Stuart Reid

Diary – 24 January 2004

Smokers in New York are trading cancer for hypothermia

issue 24 January 2004

New York

It’s as easy as pie to get through Checkpoint Charlie. The very agreeable Hispanic immigration officer at Kennedy asked me to place my index fingers, one at a time, on a scanning machine. My prints were instantly checked against the dabs of (I suppose) suicide bombers, anarchists, white slavers, drugs barons, porn kings, and those who, wittingly or unwittingly, have in the past 60 years engaged in genocide (on however small a scale). But… no match. I was clean; and I was through immigration faster than on any previous visit to the United States. The new security arrangements may be daft, but they are not yet burdensome. Now that the Feds have my prints, however, I shall have to keep my hands to myself on future visits.

I arrived in New York on the eve of the biggest freeze for 100 years.

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