Terminal disease
From The Duke of Devonshire
Sir: I cannot let Allister Heath’s throwaway ‘putting to one side the legendary rudeness of US immigration officials’ (‘300,000 Frenchmen can’t be wrong’, 11 March) go unchallenged. I have no idea how often Mr Heath travels to the United States, or indeed back into Terminal 4 at London Heathrow. I use that route fairly often, and I have to say that the legendary rudeness is now remarkable only by its invisibility.
In the United States, even though in some airports the queues are long, the immigration staff are invariably polite and efficient. Sadly the same cannot be said about Heathrow. Even if you are lucky enough to have a European passport, the ‘queuing’ is extraordinarily badly organised, with no question of anybody being in charge. Our immigration officials, of whom there are embarrassingly few, therefore tend to be short on humour as they have to snap ‘Next!’ to persuade the head of the rugby scrum masquerading as a queue to proceed to processing. I shudder to think how long our esteemed tourists from non-EU countries have to wait in their much longer lines, again apparently not marshalled at all.
Perhaps Mr Heath is right after all. The US immigration officials’ rudeness is now no more than a legend from a distant past.
Stoker Devonshire Chatsworth, Derbyshire
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