Having removed his shoes, coat, gloves, hat, jacket, wallet and keys, your correspondent walked through the metal detector. It beeped. He had forgotten to remove his belt. The two security guards began to shout and make disparaging remarks about his ability to perform simple tasks.

This scene occurred outside the American Embassy in London last month, when he was renewing his visa. The rest of the process passed smoothly, but those boorish security guards were a poor advertisement for the greatest country on Earth.

Americans are, by and large, a courteous bunch. Interactions with strangers are typically sweetened with a generous frosting of "Sir," "Ma'am" and "Excuse me." Yet in a survey commissioned by the travel industry, more than half of visitors found American border officials rude and unpleasant. By a two-to-one margin, the country's entry process was rated the world's worst.

This is not a problem only for whining journalists and other foreign riff-raff. It is also a problem for America.

The system is geared towards keeping out a tiny number of terrorists. Fair enough -- such people should indeed be kept out. But there should be a trade-off.

An immigration official lives in fear of admitting the next Mohammed Atta, but there is no penalty for excluding the next Einstein, or for humiliating tourists who subsequently summer in France.

Source: Industry Wire