A fellow journalist found herself handcuffed, interrogated, held in a cell and abused by American security officials last week. Calls to the US embassy in London were fruitless; appeals to the Foreign Office met with resignation. Was she in Baghdad, or smuggling Semtex? No, in Los Angeles International airport. Her crime? Landing for a brief stay without the correct visa.
It would be nice to think of this as a shocking aberration, but too many US visits prove otherwise. If incarceration is rare, hostile questioning is not, and seeing tourists shouted into line and examined like deviant cattle no longer surprises anyone.
Most (bar a drunken Neil Morrissey) stoically accept the lengthy immigration queues; although, as Joanne O'Connor wrote on this page two months ago, seven hours can be barely enough time to make a connecting flight at LA. But many find it harder to understand, to quote recent travellers, the 'lack of courtesy' and the 'disrespectful' and 'rude and aggressive' treatment they receive in return for wanting to holiday in the US.
Worse is on the way, with imminent laws insisting that all new passports contain biometric data such as fingerprints and iris scans. The travel industry is still sweating over whether Congress will grant a stay of execution to avert chaos this October; on top of that, airlines are having to contest US proposals to force them to supply reams of data about their passengers. Planeloads of UK tourists, whose only insidious desire might be to meet Mickey and Goofy, will soon have to queue up for mugshots and fingerprinting - the kind of procedure most countries reserve for their criminals.
Some welcome. Once you make it in, though, there are reassuringly sane voices. Gary Sherwin of Palm Springs Desert Resorts told me: 'It is a public-relations nightmare. We understand the need to be cautious, but some of the deadlines and restrictions are unworkable. If you challenge it in America you're labelled soft on terrorism.'
Such restrictions, which have already hit many foreign visitors far harder than the British, have helped account for a 30 per cent drop in tourists to the US since 2001. Derek Moore of Explore Worldwide reports booming business overall but adds: 'Sales to the US are down about 20 per cent on what we would have expected.'For South America, customers are avoiding the traditional change in Miami. 'A lot of people don't want to fly on US carriers now, given a choice.'
When even the staunchly pro- American Sunday Times suggests alternatives to visiting the US, fuelled by complaints from bewildered Middle England, alarm bells should start ringing.
On the bright side, Abta says cheap air fares and the low dollar are keeping traffic from the UK strong, and most recent visitors I spoke to said they would still go again.
But should they? To holiday in the US will mean undergoing a level of scrutiny that no other country deems necessary; submitting to a system that will quickly become standard if meekly accepted; and abandoning a right to privacy that is unlikely to be reclaimed. Tourists might like to consider whether the kinds of freedom other generations of Britons and Americans fought for should be lightly traded in for some bargain shopping in New York.
We may be, as our leaders have it, at war. So, as they used to ask in previous times of war, is your journey really necessary? As a famous movie character with visa difficulties of his own might have remarked, we'll always have Disneyland Paris.
· Gwyn Topham is travel editor of Guardian Unlimited
