The west persists in using race to decide who can cross its borders

[Briar]

The west persists in using race to decide who can cross its borders


What may look like a gatekeeper's hunch is the accumulated weight of prejudice, entrenched by global economics

Gary Younge

One morning several years ago, an MP's secretary agreed to meet me off a train in rural Wales and take me to her boss for an interview. The train arrived on time and about 15 people got off, leaving just me standing there. A middle-aged woman remained looking straight through me for what seemed like an age before it occurred to her that the black man with whom she was sharing the platform might just be the Guardian journalist she was supposed to be meeting. She said she was expecting someone taller.

I was reminded of that incident last August as I crossed into the US from the Mexican border town of Palomas. I was travelling with a photographer - a white Mexican with dual Spanish citizenship who, unlike me, did not have a visa to work as a journalist in the US. I thought there would be a problem. I didn't realise the problem would be me.

The border guard arranged for dogs to sniff my belongings and other guards to search my hire car, while she checked out my visa, asked me where I was born so many times I could barely remember, and made me explain every stamp in my passport. Meanwhile the visaless photographer had been waved through. Finally, when she had run out of fingers to fingerprint, she had to concede the possibility that I might actually be the foreign correspondent I claimed to be. Maybe she thought I should be taller.

The Home Office report, Exploring the Decision-Making of Immigration Officers, published last week, provides further evidence of what most non-white travellers have long known to be true. That the practice of profiling on the basis of race, ethnicity and religion persists at borders around the world. Compared to all the strip-searching, deportations and interrogations that go on, I have got off lightly. My granny was once questioned for more than three hours after arriving from Barbados. They wanted to know, among other things, whether she was coming to work. "Do you cut cane here too?" she asked.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1995727,00.html

[Karenina]

1. Boarding a train

I once experienced a food cart worker blocking my path to my seat telling me that 2nd class was in the other direction. I told him to get out of my way. My travelling companion was a bit more colourful. He left his cart and ran off to find the conductor who dutifully came directly to us to insure our tickets were in order. :eyes: