks at trains, busy train stations that have a weapon free zone (which is really weird since you generally can't carry weapons anywhere in public) and I get the feeling that traveling in Germany is less safe than here in Africa.

The US doesn't have the best safety record. But I think it was always like that. I don't think it has gotten worse. Only the border controls feel more worrisome now.

Agreed. As I said, the overall gun homicide numbers do not tell the whole story with regard to tourist safety -- assuming OP is visiting tourist-y places then the risk of death will be significantly lower than the overall numbers indicate, though possibly still higher than their home country.

But people worry about all sorts of irrational things with zero basis in fact. I'm merely pointing out that there is, in fact, a factual basis for this concern.

Personally I consider the benefits of traveling even to other countries (even those with higher homicide rates than the US) to vastly outweigh the risks. But if someone feels otherwise and avoids traveling to places with higher levels of risk then I think this would technically provide a "realistic reduction in risk".

I meant to contrast those things, you could be run over by a truck at a German Christmas market because it has happened a lot(relative to the size of Germany) of times but almost no tourists to the US are ever shot by strangers. You only hear about one of these things in the context of travel danger.

Sure, that’s what I’m referring to in the other comment about truck attacks. Germany on average is less violent but has outbursts of random violence targeting places tourists frequent, yet no one says don’t go to Munich.

They could ask for ID.

There really isn’t. The number of unarmed people killed by American police every year is close to 10. This happens across millions of interactions.

Odds are very strongly in your favor, not in theory, but in practice. If you can't handle "the possibility", I have some bad news about a huge amount of way more likely possibilities of what can happen to someone simply… living.

The only reason you're afraid of some things more than others is because you came across some stories, and not others. We're all wired like this evolutionarily, on purpose. When we see stories, we're supposed to alter our behavior, because all the stories used to be local and relevant. "A bear ate Timmy near the river" is a good warning to be extra careful near there. Now that we have internet, and the entire planet's worth of carefully selected bears eating Timmys is getting fed into everyone's mind, we must learn a new trick: understanding how odds and relevancy works.

that's a disingenuous argument, ignoring emotions is not a rational way to make decisions

if one will be too afraid of gun violence to enjoy a US vacation, the rational choice is to go somewhere else

that said, the rational choice for, say, an agoraphobe is not "never go outside"

This is a logic driven community

Without evidence, that’s an emotional claim.

[0] is the article from LeMonde (in french) for anyone interested.

[0] https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2025/03/19/etat...

You can piece it together. The article conveniently leaves out exactly where she was staying for the months between visa revocation and re-entering the US.

Presumably she wasn't in the US or she wouldn't have been trying to enter the US from Mexico.

She was likely doing what many folks do: cross the border briefly for the explicit purpose of getting documents refreshed. This is common and expected in many cases, but she was without a visa for months at this point. And she likely crossed from Mexico because it is close to where she was previously living. Again, this is common.

The fact that she didn't cross back over from her home country of Canada immediately sets off alarm bells.

Rule following has not been a safeguard against recent border and immigration actions

Just because it doesn't reduce the chances of harm to zero does not mean it's useless. She was less likely to be detained had she left the country as soon as her visa was revoked. Not really up for debate.

illegally

And we're back to the "I can cross the street here without looking both ways because I have the right of way by law!!!" argument. I don't know if you experienced the last few US presidential/administration changes, but things that are "illegal" and yet "allowed anyway without consequences" are becoming a hot topic!

I think deporting someone if they remain for months after their visa is revoked is perfectly acceptable. Ideally the person should be allowed to do it themselves in the few weeks after. By all appearances, she was capable of doing so and simply did not.

Detaining someone indefinitely in inhumane conditions is not acceptable under any circumstances.

It is also true that she could have avoided detention by leaving the country as soon as her visa was revoked. It doesn't matter whether revocation was reasonable at that point, because she is now in a country that is actively hostile toward her.

Her visa was revoked in November. She obviously remained in the US, where she attempted to cross again at the Mexico border, because she was obviously still living and working in California all those months when she should have been back in Canada.

It is not acceptable for the US to detain her; she also could have avoided it by following the rules, and others can avoid it too.

That's my point.

That does not make sense... In November, her visa was revoked at the border, when trying to enter the US. At that point, she was obviously turned around back into Canada. Then later, she was detained when trying to enter the US from Mexico in 2025.

