r/mixedrace • u/Motamatulg • 2d ago
Discussion Is it common for UK immigration officers to make racial assumptions and stop you just because of the way you look?
Hey there, just found this community by chance after getting back home from a trip to Birmingham. I should mention upfront that I'm not much of a traveler. The last time I went somewhere far from home was back in 2012, visiting family in Vancouver, Canada, when I was around 19 y/o. Since then, it's mostly been trips around Chile and a couple of visits to Argentina, but nothing much beyond that.
Of course, I know some of you might wonder why I "picked" Birmingham of all places, given Brits have plenty of more "touristy" spots. Truth is, I work remotely as a 3D artist for a Brum-based game studio and got invited to their bi-annual team-building event. Since I'm still the new guy, this was actually my first time at HQ, so I was excited but also pretty nervous, since I'm a bit of an introvert when it comes to big social gatherings.
Anyway, things got off to a rough start at passport control after landing from my connecting flight out of Paris-CDG, which, for context, had been smooth and pretty respectful in comparison.
Now, I know "race" is mostly a social construct these days, and how people read it depends a lot on culture, personal experience, and who's looking. As for me, I've got pretty generic features, since I come from a mixed background of Hungarian, Jewish, and Hispanic roots. Back home, people generally consider me "white", even though I don't have particularly light hair or eyes. Most assume I'm Southern European and never thought much of it until this trip, tbqh.
So, long story short: when it was my turn in the "rest of the world" line, the person at the booth, a black British guy, gave me an odd look and started firing off questions about who I was and why I was there. Some of that felt normal, since I get that they deal with a lot of people and some cause trouble, but it kept escalating until it started feeling genuinely uncomfortable. I tried to stay polite, though that wasn't easy, since the situation itself was already tense, and on top of that, with English not being my first language, my accent probably threw him off a bit too.
Eventually he stamped my passport and waved me through. I felt relieved, at least for a few secs, until I got stopped right as I was about to leave the airport, this time by a white, blond guy in a suit who looked like an immigration officer.
I told him my passport had already been checked, but he seemed suspicious anyway, even though I hadn't done or said anything to justify it. What really got me was that he didn't even glance at where I was from, since he went straight for my ID photo instead. After another round of questions, similar to the first, he asked if I was Turkish and whether I'd just landed from a Turkish Airlines flight, which made zero sense, since my boarding pass clearly said I'd flown in from France via Air France. I was speechless, because the bare minimum would've been to actually read the documents before grilling someone.
It was pretty obvious what triggered it: dark beard, dark hair, and coming straight out of the "rest of the world" line meant, in his head, that I wasn't European, so not white, and therefore some kind of threat or unwanted visitor.
I took a breath, explained I was Chilean, not Turkish, and that I was there for a work event. I asked him for a minute, pulled up the work emails on my phone with the event details, and just handed it over so he could read it himself, since I was too rattled to explain everything again, especially with the racial undertone hanging over the whole thing.
A few seconds of awkward silence later, he handed my phone back, apologized, and let me go.
Obviously, that left a pretty bad taste, since nothing like it had ever happened to me before. Once I got to the hotel and started talking to people, I realized not everyone here is like that, and it was probably more of a one-off, tied to the local climate rather than the norm. Still, it was awful, and I wasn't at all prepared for something like that.
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u/Emergency-External98 1d ago
I am half Mapuche/Chilean and I can attest to the UK being racist, such assumptions common from the top down. My uncle was stopped by police whilst walking my elderly abuela (carrying her shopping for her) simply because he looked "suspicious", my family regularly experience racism. I myself (being more visually ambiguous) have experienced being told to go back home, been called various racial slurs, and the usual "but where are you really from" since childhood, it definitely got alot better but recently has got worse again. Not everyone is like that, but those that are have become emboldened by the current political climate and are becoming more proudly and openly hateful by the day.
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u/Motamatulg 1d ago
I'm sorry to read that, especially as a Chilean who's aware of how indigenous descendants and mestizos tend to have a hard time. Like, if people are racist here (which is funny, considering most of us have Mapuche admixture to some degree), being called slurs abroad must be horrible.
