Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How a French scholar was treated at US airport

translate.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 266 posts

Re: How a French scholar was treated at US airport

#81

Post by d_theorist »

coldpie wrote: post #71
DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is worth reading then https://medium.com/@thegrugq/stop-fabricating-travel-securit... EDIT (what to do): https://twitter.com/thegrugq/status/829855684636274688

That's kind of a worthless article. What's the solution, then? Just accept that all of your private data will be copied by the government? Don't travel at all? Edit: Also, the same guy explicitly encourages lying about your social media accounts two posts prior to that one. Which is it, chief?

I don't think it's worthless to point out that a number of strategies are bad, and likely counterproductive. It might just be the case that there are no good foolproof methods for getting through the US border without any negative effects on your privacy or convenience.

The only real solution is to change government policy.

Re: How a French scholar was treated at US airport

#82

Post by krzrak »

monodeldiablo wrote: post #67
fowlerpower wrote: post #58

The article gives me anxiety. It gives me anxiety that people can be held at our borders for hours and sometimes days (in my country non the less). All because some junior border officer did not understand the visa type well enough. How can they not even apologize? How can they not even acknowledge these types of errors. Will they do this to us when we travel abroad on a tourist visa?

Will other countries begin to reciprocate? Will other countries/institutions begin demanding compensation for wrongful detention/deportations? Perhaps my biggest concern is this: How long until this pushes someone over the edge? It's precisely this kind of persistent harassment that can convince an angry, disaffected young man that, yes, the system really is rigged against him.

> Will other countries begin to reciprocate?

We shouldn't. A trait of civilized society is that it doesn't reciprocates on the barbarians with their methods.

Re: How a French scholar was treated at US airport

#83

Post by ritchiea »

For everyone on HN that's afraid of being harassed for their politics because of how Trump support was received, this story and worse ones to come are exactly what we were afraid of coming from Trump. This was never just about policy, the current administration is giving license to treating people who don't look "American" enough with suspicion and they made that intention clear in their campaign.

If this was just about tax rates and government spending policies no one would be nearly as upset.

Re: How a French scholar was treated at US airport

#84

Post by arca_vorago »

Love all the doom and gloom outrage. Just because trump got elected I feel like way too many people are in a mild form of hysteria, and use any excuse to vent their uncontrolled expression of emotion.

Look, this was a stupid decision made by a stupid officer. An officer who lives es in Aggie land too! (For those of you not in Texas, Aggies aka A&M people are known for being good old country levels of dumb, and are often the butt of jokes.)

Now, that's not an excuse, but this was an outlier fuckup that has happened for years before Trump, though I'm willing to grant its probably more likely to happen with overzealous people in this political climate.

Its funny that the UK has been doing stuff like this to vast amounts of US persons visiting the UK on the same bad understanding of people giving payed for speeches/debates, but everyone has suddenly forgotten about that.

Look, there is room for improvement, and officers in this position should be held to a higher standard by their superiors, but when all you have is a hammer(outrage mode), everything begins to look like a nail (outrageous action), so let's work on calming down and being a bit more rational and focused on practical ways to solve issues please.

Re: How a French scholar was treated at US airport

#85

Post by ethbro »

monodeldiablo wrote: post #75
coldcode wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do not come to the US for any reason. Also, request that your government treat all US visitors exactly the same as this. Until people start to see how awful treating people like trash is nothing will change, it will only get worse. My job depends (somewhat) on foreign tourists coming to the US, I would rather lose my job than read these embarrassing stories.

Please don't encourage ill treatment of US citizens overseas. Americans who travel outside her borders are not the people making these decisions, tend to be much more worldly than the average citizen, and are the first to be horrified at these developments. If you want to make the US change, speak the language we speak: lawsuits. Sue, sue, sue. Call your embassy and demand that they pressure the White House to retrac…

This is, for better or worse, a populist decision.

I'd be all in favor of other countries holding up any Americans coming through on a tourist visa. Maybe if enough of their friends gripe about the way they're being treated overseas, Trump country will think "Oh, it's really not a very nice way to treat people." (To say nothing of ineffective)

Re: How a French scholar was treated at US airport

#86

Post by coldtea »

infodroid wrote: post #35
schtitt wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they're not different. Every time I am visiting the states I have to go through the extra process of interviewing (due to things that happened a long time ago), and every time I am struck by how it seems like they're actively attempting to dehumanize the persons who are there. The border control is actually the #1 reason I am considering never visiting again. Though, as the original author, I love the US, so it's…

> Though, as the original author... Do you mean to say that you are the French historian Henry Rousso?

No, he means: LIKE the original author, ...

Re: How a French scholar was treated at US airport

#88

Post by coldtea »

Arnt wrote: post #25
skocznymroczny wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably it's been like that always at the US border, it's just now it's popular to showcase such stories as an example of "look what Trump did to our country". I heard of horror stories at the US border way before Trump took office.

Obama didn't get blamed for such things because he clearly didn't want them to happen. They happened, can't tell how often, but he didn't want or intend that. I didn't have the impression that Dubya wanted to harass random foreigners either. Trump, OTOH, is the kind of person who wants to throw out all the Yemeni in case one of them is another Timothy McVeigh.

>Obama didn't get blamed for such things because he clearly didn't want them to happen.

If he "didn't want them to happen" it would have been trivial to stop them. Would not even need a new law, a presidential speech would be enough.

Re: How a French scholar was treated at US airport

#89

Post by infodroid »

afandian wrote: post #63
infodroid wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Though, as the original author... Do you mean to say that you are the French historian Henry Rousso?

In English you can say "as X, Y", for example "as Google, Microsoft releases code, "as last time, I was late" or "as the author, I love the US". It doesn't mean that "Microsoft = Google", or "I am last time" or "I am the author". Google's dictionary (wherever it comes from) has > conjunction 2: used to indicate by comparison the way that something happens or is done I think you're thinking of > preposition 1: used to…

That's just wrong. In the original comment, "as" was used as a preposition and not as a conjunction. But it is grammatically incorrect to use the preposition "as" to draw a comparison instead of "like". See for example: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/as-o....
Post reply on HN