So, how do you suggest she managed to enter the US after November in order to have remained there illegally? Did the CBP, who have just revoked her visa a few days/weeks prior, just let her in on a tourist visa? That does not sound very believable, even for the previous US administration.

And what do you suggest her plan was? Previously she was on TN work visa. You seem to think that after having her TN visa revoked, she managed to get into the US on a 90-day tourist visa instead (thus working there illegally), which is why she needed to run for the border after 3 months, and why she was detained when trying to re-enter. But what kind of plan is that – to run for the border every 90 days after having your TN visa revoked. That is such an obvious recipe for failure, nobody who employs an immigration lawyer – like that lady – would have gone ahead with it.

I've definitely seen other headlines overselling similar detention stories for rage bait, but I don't see much wiggle room in this case.

This is why I won't visit the US anytime soon. Going through US immigration has always been stressful. In the past, a friend of mine was sent back after flying for 14 hours because immigration didn't believe that they were actually a tourist.

Recently, it seems to have gotten even worse.

It's not worth the stress for me personally, even if the real-world probability of getting detained or rejected is still relatively small.

And another news today with a German 25 yo guy. He came back from a side-trip to Mexico and was cuffed at the border from Mexico to US.

"The German government has responded with a warning to travelers to the USA in response to several Germans being placed in detention pending immigration upon entry in recent weeks."

https://www-welt-de.translate.goog/politik/ausland/article25...

Yes, that is a great reference — I should probably have included that! I'm even expecting to do the same for my next trips abroad a US citizen, to avoid trouble on returning.

My understanding is the French scientist was deported on arrival because he had a text complaining about the new administration's defunding of science. So, an even innocuous complaint about policy is politicized to an insane degree.

(and yes, I fully understand the implications of the North Korea reference. Unfortunately, it does not appear we can take it as a joke or exaggeration. All signs are this administration is doing everything possible to convert the form of govt from a democracy to a dictatorship)

I was comparing it with late 2000-2014 when I visited US a couple of times.

I agree it is an emotional comparison and probably driven by media.

Still I have replied in some other comment the idea that there are 500 shootings in 2024 in US seems to crazy to me. I know US is huge and this does not tell anything if I visit a specific place. Thus my emotional fear

A friend of mine who is german, traveled as a regular tourist through a major airport got detained for 6 hours. No access to the bathroom, got brutally yelled at when she asked for information. She has an hispanic name. This was pre-Trump.

Then more recently in the news, which wasn't a visa issue

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/19/trump-musk-f...

So I agree that most people will be fine traveling to the US, but I understand some want to reconsider their travel plans. I can only imagine some immigration officers thinking they now have a free pass to harass people

I had a long response typed up with more personal data but the short of it is that yes, I am more hesitant to visit the US than I was in the past. I was already quite hesitant due to my experiences over the years (I did my undergrad in the US) but now I feel like there is a risk of more than simply being denied entry and swiftly returned to my home country.

this.

although i suspect there has been an increase in like random "mass" violence, but that effects a tiny fraction of the population (but certainly scares the rest). My guess is there has not been an increase in population effected by violence -- but that could be because the USA has always been a very violent place, founded on violence (by Europeans and for the benefit of Europe, so don't get too smug).

The woman who had "sympathetic" photos of Hezbollah on the phone Although I personally disagree with her, I think you're correct here. They clearly wanted to make an example of her.

The professor who attended a Pro-Palestinian protest. This is disingenuous, he was the leader of the group that organizes those protests. In Europe, I probably wouldn't be welcome too long if I was the leader of a neo-nazi group while on a visa.

I thought we were free speech people

The US were never the land of free speech (or of the free). It's all marketing.

Don't forget the two-thirds of gun violence that only involves a single private party, and doesn't pose any risk to an unrelated tourist visiting the country.

I think drug overdoses are still higher for people under the age of 18.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7150a2.htm

Show us the source

they're not worth worrying about at the individual level

Just as an anecdote: My company tried to recruit an executive from Britain many years ago. He had young children and was concerned about the high rates of child mortality due to firearms and motor-vehicles deaths (the top two causes of death for children in the US) compared to the negligible risk in the UK.

While his underlying concern wasn't specific to "school shootings", he did point out that our blasé acceptance of them was another example of our comparatively higher risk tolerance.

