>I do disagree that the US is not tourist friendly

Once you're in the country, it's wonderful. The service industry is second to none and I thoroughly enjoy the whole experience.

In fact, through contacts, I have an open-ended offer on the table to go and work for a very well known internet operation in CA, and I've often been tempted to accept, although it'll be at least another year before I get bored with my current projects and consider that again.

So my comment isn't about the USA as a tourist destination per s�, but rather an intentional sleight against the border controls.

Britain has been dealing with terrorism for over 30 years (the IRA amongst others), so I understand and fully support the need for border controls. I was actually travelling in Asia when 9/11 kicked off, and hit the USA as a planned part of that trip less than 2 weeks after the event.

But the controls as they currently stand are invasive, disruptive and, yes, ineffective.

I feel like I'm doing something "wrong" every time I enter the country, and I refuse to allow people to make me feel that way any more. Hence my decision to just stop travelling there - for either business or personal reasons - until there's a proper fast-track process in place for people like myself, and my conclusion that it's no longer tourist friendly.

It's of no consolation to know that I feel almost the same when I return home to England (which, thankfully, is only around four times a year at the moment).

Thanks to the Schengen Agreement, I can travel literally anywhere in Europe without any trouble at all. I don't even have to show my passport most of the time.

But as soon as I hit "home territory", which in their wisdom is outside of the Shengen Agreement, I have to go through two separate airport searches and two lots of passport control.

Both of which are also totally ineffective, as witnessed by the fact that the UK remains the number one destination of choice for illegal immigrants from the entire European and African continents.

The jobs and immigration questions are very difficult, and deserve more sensitivity than shown here so far.

I saw my first off-shoring exercise ten years ago, so it's not a new idea by any stretch, and when I saw the effect it had on the workforce (that's real people, with families to support) for the company I worked for at the time, I predicted a huge rise in the nationalism.

Although the curve hasn't been as steep as I perhaps thought it would be, I think it's quite clear that's exactly what's happened.

Personally, I believe companies have a moral and ethical responsibility in addition to their fiduciary duties, and I hold that the two sides are not mutually exclusive. I personally refused to take part in the off-shoring exercise and left the company even though I was in a bullet-proof position.

It's a tremendously complex, sensitive and divisive issue, which deserves a better hearing than my random drivel here, so I won't delve into it much deeper, but the real problem is that local workers often simply cannot compete with foreign workers.

It's just not a level playing field.

If a foreign worker makes his home in the UK, pays UK tax, and is subject to the UK cost of living, that's all fair enough. But that's not what happens most of the time.

Even the technology workers often remain outside of the UK tax system, go there only temporarily, and the money they earn has far, far greater buying power in their country of origin.

Locals just cannot reasonably compete with that.

And the ripple effect of that is extraordinary.

Fred gets put out of work by a foreign worker who's not paying UK tax. Fred starts drawing state support (i.e. goes "on the dole"). He's already a drain on the UK taxpayers instead of a contributor.

He obviously gets far less from the state than he was getting as an employee, so he has less to spend. The government loses out on all the VAT he was previously paying, and if he ultimately loses his home because he can't afford to pay for it, then they have to find housing for him too.

Let's say he used to eat out at a restaurant once a week. That resturant would also be paying business tax. Their income goes down, they pay less tax, the government gets even less money.

If that business ultimately fails, that's another bunch of people "on the dole". Propagate that affect and see what the final impact on the local coffers actually is, and then let's see who the winners are.

Globalisation? Not in our lifetimes. We are SO not prepared