Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Miami Airport Immigration

The flight to Miami was uneventful although US immigration was suspicious of my having spent only 2 days in Mexico. I mentioned i went to see Chichen Itza and then he said 'you came all the way from Australia for 2 days?' I explained about the course in Philadelphia and each bit of information I proffered he queried deeper, ie which city, what was the course on, what was one of the instructors names? It felt a bit like Millionaire - I think I got up to $2000 before the commercial break. But unable to trap me on that he changed tack to see if I was really Australian (apparently my accent wasn't enough of a giveaway - I must have been masking it with my natural Arabic accent) by asking me about the early days of ACDC! Seriously, do I look like Molly Meldrum? I smiled (only to myself because its against the law to smile while at the immigration desk - apparently only terrorists do that...thats how they catch them) to myself when an immigration agent who could only have been 25 talks in a nostalgic way about the early days of ACDC playing in pubs. For Gods sake, he wasn't even born! I'm not sure what my answer should have been...should I have done a bit of air guitar (with sound) to Thunderstruck! It must be foreigner familiarization 101 for US immigration. It felt like a reverse citizenship test! Made me wonder what other countries get....do travelers from the UK get questions about the Beatles or Princess Diana? Do Italians get questions about the Coloseum? French the Eiffel Tower? Hopefully it's age-specific, perhaps if I was younger I would have been queried about Paul Hogan throwing a shrimp on the barbie, or perhaps the America's Cup.

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