With Guantanamo Bay due to close I have a request for President Barack Obama’s next big gesture – let people visit your country, writes Dan Wainwright.

American immigration seems to want to do as much as possible to prevent tourists, even from its staunch ally Great Britain, getting in.

In a few weeks I am due to go Florida and hope to be able to enjoy a bit of winter sun and Sea World.

My passport is four years old and does not contain the new style biometric chip, which allows the US authorities to record my fingerprints to identify me on arrival. Presumably this is a way of preventing me borrowing my girlfriend’s passport and going into the US wearing a burkha – although asking me to take it off would probably work just as well.

I should say from the outset that this catalogue of annoying events occurred because I need a journalist’s visa rather than going in under the visa waiver scheme open to British tourists. But even those people who just want to spend a few days at Disneyland will still have to fill in their landing cards online before they travel.

Cue then an extremely confusing procedure which starts with a £7.31 phone call to a premium rate number to book an interview at the US embassy in London.

I was then summoned to an 8am appointment two days later, meaning the cheapest train fare with Virgin would be £139. Thank you Mr Branson, but I drove instead.

After filling out all the forms and getting a new batch of passport photos I had to work out what to do with my electronic items. No mobile phones, cameras, nose-hair trimmers or anything that could double up as a detonator are allowed inside.

The US embassy website helpfully lists left luggage offices including London Euston, Birmingham New Street and, er, Edinburgh. Nice and close then.

Arriving at a park and ride station in High Barnet at 6am I decided to risk it and leave my valuables in the boot of the car, at the mercy of any passing happy-slapping hoodie with an Asbo and a brick.

Arriving at the embassy I immediately roused suspicion when they saw my car key. Its very common feature allowing me to push a button and unlock the door was an electronic device and therefore meant I could ignite the semtex I must have already planted inside.

Fortunately, I was told, a chemist down the street offered a left luggage service – for £5. My thoughts turned to my electronics hiding under a coat in my boot shivering at the thought of a Cockney chancer who would want to curry favour with Fagin for bringing back my TomTom instead of the usual handkerchief.

Once I was finally allowed into the queue I saw the usual pictorial signs of prohibited items inside circles with lines through them – phones, cameras, food, a gun and a grenade. I wondered how many people they had to turn away carrying those last two.
Next came the metal detectors and the removal of my belt.

After a humiliating walk old Steptoe style to the front desk, carrying my belt and holding my trousers up, I was given a number and told to sit down. It was a bit like being in Argos where your number creeps slowly across the screen until an automated voice calls you to your collection point, sorry, interview.

A cursory glance at my passport, a scan of my fingerprints and all my documents and I was told to take a seat before my second appointment.

After ten minutes I was summoned by the only American I met during the whole process who asked me a few questions I had already answered before wishing me a nice day.

Before I left I had to part with another £34 to a courier firm to get my passport back the next day. With the £90 application fee and the petrol the total cost of my visa came to £170 – and I haven’t seen a single dolphin yet.

It’s enough to make me wish I hadn’t bothered. With hindsight the most sensible thing to have done would have been to pretend I was a tourist.

I am, however, glad that I still have an older passport. I am dubious about a 10-year identity document with a microchip guaranteed for only two. What happens if, upon arrival in Orlando, my passport turns out to be faulty?

Wherever you go now the airport announcements refer to us being in a time of “heightened security”. Every time something happens that security level gets higher but even if nothing happens for years that level never drops back.

America is an incredible place to visit and with their newly elected popular president it’s once more becoming the coolest country, in a trendy sense, on the planet.

So please Mr Obama, let me in for a holiday or maybe I’ll take my spending money and boost someone else’s flagging economy.