Well to put it into perspective, run the numbers to see how likely it is per-capita for a Ukrainian civilian to die in the war, compared to how likely it is for a US American to die by being shot.

Maybe, but then you still have the secondary effects. Terrifying lockdown drills and shooter training. Transparent/kevlar backpacks. Armed teachers and/or security everywhere. What a fucked up environment to grow up in.

Sandy hook? Harvest Festival? Not exactly low income.

Your point is somewhat valid. I live in Los Angeles and never think about gun violence. But it’s a stretch to say gun violence is isolated to low income areas. The risk is non-zero for all of us.

As a U.S. citizen my fear of being involved in gun violence on a day-to-day basis is zero.

As an Australian, my fear of being killed by the local fauna, flora or the country is near 0. Yes, the "common brown" is the worlds 3rd most venomous snake, and they are the snake I mostly see around my house, but I know where they live and their habits. Yes, the funnel web is a relatively common and very aggressive spider found in our backyards. It's also the world's deadliest spider (it killed one girl in 12 minutes). But everyone is hyper aware of them, and almost no one gets bitten. The surf on our magnificent beaches is deadly, but we are all taught to recognise rips and swim only in supervised areas.

So the reality is Australia is a very safe place, for Australians. Please visit. It's a blast.

Not so much afraid, but not planning because they will probly not let me in anyways. There are better places to visit anyways

I would not travel to the US unless my life depends on it.

Well yes that will probably happen.

We had one in Toronto pre-pandemic. No problem with entry that I recall back then. Would love to have more in Canada personally.

Do you mean that you always carry a loaded gun with you and that you would shoot someone who tries to steal your phone?

I'm curious what data you have that shows carrying a gun decreases your risk, as opposed to increasing it.

Ya, one of the most common crimes nowadays. Thanks for clarifying! I was too lazy to explain where there seemed to be a gray understanding of reality.

The gun violence fear seems over the top, but I'd prefer to have my freedom of speech to call any politician "an idiot" without the need to explain myself to a gang member with a badge.

Currently, Trump is so surreal that it is hard to decide what is thought out policy and what is pure idiotism, but getting caught in the crossfire is rather unnecessary and I'd prefer to wait for things to calm down before committing to any US travel.

Thanks.

I definitely notice and care how serious it is. Knowing what is going on, frankly Canada should be doing conscriptions and switching to a wartime economy. Hope is your enemy with someone like Trump.

But ‘that doesn’t make sense’ (except, if we don’t ignore the obvious truth, it definitely does), so we’re all going to pretend it’s just Sabre rattling and rage baiting. Because no one wants to take the hit for something that ‘should never happen’.

Which it kind of is, but isn’t really. It’s infuriating, as is the inaction, but that’s why it works/happens.

And part of why it works/happens is the escalating ridiculousness for the last 5-10 years overall in the media when it comes to hitting outrage buttons.

For instance, on the mass shooting side, depending on how you count, there were between 103-706 killed in ‘mass shootings’ in the US in 2021 [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shooting], out of a country of 350 million. 103 per the FBI, 706 per some action group I can’t remember.

You’re roughly as likely to die of a lightning strike (or more likely to die from lightning), as be involved in a mass shooting. Yet, it gets endless airtime - which the media admits even just makes the problem worse. [https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2016/08/media-contag...]

And endless goal post shifting of even what the definition is, so that the problem grows and grows.

Meanwhile, we ignore actual problems.

As someone who just returned from the US for a family wedding, its the last time I'm stepping foot in the US until the administration and direction changes.

The odds of getting an 'emboldened nationalistic fuckhead', or ENF's as I call them, at the border, or a LEO officer has gone up considerably. Scientists blocked at the border due to social media posts, Citizens/legal green card holders are being deported for simply criticizing or protesting the administration. Legal visitors and musicians are being followed and harassed by LEO's demanding their country of preference and treating them like drug smugglers. Legal visa seekers are being detained for weeks in horrible conditions. This is only a short list of the many things visitors need to be aware of and concerned about.

This administration is showing every indication of refusing to follow multiple judges orders and attacking the judicial system people would typically expect to curb and/or stop such abuses.

If you have any sort of public profile or social media presence that isn't pro-Trump/US you are at risk.

