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A deportation at the UK border

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Re: A deportation at the UK border

#91

Post by durzagott »

jackgavigan wrote: post #7

Unfortunately, like other countries, the UK's Border Force[1] clearly has an above-average share of incompetents and bullies. If you give such people any power whatsoever, they will abuse it. Sadly, that's what happened here. The real problem is that there is no accountability in these organisations. Even if a complaint by Rachel triggered an investigation, the culture in organisations like this is to protect their o…

Theresa May is my local MP. I keep trying to vote her out, but the idiots around me keep voting her in!

So when we sleep walk into a mass surveillance state I can honestly look at the people who live around me and say 'this is your damn fault'.

Re: A deportation at the UK border

#92

Post by pjc50 »

JamesMcMinn wrote: post #69
PaulHoule wrote: post #35

England has probably the toughest border to cross of any country I have been to.

Try entering from Scotland.

I'm always entertained by how there's a big "Welcome to Scotland" sign on the A1 going north, and no corresponding "Welcome to England" sign in the other direction.

The UK has an open land border with another EU country - Ireland - and so far the Brexit campaign have been very unclear about whether this would continue and what implications that might have for ""controlling immigration"" and ""protecting borders"".

Re: A deportation at the UK border

#93

Post by tobltobs »

vinceguidry wrote: post #60
settsu wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the victim is to blame for their honesty? How does this improve security?

The point is not to blame the victim for her actions, (that's in the past) but to advise on how to avoid such a situation yourself. (in the future) Border crossings are one of those utterly weird situations where not knowing what's up will put you at odds with people who have zero respect for your convenience or comfort and are perfectly willing to remove you from both. And you won't learn what's up the first, second…

And what would your "advise" be if she would get into trouble for lying to a custom officer? I guess something like "Just don't lie".

Re: A deportation at the UK border

#94

Post by llamataboot »

arethuza wrote: post #34
fhood wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So do you think this is more of a policy problem or an attitude problem.

I have no idea - but I've traveled to a lot of places and in terms of friendliness of reception at the border the only place that was worse involved communists and large crew-serviced machine guns (NB crossing into Yugoslavia in the late 1980s by train from Italy). Edit: For the avoidance of doubt, I really like the US as a place to visit both for business and vacation, but the experience at the border can leave a lo…

I'm a US citizen and I don't like having to return to the US from abroad. Sometimes you are lucky and get a border guard that actually acts like a human being, even a human being doing a mostly boring job, but many times you get power-tripping jerks. I often travel with my partner, who is a green card holder, so I get to see that whole barrel of nonsense as well. In airports without the new expedited entry system (forget what it is called) we often have to wait upwards of 2-3 hours to get through an immigration checkpoint.

Re: A deportation at the UK border

#95

Post by gsnedders »

mseebach wrote: post #86
rtpg wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

generally speaking, countries don't want you to be in them and be paid by a foreign company. Think about it, if you're in the UK but being "paid" by a German company, are you really paying the right kind of taxes? What's to stop every major corp from having the Cayman Islands branch hire you. Usually people working for foreign corps end up actually being contractors (and paying self-employment taxes or whatnot).

Being paid by a company in any country is equally not OK. It seems the Germany-part is just a red herring/the officer being a dick (it seems they could have easily rejected her straight at the desk - you're here to work, you don't have the visa, done, have a nice flight back, next please).

> it seems they could have easily rejected her straight at the desk - you're here to work, you don't have the visa, done, have a nice flight back, next please

They can't actually do that, any refusal has to be signed off by the duty head of the port (IIRC; I presume each terminal at LHR has a separate one!), as far as I'm aware.

Re: A deportation at the UK border

#96

Post by omonra »

moon_of_moon wrote: post #11

Human rights in immigrant detention centres is something everyone should get behind. Unfortunately this exact kind of treatment is common at the US border. Search for: denied port of entry nightmare. e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3545548 I guess when you see scores of people trying to scam the system you get hard nosed about it in time.

Yep.

It's human nature - if the people she faced deal with people who are trying to scam the system 90% of the time, they will be conditioned to deal with such individuals.

Then when the 1 out of 10 comes across who is genuinely NOT trying to pull a scam, it will be very hard for them to turn their attitude 180 degrees.

Re: A deportation at the UK border

#97

Post by gaius »

intoverflow2 wrote: post #43

Pretty much the same sort of experience you'd get travelling any international borders.

Indeed. Try showing up at the US border and explaining you're going to work without a permit but it's OK since you're being paid via Mexico with two currency conversions. I get that the experience was unnecessarily unpleasant but c'mon.

Re: A deportation at the UK border

#98

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

forgottenpass wrote: post #61
settsu wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the victim is to blame for their honesty? How does this improve security?

It doesn't improve security. That is a different conversation. This about how to mitigate risk of hassle in interacting with a system that is broken (or, more depressing/honest working properly towards non-security aims).

Yes, this is a textbook case of idiotic bureaucrats encouraging good, honest people to lie in order to go about their day-to-day lives. This policy is clearly counterproductive. -- UK citizen, absolutely furious about this.

Re: A deportation at the UK border

#99

Post by Johnny555 »

DanBC wrote: post #84

I'm sorry she had a terrible experience. But the visa requirements are pretty clear, and she needed a standard visa. Here's the "do you need a visa" website. https://www.gov.uk/check-uk-visa Walk through it. She's from the USA. She's travelling for work, academic or business. She's planning to stay less than six months. Here's the result: https://www.gov.uk/check-uk-visa/y/usa/work/six_months_or_le... You don't need…

She's an animation artist giving a talk about an web animation API, doesn't that fall under If you’re invited as an expert ...take part in arts, entertainment or sporting activities?

Re: A deportation at the UK border

#100

Post by kintamanimatt »

This is a horrible experience that she went through, but one quote stuck out:

> The room’s only other occupants were men. I do not feel comfortable in rooms full of men I do not know with the door closed.

Why? This doesn't make sense. What does she think is going to happen? Are most men really presumed to be rapists or something?

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