Day 1, Part 2 - Deplane! Deplane!
Well, despite the header of this post there was no Ricardo Montalban welcoming us to Fantasy Island; just an officious little man from the TSA who loved his job way too much telling us to have our I-94 and Customs forms filled out correctly because if we went to the Immigration officers and there was a problem, we would not be allowed to fill them out there - we would be sent back to the end of the line.
Also, we needed to form a queue here not there, because there was another flight coming in soon for processing and they would need the room here to queue up.
Once the sheepdog trial was over and we were all lined up correctly, it was just a matter of waiting; and of trying to decipher the arcane I-94 and US customs forms, of course. I thought I had it right, but wondered if I should have taken the flight crew up on their offer, made just before landing, to distribute I-94s printed in German. (The claimed reason was a shortage of the English version, but I suspect that they simply understood that sometimes familiarity with a language is not helpful when attempting to understand documents written by governments.)
In the end, no problems with Immigration or Customs; ( not even after answering "How can you afford a 45-day holiday in the US" with "I was on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire". ) Although it seemed for a moment that my right index finger didn't want to be fingerprinted, the offending digit succumbed eventually, and I was free... to collect our bags and proceed through Customs, which was uneventful for me - although Kerry managed to score herself a random interview with a Customs officer.
Fortunately, being a law-abiding supraat, Kerry soon joined me on the kerb outside the LAX arrivals terminal. Lots of taxis, vans, shuttles and buses, zooming by very very fast, swerving quickly into bays and zipping out of them. Welcome to the USA.
(Oh, and in relation the predictions made by the TSA man at the top of the post: no other flight arrived in the half hour we waited for processing, and the Immigration Officers I saw seemed happy to let visitors make minor corrections to their paperwork.)
Also, we needed to form a queue here not there, because there was another flight coming in soon for processing and they would need the room here to queue up.
Once the sheepdog trial was over and we were all lined up correctly, it was just a matter of waiting; and of trying to decipher the arcane I-94 and US customs forms, of course. I thought I had it right, but wondered if I should have taken the flight crew up on their offer, made just before landing, to distribute I-94s printed in German. (The claimed reason was a shortage of the English version, but I suspect that they simply understood that sometimes familiarity with a language is not helpful when attempting to understand documents written by governments.)
In the end, no problems with Immigration or Customs; ( not even after answering "How can you afford a 45-day holiday in the US" with "I was on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire". ) Although it seemed for a moment that my right index finger didn't want to be fingerprinted, the offending digit succumbed eventually, and I was free... to collect our bags and proceed through Customs, which was uneventful for me - although Kerry managed to score herself a random interview with a Customs officer.
Fortunately, being a law-abiding supraat, Kerry soon joined me on the kerb outside the LAX arrivals terminal. Lots of taxis, vans, shuttles and buses, zooming by very very fast, swerving quickly into bays and zipping out of them. Welcome to the USA.
(Oh, and in relation the predictions made by the TSA man at the top of the post: no other flight arrived in the half hour we waited for processing, and the Immigration Officers I saw seemed happy to let visitors make minor corrections to their paperwork.)
posted by JJ Glamma at
1:00 AM
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