zlacker

Looks like the US is implementing the same policy Israel had for years. Make people feel like shit for coming into the country. I've been hearing these stories from tourists who visited Israel for years - and I honestly have no idea what the reason is.

>>xenosp+(OP)
From my point of view, the reason is little more than petty power trips. When the job of exercising a little bit of authority becomes mundane or rote, people will look for ways to "spice it up." Since we--globally, not just in the US--have built up a lot of these authority jobs as optional-in-name-only (sure, you don't have to put up with TSA but you do if you want to go on that vacation to Portugal and take under three weeks to get there), there are few repercussions for those "small slights."

Take the anecdote of the person to whom you replied. Lots of people will tell that person's friend, "oh, just let it go, the border agent didn't really mean anything." And if the person complains to a higher authority, the complaint is staggeringly likely to get brushed off, if not used in exactly the opposite way the person intended when filing it.

At a previous job of mine, I worked for the phone-based customer service while another team in the same group operated service windows for in-person assistance. No authority here at all, just answering questions. More often than not, if someone filed a complaint about how one of our window clerks had treated them, the supervisor delivering the complaint to the clerk treated it as a joke. "Well, it says here you told the woman she should smile more. I pulled the security tape and she was pretty cute. Sure would have looked nicer if she had smiled, yeah?" Yeah boss, sure would have! "Darn right, can't fault you there, so we'll just toss this one as unwarranted, yeah?"