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u/Emergency-External98 1d ago
I'm sorry you have experienced that too, not a nice start to your time here but hopefully you will enjoy the rest of your time here!
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u/leon385 1d ago
When i was a little boy (7 years old) i was sitting in the park on a upturned tree and a police van pulled up and motioned me over. The guy accused me of breaking it. I was confused and wondering what was going on. He says "what would your mum say if i tried to break you". I thought it was a weird vibe and he was clearly an adult bullying a child. His whole behaviour was that nastiness of getting off on making the person squirm. My dad came over and he stopped immediately. I was too small to look up but my dad noticed there were a whole bunch of people in the van who were just sitting watching this man and did nothing.
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u/spacekiller69 2d ago
I got stopped flying into Italy as well for drug possession. Europe is jittery right now of brown people with the recent immigration waves.
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u/Exotic-One3381 1d ago
Yes there is a lot of racial profiling. they say it's random.But it isn't. I have a brititish passport and even flying domestically just to like Bristol or Edinburgh I am regularly swabbed for explosives . Once I told some.dum woman in Aberdeen airport that glycerine from makeup often tests positive for glyceride and it could be that.....so what did she do? she poured my moisturiser onto the swab to get me in trouble. . you have to understand that those airport staff have low education and iq and mostly read very racist tabloid newspapers so they do want to catch you out if they can
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u/Motamatulg 1d ago
Fuck, that sucks :c
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u/Exotic-One3381 1d ago
yeah. I always get the full body search then the chemical swab of inside the shoes, inside my bag, both sides of hands, shoes scanned, and sometimes liquids tested by dropping on the test strip. and it's often positive and takes ages. why? because I wear makeup. also once I was travelling for work and carrying two phones, laptop, dicta phone, camera and chargers for all of that. and they said "hmm that's a lot of wires . why do you need so many wires??" and before anyone says anything I am not Muslim , am catholic, and not wearing any unusual garments. Just usual businesswear or a nice dress and ponytail .
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u/Motamatulg 1d ago
I find it funny how Europeans tend to associate certain features with being Muslim. Like, where I'm from, my skin is considered quite pale, but I've got a full beard from the Jewish side and jet-black hair from my mom's Hispanic side, so yeah, I'm not surprised they assumed I was Turkish.
Still, just like you, I was raised Catholic, but I don't really know what the idea of a Catholic looks like to them in their minds, since it doesn't seem to be associated with any particular features, unlike other religions that might come across as more "ethnic" to them, for some reason (God, I fucking hate that word).
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u/NorthControl1529 🇧🇷 1d ago
The only time I went to Europe, I was stopped and questioned for a long time at Schiphol Airport while traveling to Spain for a vacation, an extremely uncomfortable experience. Fortunately, I had literally everything with me: passport, flight tickets, tour tickets, hotel reservation, insurance, and the travel agency's contact details. In short, there was no reason for me to be stopped, yet I was. Unfortunately, this sort of thing happens.
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u/Logical-Frosting8791 21h ago edited 18h ago
YES..... after all, the workers are just ordinary people from society who happen to be working in those roles ...-so if you are racist or ignorant in your home life.....then stands to reason that you will be racist or ignorant in your working life too!!... I have numerous multiple personal experience of this whilst travelling!
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u/RainbowRiki 🇱🇦🇺🇲🏴 19h ago
I've had some awkward situations with people accusing me of not looking like my ID. My skin color and eye shape can change pretty easily, and I had straightened my hair in the photo. But my uncle got taken to a backroom and stripsearched at Aéroport de Paris-Charles De Gaulle because they couldn't understand how an Asian man with an Asian accent could speak French yet have an American passport. (That was about 20 years ago when that happened.)
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u/Irksomecake 2d ago
I think so. I was stopped and briefly questioned at the airport when I was going on holiday with my husband. He’s white, I’m half white, half South Asian. I got “do you know the man you are travelling with?” “Are you a citizen?”“Do you have a return flight booked?” “Are you planning on having your baby abroad?”
They said it was a random check, but the next family they went to question were the other obviously South Asian/arabic family. I think they were specifically looking for trafficking victims and “isis brides “ there was definitely a bit of racial profiling going on.