No, if you want to come into this country to make money you will be scrutinized.

That's what I meant by "gig" - any kind of paid work. It appears that scrutiny is tighter in such cases than it is for leisure travel - and that's what seems daft. If there were any grounds for this kind of difference it would be the leisure travellers you'd watch out for. I mean, why arrange a job when you are going over there to blow up the Pentagon?

I imagine that if other countries were to apply the same kind of rules to Americans, so that processing travel arrangements had to involve making a trip to Washington, that wouldn't go down too well in places like California, Alaska and Hawaii...