"What Passport/Visa?" Traveling Like A Mexican Resident

[NanN]

I hear you on air travel. I flew up to Toronto, from Leon through Houston the last Saturday in July. Granted it was a weekend but the volume delays at that airport were staggering. United tried to sell me a ticket with an hour and a half connect time - I chose the 4 hour option and am glad I did.

It took 2 hours and 15 minutes from the time I cleared immigration to get to my gate in another terminal. It was only about a 10 minute wait in line at immigration as they had lots of staff working and they seemed to be funneling the few Canadians present into one row on the foreigner side of things, and we clear immigration with the swipe of our passports.

Customs was also fast because my bags checked through all the way to Toronto so they just took my form and waived me on.

THEN came the lines for security - yes, lines plural and huge. One line snaked around most of the lobby outside of customs. This line was to get on the escalator up to security and they were letting people onto the escalator two and three at a time so it took forever. Finally I was on the escalator thinking I had cleared the lineup for security but no such luck. Another line even longer snaked around in front of security. Everyone had to step into the "box" before clearing security and since two lines share one "box" it was a real bottle neck. People were missing connections all around me and I was sure glad I had gone for the ticket with the longer connection time.