Attend remotely or not at all, and make it known to the conference organizers that the US is not a safe place anymore to host international conferences. It will only take a year or two of people refusing and these conferences will stop being organized in the US.

Hopefully a new administration comes along sooner rather than later and makes significant inroads into restoring democracy and freedom in the US, for now its an autocratic regime with a very thin skin and massive ego.

The rate of violent crime in the US has not increased since 2014[1].

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-...

don't shoot the messenger, I just reverberating current US government stance on this matter

I am a U.S. citizen and I wouldn't recommend risking a chance at the border, personally. Although gun violence or other random violence more generically is not something I am worried about, even living in a somewhat impoverished urban core.

A lot of those who did probably aren't necessarily bad people.

A lot who did are now surprised (for the second time) that Trump is bein' a total ass-hat. Learned nothing from the first time around except that he's an infallible "stable genius" what can never be wrong about anything. They're literal cult-members.

Speaking to the immigration point, as a US citizen who knows several non citizens I still believe you will have no problem and be completely welcomed as long as you enter legally through a port of entry and don’t overstay visa or conduct illegal activity while here. Despite what gets reported, you are welcome and valued to visit tech conferences here.

Yup, it will very much depend on where you live or travel. I lived on the Northside. If you avoid localized areas with high gun violence, you will very rarely ever encounter it.

The areas surrounding University of Chicago were historically some of the worst areas in the entire city for gun violence.

Many cities actually have crime heat maps that can show you the most dangerous areas and can be filtered by crime type (murder, assault, property crime, etc).

Yes. As someone publicly critical of the Trump administration, I don't want my entire social media presence crawled by immigration officers, just to end up in some detention centre for weeks or months. I'd rather just stay at home or travel to safer countries like Canada or Mexico.

I'm not a USC, but I will be eligible to apply for citizenship next year.

I have made the decision to avoid international travel so that I don't run into any potential issues at the border until I've gone through the citizenship process.

I'm also keeping an eye on the situation with domestic air travel. If we start getting reports of people being detained and stripped of their LPR status while trying to board domestic flights, I'll probably just stick to ground travel.

Compare the statistics of murders per capita in your city and the US city you plan to visit.

I think your fear is unreasonzble.

But it's a good thing to avoid travel. By fying across ocean you would contribute to environment damage by the airplane emission and potentially transmit infections.

Participate remotely, stay home, save time, money and the planet.

It does depend on where you enter the country, at least in my experience (UK citizen, have visited a lot both on visa waivers and prior to that on visas, since the 80s).

Every time I've flown into Austin, TX, they've been super-nice. DC likewise. NYC/Newark are brusque but not nasty. San Francisco are scary. Boston on the one time I flew there was just horrendous, though that might have just been one agent who was having a bad day.

I hadn't heard about Sweden so went and looked it up. In Jan 2025 there were 30 blasts, over 1 a day!!!

Facts are violence is an indication of issues, not the issue itself. Poverty, unhappiness, lack of opportunities, combined with dissatisfaction with the govt increased by the never ending waves of propaganda from both sides.

In that light, the US and Sweden both are facing serious social crises. Solely blaming the tools doesn't even start to understand the causes of the social issues nor gets us anywhere near solving them.

I'm a US citizen who has been detained at the border in the past because facial recognition systems seemed to think that I didn't look like my passport photo. Agents could have just looked at me and seen that I am in fact the person in my passport photo, but no, they detained me instead and treated me like a criminal on two separate occasions. I've also been critical of Trump on social media. US border agents do not care about common sense or decency, they haven't for at least a decade. They're just following orders, and their orders are to look for any possible reason to detain you, and then treat you as guilty until proven innocent.

All that to say, even as a US citizen, I'm hoping to avoid traveling to the US until this fascist government is removed.

You're not wrong. I've been called "paranoid" for literal decades now for warning folks to always be vigilant lest exactly what's happening now comes to pass. Nothin' to be done for it now but ride it out I guess...

If it helps, at least two of my relatives were denied US visa when trying to visit relatives in US (who are citizens), as understood on account of being cisgendered females, which US government of the day saw as a risk of staying in the country illegally (not enough attachment to the country of origin). That was neither in 1960ies nor in the fascist clown times. Nobody was detained, just missed a wedding and some amount of time and money, but who cares about that.

