Summary
Germany updated its travel advice for the US after three German nationals were detained despite holding valid visas or entry waivers.
The Foreign Office clarified that holding a US visa or ESTA approval does not guarantee entry, as border authorities have the final say.
Recent detentions include a green card holder held at Boston airport and two others detained at the US-Mexico border.
Germany investigates whether these cases reflect a broader policy shift under Trump’s tighter immigration policies.
I recently vacationed in Germany and the immigration polizei agent asked me, in English, “what’s the purpose of your visit here?” and I said something like “Urlaub machen und Bier trinken, naturlich!” He applied the stamp and waved me through without incident.
So… Thanks for being cool, Germans!
As a non-German speaker, I’m fairly sure this says: “Lubing machinery and beer drinking, naturally!”
Vacationing/ Lubing machinery, those are synonyms in German xD
What lol? I mean, that’s amazing…but why?
^they^ ^aren’t^ ^really^
I don’t fucking understand why they’d rather detain and deport people than just reject them at the border.
Yes, the for-profit prison companies are making money imprisoning people, but the government is the one spending it. It doesn’t make sense.
The government is taking tax money from citizens and giving it to the oligarchs running the for-profit prisons.
The only part of that that doesn’t make sense is the citizens voting for it.
The only part of that that doesn’t make sense is the citizens voting for it.
Racism. These policies are generally put forth with an implied wink and nudge that this will be used to target minorities. Unfortunately, they consider anyone outside of their tiny class and brainless minions to be a possible minority.
The purpose of the Trump Government is to distribute tax dollars to their donors. Spending is only wasteful when a non-white, non-rich person would profit .
You’re assuming a single rational actor. The current US government is neither rational nor unified in policy. Whether someone gets in or not is down to the whims of individual ICE agents and whether they’re detained or not is down to the whims of individual ICE agents, so you get one reasonable guy who says “sure, come on in”, and then you get one xenophobe who says “need to get all these damn foreigners out of our country” and then you have this situation.
Normally you have a sane leadership setting and enforcing uniform policies. The current leadership is entirely focused on generating sound bites and demolishing everything within reach. Thus individual agents have been handed almost complete authority with almost no oversight.
Wow, that’s really scary. I wonder if my government will put out travel warnings urging Canadians to stay away, we’ve already had a deportation story make the news and the details are harrowing.
Do Canadians even need such a warning at this point? Between the tariffs and the direct threats to your sovereignty, I’m surprised you aren’t installing trenches, barbed wire, and land mines along the border yet.
No, we don’t, but politically an official warning signals a shift in the relationship that nobody (i.e., Canadians denying that America is now a blatant fascist government) can ignore any longer. I believe Germany recently did so after 2 of their citizens were detained for several weeks.
It would also give us official guidance on how to prepare and keep ourselves safe in the event that we do choose to travel or are forced to enter due to a layover. We do this for other countries where there may be immediate safety, diplomatic, or democratic concerns.
At present, the official travel advisory website says there are no immediate concerns other than the normal risks of travel. I think that’s misleading.
Because the US needs them. They need the cheap labour, they need immigrants, and keeping them “illegal” makes it easy to abuse them. If they deported all of them, or let them become citizens, the economy of Texas would probably collapse as there wouldn’t be a constant stream of people who can’t take advantage of even the weak labour laws of the US.
I’ve been wondering that too. Why not just say “nope” and have them take a plane home?
As a dual EU/US citizen, I cannot get over how fucking dumb this whole thing is.
As a US citizen, I can’t get over how envious I am of your EU citizenship.
As a US citizen, I cannot get over how fucking dumb this country is.
As an American citizen I wish so badly to get citizenship somewhere else.
Some countries have a grandparents rule if that’s any use to you. Ireland is one.
Unfortunately, I was adopted (possibly government kidnapped given recent news) from SoKo and have zero info on family relatives.
I’ve been looking at Germany since I could get a job there pretty easily and it seems relatively easy to get into. But it’d be a stepping stone.
If you need information from a German citizen, feel free to contact me
Any chance you could help me make a German style resume?
I can try, yes.
the republicans have the seats they need to impeach this guy and throw him out. they can do it any time they want.
The cancer is Americas entire political and corporate oligarchy, and its terminal.
Remove Trump and there is still his fascist admin, as well as hundreds of other politicians and a supreme court, staffed by the criminally corrupt who sell their souls to the highest bidder.
if they worried about their seats because republican voters all started jerking off at the same time, maybe they would at least pretend
So the cancer just continues to grow under the surface? Sounds terminal…
Not that they owe my country any favors or anything, but given their own history I would have hoped this German government agency could do something a little stronger than “this is not a travel warning, just reminding all you plebs to listen to border guards if you don’t want to be tortured”
It’s the proper procedure - they have a “ranking” how they proceeded with countries that behave like that. The US currently is not quite yet in the “travel warning” area but is getting closer and closer every day (which they, despite the usual secrecy of diplomacy, told the media multiple times).
Considering the huge ramifications a travel warning has, it’s reasonable to go step by step to gradually increase pressure, ideally together with European partners.
The formal travel warning is basically the biggest gun they have in their arsenal.
Amongst others that would mean:
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Most travel insurance providers no longer would cover travellers. This is especially significant for business travel as then individual risk assessment need to be made. (I do the later…it’s not cheap). And companies can no longer require their staff to travel to the US. So huge “risk bonuses” would be required. Even more significant for public employees and the European army personnel currently training in the US.
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Airlines would have to take additional insurance by their brokers to cover flights to and from the US. That can easily double prices for passengers and freight.
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Current trade contracts will have larger insurance costs, industrial goods and equipment that requires maintenance will have issues,etc. This is not a one way street,though,as European staff cannot be trained in the US either. Same goes for science,etc.
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It’s not an agency it’s the ministry of foreign affairs and right now they’re operating in maintenance mode as we don’t have a government proper, only a caretaker government until the Bundestag constitutes itself on the 25th where a new chancellor can be elected.
The change looks like it does because it’s the kind of change a ranking civil servant can do without checking in with their minister, it’s considered non-political.
That is important context, thank you. I still kind of think that taking an assertive stand against what the United States is doing to Germany citizens is the kind of clear call this minister probably ought to feel empowered to make, but on the other hand I have a deep appreciation for government workers who feel their obligations to upholding democratic systems, so this is a hard call to make I suppose.
I guess at this point it’s a matter of numbers: Cases do exist and are egregious (especially because the US somehow doesn’t understand that light 24/7 constitutes torture), but compared to the total number of Germans crossing the border it’s not even a drop in the bucket, they can’t say “The US has a policy of making your life hell” based on pure factual data because “isolated cases”.
So putting out a travel warning at this point would be Germany slapping the US across the face which, no matter how deserved or politically warranted or opportune, is not a thing mere civil servants are supposed to do.
Meanwhile, the outgoing minister is going to say “nah let my successor deal with that shitshow”. TBH Baerbock has been awfully quiet ever since the coalition broke. I guess she might actually have caught a case of civil servant fiddlesticks (An actual term in German, “whoever moves first loses”).
