The money's in the bag or what NOT to do at the airport I just got back from spending time with my family in Ireland last week. And as much as I hate flying 12 hours across oceans and corn fields, the thing I hate even more is the whole airport experience -- from checking in and checking luggage to standing around listlessly waiting for the plane to come in. (Really, these people give "hurry up and wait" a whole new meaning.) The part of the airport experience that I hate the most is going through airport security. The security guards almost always seem to have attitudes, and the way they look at you -- it's as if they've assessed your entire history through one glance and a flash of your boarding pass. Man, it makes me nervous just thinking about airport security. So I can only imagine what Pedro Zapeta, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala, went through when security guards saw his duffle bag full of cash meander through the detector. He was arrested for trying to take more than the allotted $10,000 out of the country without notifying customs, according to a recent CNN news report. I imagine it went something like this: Security screener 1 (AKA Joe): Hey Bob, get over here now. Security screener 2 (AKA Bob): Alright, just a second, let me finish frisking this guy. Joe goes over to Bob Bob: You see that? Joe: Yeah, it looks like... Bob and Joe: A bag full of CASH!!! Bob and Joe: Quick! Stop that Guatemalan guy with the duffle bag. Other security guards surround and then detain Pedro while Bob and Joe call in the customs guys. Yeah, that couldn't have been fun for Pedro. Now imagine the whole encounter happening really quickly and the people around you are flailing their arms and making weird grunting noises that you can't understand like the humans in the first "Planet of The Apes" movie. That's probably more similar to what Pedro actually went through, since he speaks almost no English. Since that encounter at the airport happened nearly two years ago, things haven't gotten any easier for Pedro. The U.S. government took all of his money and tried to bust him for drug trafficking. But when Pedro produced pay stubs to prove that he had indeed scrubbed dishes for 11 years to get that measly $59,000, the government relented on the drug charges. But for good measure, they are still kicking him out of the country. I think Pedro's story has a couple of lessons for all of us: 1. Our immigration system needs to be fixed. We shouldn't be busting people for working hard illegally; we should be preventing them from entering the country illegally in the first place. and 2. It pays to be legal. I know Pedro worked his butt off to get that money, and I feel sorry for the guy, but if he had been in the country legally, he might have known the laws of the land. Then he would have known to take the money back incrementally ($10,000 at a time), or even to just make a declaration in the first place. I mean, if I snuck into Guatemala, worked hard and tried to take back money to the United States, I'm not sure my sentence would be as light as Pedro's. I can't help but think about the horror stories of corruption and greed that have plagued Guatemala during the last 50 years. If I were in Pedro's shoes, I'd probably be facing jail time and harsh treatment in the newly-minted democratic-republic, while he's only losing his life savings and being expelled from the country. We should all be so lucky. POSTED BY tifforr@gmail.com (Tiffany) AT 3/23/2008 6:36 AM 0 COMMENTS » POST A COMMENT  |  DIGG IT « BACK HOME ABOUT ME Welcome to the Tiff Spot, where we take a look at what's going on in the news ... just in case you missed it. This is as much my forum as it is your forum, so feel free to say whatever you want. If you need something, e-mail me. tifforr@gmail.com RECENT POSTS Fear of a black nation: Is the United States ready for a black president? Subscribe in a reader