Gun violence is very very rare. I’m in the northeast and there is very little gun culture here. A post doc college who came from Germany said his coworkers thought he was crazy coming to such a dangerous country, but after being here he realized it’s not bad. During the election there was lots of commentary about how bad it’s gotten, when it really hasn’t changed significantly.

There have been increased instances of foreigners being detained and there social media gone through. The results vary from being denied entry to being locked up for a couple weeks.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/19/trump-musk-f...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/18/canadian-act...

Imagine why this is a throwaway account because I read they check the phone, laptops at the boarder.

They ask for your social media accounts too. "Hey, you left out your HN throwaway account from this list. Come with me (1).".

Well, I guess I'm in someone's list now.

People were worried about donating to Assange defense fund when it was a thing.

To people defending it, imagine if this was happening to someone you care about in some country you think are run are by assholes: 1) https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/19/canadian-det...

If you are afraid to travel to the US, I’d ask if you’re also afraid to travel to Asia, South America and Africa where risks are comparable regardless of gun ownership.

It seems that you would be cutting yourself off from a large portion of the world.

Your fears are unfounded and the traditional media and social media may be to blame. However, even as an American, I wouldn’t visit here unless absolutely necessary.

The orange man and his kleptocracy cabinet are dismantling the federal government to make way for a corporation run country or “nation states.”

Take your tourism dollars and please spend them elsewhere. America in its current state does not deserve your patronage. Encourage conference leaders to move their venue out of the United States.

I wouldn’t fear guns but the political climate. If you have said anything critical about the Trump government or of about a tiny country’s conduct in the ME, your fears are not baseless. In the past there were reports about having to hand out laptop / other electronic devices and handing over your pin/password, if you refused, you wouldn’t be allowed to enter the US. I also know a christian arab who regularly was taken to the secondary by tsa agents. And was interrogated.

You can’t even guarantee the safety of your family where you live 100%. Why the fear of guns specifically? Have you ever fired one? Best way to get over the fear is just get some training. I view guns as just a slingshot 2.0. Take a class and get over your Hollywood and fear mongering news led view of them.

Literally the only guarantee you have is that on a long enough timeline, you will die.

This is what happens when you get your information from entertainment media masquerading as news. Sure, there are shootings. What is the distribution? Shootings are not randomly distributed.

Some quick stats from Pew Research in 2023 there were 46,728 gun deaths. Sounds like a lot, right? Remember though the US is BIG. A full 58% were suicides. That’s 6/10!

A distribution map is available at https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/03/05/what-the-...

And finer maps are available too.

I have lived here over 40 years and never such as heard a gunshot outside of the range. I have lived in New Jersey, Illinois, and California. I have never been threatened with any kind of weapon.

I spent six months in England though and was threatened with a knife.

The last time I visited the US was in 2017, and I vowed never to go again. All because of the treatment by immigration. Over a number of visits during the years, I have been shouted at multiple times, talked down to, and generally treated like crap. I am travelling on a South African passport (I am white, though, before anyone tries and blames it on racism).

This last incident in 2017, I was standing by the immigration officer, and while he was looking through my documents, I was looking around at the people waiting in the queue. He asked if I was travelling with someone. I said no. He asked why I was looking at the queue. I said I was just looking around. He told me to stop looking around and look in front of me. I said OK. Somewhere during this I put my hands in my pocket, so he told me to take my hands out of my pocket. I was a bit startled at this and trying to figure out what was going on with the guy. I was obviously too slow for him so he shouted loud "take your hands out of your damn pocket". I just zipped my mouth and wanted to get through it.

Once I got past him, I needed to get a connecting flight to Mexico. I walked down a passage following the directions and saw that I was going to end up in the main check-in area. Since I was just connecting, I was confused and I asked two immigration officers whether I am going in the right direction. The lady just told me "keep moving sir". I tried to explain that I was connecting and thought I was going in the wrong direction. She then shouted at me "keep moving!". I told her again "please, just listen to me", and she shouted at me again. Thankfully, the guy with her told her to calm down and took a minute to listen to me and explained that I was going the right way.

Honestly, this trip was the last straw for me and I vowed never to go back. The contrast between the immigration in the US and other countries - especially compared to Asia - was night and day. I decided I would visit countries that are happy to have me visit and treat me with dignity instead.

