There is a ‘fly on the wall’ type of documentary shown here in Australia called Border Security.
Basically it’s a series concerning the Customs and Immigration issues of passengers arriving into Australian airports. A recent episode caught my eye because a transgender passenger, who had arrived from the Philippines, had been stopped by the Australian Immigration Dept.
We’ve often discussed domestic travelling by air on this forum, but not international travel, so I was interested to see how this person would be treated.
The first thing that was established was that she was stopped because she had several different identification documents which appeared to contradict her travel documents.
First she was asked what named she’d liked to be called by during the interviews (she preferred the name Ronnie) – Although she was listed as ‘male’ on her passport I did note that at no time did they refer to her as ‘he’ or ‘she’, but they used the phrase ‘the passenger’ or ‘Ronnie’. I didn’t think that this was a problem as such, but a display of sensitivity regarding the issues.
I thought she was treated pretty fairly. I don’t think it was because the cameras were there as most officials here in Australia are very reasonable. The final result was the problem was sorted through and she was let into Australia.
If I arrive in Atlanta later this year as Suzy, I wonder if I would be allowed into the US without any problems – as I’d look nothing like my passport photo……
