My first visit to San Francisco - I am here invited by the California College of Art to prepare the 1st year Curatorial Practice students for their forthcoming trip to Tokyo, which AIT will host. This is a city which I have always wanted to visit, and I nearly didn't make it in because I do not own a machine readable passport! All visitors to the USA now must have a so called machine readable passport, which means that the passport can be computer scanned (presumably the data being processed into some huge centralised surveillance system). Because I still use an old style British passport that does not have this, I was stopped at the airport and taken into a special office to the side for further questioning. An immigration officer sat behind a desk and asked me various questions about my work, purpose of visit etc. Things seemed to be in order, so I was granted a one time 'parole' entry. As my current passport does not expire until 2011, I guess I cannont return to the USA until after then!
Recent Comments