Another time in the US, I was walking past a construction site. I was walking outside the safety barriers, but on the same side of the street. I guy rushed out at me and started shouting at me to get on the opposite side of the road. Huge guy. Looked like he wanted to attack me and was red in the face of fury and spittle sprayed all over me while he was shouting at me.

Quite honestly, there are too many angry people over there. I have visited many countries and never experienced anything like the angry people in the US.

Think of the risk of getting caught in gun violence like the risk of mass stabbings or vehicles being driven into crowds. It can and has happened, but the odds are staggeringly low.

Most gun violence is between people who are known to each other (gangs, suicide, domestic violence). As a random person, you are very unlikely to have problems.

I'm curious about your probabilities and violence comment. Where do you live?

I believe that in general people tend to overestimate the threats in places they do not live because the news reports on the worst stuff. There is also not an even distribution across the country, or even the state or city for that matter. If I was to visit your country, I wonder what concerns I would have about it that you would find unusual.

I was already questioned around 10 years ago at the Atlanta airport about what I had been doing in Ecuador. None of your business, dipshit.

Oh, it's my favorite, not when coming to US as a noncitizen, but being asked this by my country's border agents. "What have you been doing in $country?" -- I know they have no way to deny me entry and will be to lazy to do paperwork to delay me for more than 5 minutes, so I smile and give a non-answer, like "chilling" or "eating kebabs". Not their business indeed.

Don't take personal safety advice from an ivory tower.

Around 1980, in the age of 14, I took part in an US-/German student exchange programme of my school. As a German at that time, I received a supposedly lifelong US-Visum in my passport.

Some years later, as a grown-up, I started to visit the US a couple of times, for business (visiting trade shows, conferences and customers), and as a tourist.

Around the 10th trip, the immigration officer unexpectedly crossed out my visum in the passport upon entry. I was stunned. He explained to me, very friendly, "that the policies had changed, the visum type was not existant anymore and thus cancelled, in the future I would just have to fill a paper in the airplane, welcome to the United States".

Next trip I received the questionnaire in the airplane, with one of the questions being "has there ever been an US visum cancelled for you?". That seemed a difficult question to answer. Would I say "no", that seemed like lying, because a visum had - as a matter of fact - been cancelled for me. Would I say "yes", I probably could just keep sitting in the plane seat for an immediate return. I decided to clear this up with the friendly immigration officer.

Who turned out not to be friendly, at all. Before I could even open my mouth, he noticed the unanswered question on the form, yelled at me like crazy, made me get back to the end of the line (I had spent already almost an hour in the line), told me to better not come back with unanswered questions on the form (I chose "no" on the second attempt) and then kept me interrogating for 20 minutes, all the time giving me the feeling that I would go right home. I was finally allowed to enter and spent another hour with customs.

Didn't feel the urge to ever come back to the US. That was long before ESTA. And long before I started to collect exotic stamps in my passport, some of them showing arabic typefaces. And long before Europe became an enemy of the US.

I have been to African countries (which the current POTUS would describe as shithole countries), whose administrations were less erratic and unpredictable than the US currently are.

I don't think it's likely I'll be detained if I visit, nor do I think I'd suffer from gun violence. I simply don't want to visit a country where much of the population voted for this current government.

Yes - the recent nightmare scenarios experienced by EU citizens in the US has unnerved me. I've also become far more worried about sending (non-white) members of my team from South East Asia to the US.

In my companies recent town halls people are voicing concerns about US travel, which has never happened before. In comparison, our large events in (far more authoritarian) China, which were attended by large numbers of foreign employees, didn't have any such concerns other than usual IP-sharing ones.

I'm an EU citizen and I have been to US and Canada once in 2019, for business trip visiting a company that does business with the company I work for. The trip was without issues.

I wouldn't go US again, it's nothing like in the movies.

I wouldn’t be too concerned about gun violence, but the TSA and CBP have become increasingly hostile toward visitors to the United States.

If you're white and traveling from the EU or elsewhere, you’ll likely be fine, though the experience may still be unpleasant.

However, if your passport lists a country of birth deemed undesirable (such as those in the Middle East or Africa), you may face detention, additional questioning, and other issues, regardless of the passport you hold, you will be filtered out based on your skin color and physical features.

Personally, I’ve stopped traveling to the U.S. altogether. These days, I even avoid connecting flights that pass through the country.

It’s unfortunate, but as a Canadian, I no longer see America as an ally, and I fear things may only get worse in the coming years.

What's unnerving to me when I go to the US, is that legal limbo you're in between getting off the plane and going through immigration.

At that point you're the most vulnerable.

The plane is US soil, and it's well covered by international law, but once you get out of it, and before you enter the country, not even constitutional rights are completely clear.

For the first time in nearly 20 years, I chose not to go to SXSW this year - not out of fear of violence or border detentions, but I just don't want to give my tourist dollars to the current administration.

The ESTA sort of makes some sense. If the algo has you at low risk you immediately receive a not-a-visa but if it flags you as iffy they have time to look you up. I see the EU has copied it now.

To slightly counter the horror stories, I've had US border hassle in the past but the last trip to Austin in 2023 I didn't even have to fill a form at the border, it was just check fingerprints and have a nice day.

Not "afraid," but unwilling to travel there, and have just cancelled some plans to do so.

I'd have been travelling by air from Canada, so the border-crossing is on Canadian soil, which (probably) greatly reduces the risk of landing in detention due to the arbitrary decisions made by a MAGA-addled CBP agent.

Personal risk of harm or imprisonment aside, I have ethical concerns about continuing to behave as if the US is a normal, rational actor on the world stage while its administration threatens the sovereignty of Canada, Denmark and Panama.

As long as this bellicosity continues, the US should be shunned and isolated as much as possible by the global community.

No

Not because of guns. Crime exists everywhere; TripAdvisor will tell you how to stay safe.

But when non brown people are getting sent to ICE, and when criticism of political figures is terrorism, then this is definitely not America you are going to. It’s a country that has popped up in the geographic region previously occupied by America. This new country isn’t a place for conferences in fields that are all about upsetting the status quo.

What is the purpose of your visit? "Эта... конференция по новым компьютерным технологиям и защите компьютерных программ"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6Q0RPooaHw - the best way to visit tech conferences in US

As an American that goes to academic/tech conferences, this situation is also pretty negative, because it certainly is going to lead to many organizers moving their conferences to other places.

If I were running the convention center in Vancouver/Toronto/Montreal I'd be feeling pretty good right now.

I wouldn't be at all worried about the guns; realistically while your chances of being shot or otherwise murdered are substantially higher in the US than in most of Europe, they are still, in the scheme of things, very low, and you're at greater practical risk of death in the taxi from the airport.

FWIW there has _not_ been an increase in violent crime in the US since 2014; it's down a bit since then. The media does seem far more fixated on it, granted.

However, the increasing border nonsense would put me off. Particularly because, if I decide now to go to something in, say, June, well, who knows _how_ bad it'll be by June. I'll likely try to avoid going over for the foreseeable future.

I will no longer travel to or through the USA. I'm a white New Zealander, nearly seventy, have no criminal convictions, but will not even contemplate putting myself at the mercy of American border officials.

throwaway account because I read they check the phone, laptops at the boarder

You should be aware that it has been an official recommendation for e.g. athletes participating in international events in, erm, some countries, to get themselves 'burner' (throwaway) phones just for the purpose so there's nothing much to glean from the device. If you're considering to travel internationally with a laptop well here are my condolences, why spend so much time, money and effort just to shlep around that silly thing.

I was trying to figure what she did wrong and there's not much information but I think incomplete paperwork was mentioned - maybe she didn't declare something she was supposed to? It still seems an over the top reaction though.

At least the Western countries, and some selective Asian nations, are allowed to enter US with ESTA. For the majority of the population in the world (whole continent of Africa, the continent of Asia except Japan, S. Korea, Singapore) needs a US visa to enter US; 90% of tourist visa applications are denied, anyway.

There are specific groups of people for whom travel to the US is a serious, clear risk right now, and for everyone else it is a much harder to assess danger because policy and practices are changing rapidly, in ways adverse to travellers, with little to no public notice, and also because the targeted groups are being targeted using arbitrary process which has a jigh false positive rate and may be difficult, at best, to correct errors.

The mental cost of going there is just too high. For the first time in twenty+ years, I won't be attending any of the regular conferences in the US this year. Funny note: we just hired two Americans (unrelated) back to back, they will be moving here with their family. Reason given: "had to go live somewhere else".