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I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

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Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

#291

Post by lrvick »

fsckboy wrote: post #266
stevenwoo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Border Patrol can wait longer than you want to wait at the airport, you should not bring your personal phone if you don't want them going through all the contents, they can hold your device for an inconvenient amount of time if you are an American citizen. If you say no and are not an American citizen you can be denied entry at the airport and sent home.

> you should not bring your personal phone if you don't want them going through all the contents isn't the right move here: wipe your phone, travel to destination, then restore from cloud backup? in the middle, you can let them inspect your wiped phone.

If you are of interest to the US government or any ally, assume your phone comes back from inspection with a compromised bootloader that will continuously re-infect your phone after you wipe/reinstall.

Wipe it, let them inspect it, sell it, and buy a new one.

Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

#292

Post by lrvick »

nerdsniper wrote: post #289
fsckboy wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you should not bring your personal phone if you don't want them going through all the contents isn't the right move here: wipe your phone, travel to destination, then restore from cloud backup? in the middle, you can let them inspect your wiped phone.

For non-citizens, there's not really any law against them installing malware on your phone which could persist through a factory reset. Though I've not heard of such malware for flagship phones.

I have heard of malware like this, and engineers that found it at Google were instructed by higher ups to ignore it and never talk about it without explanation.

Good luck getting anyone close to this to go on the record about it though given such things normally come with corporate or government gag orders.

There are hundreds of privileged vendor binary blobs on most flagship devices not even Google gets source code to though so supply chain attacks should be assumed.

Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

#293

Post by lrvick »

mschild wrote: post #290
fsckboy wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you should not bring your personal phone if you don't want them going through all the contents isn't the right move here: wipe your phone, travel to destination, then restore from cloud backup? in the middle, you can let them inspect your wiped phone.

Probably more convinient to get a cheap, 2nd hand phone with the travel essentials and use that instead.

Or just do not use a phone at all. I travel internationally without one a few times a year. Europe, mexico, canada, japan, no problems. Dirty looks, but no problems.

Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

#294

Post by lrvick »

globalnode wrote: post #219
SR2Z wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the border agent doesn't want you to come into the country, you are fucked. You are seriously inconvenienced, but assuming your paperwork is in order, you will be allowed into the US. This isn't just against US law, it's a violation of international law to render a person stateless. This ignores the real point, which is that while you cannot be refused entry to the United States, you can be arrested at the borde…

yes sure you can come into america, straight into a holding cell until you hand over your pins/passwords or go back home.

Unlikely, but if that did happen an army of lawyers would be willing to help pro bono for such a constitutionally critical case.

Never comply with such nonsense.

Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

#296

Post by monerozcash »

refurb wrote: post #252
monerozcash wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, the somewhat hilarious reason justpaste.it is on the list is likely that it used to be a favourite of Islamic State terrorists a decade ago. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/08/islamic-stat... Googling 'site:gov "justpaste.it"' also brings endless results of government documents mentioning the site in the context of terrorism. I somewhat doubt US immigration authorities thwarted any w…

You'd be surprised at the number of people who willingly give up their social media accounts, only for immigration officials to find comments in support of terror attacks in the Middle East. It's pretty easy to think it's harmless if you live in a country where that viewpoint is not uncommon.

That's not surprising at all, but I think the people who could get caught by the justpaste.it thing are not the same people casually praising Hamas on Instagram.

If you're putting terrorism related content on justpaste.it, you're probably pretty deep into the whole thing.

Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

#297

Post by nkrisc »

tempfile wrote: post #160
mpweiher wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, "no obligation to admit" means they don't have any obligation whatsoever, and that includes doing so for any reason they see fit and not having to disclose those reasons (if any) to you. It is exactly the same as "I don't have to let you in".

No, it isn't. For example, I do not have an obligation to let people into my house. I can choose to let them in or decline them entry. But there are certain preconditions I cannot apply. I cannot, for example, say "you may come into my house only if you murder my neighbour". That's because I'm legally bound not to induce people to commit murder. It would obviously be disingenuous to say this means I have an "obligati…

Your house has nothing to do with this.

The United States does have some rides about what border agents can and can not do. They can not sucker punch you, for example. They can request to see the contents of your phone and if you refuse they can choose to refuse you admittance into the country.

It’s not a question of fairness.

For what it’s worth I’m very much in favor of immigration and people visiting the United States, but this country and all others have the right to admit or not admit whomever they choose.

Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

#298

Post by monerozcash »

lrvick wrote: post #292
nerdsniper wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For non-citizens, there's not really any law against them installing malware on your phone which could persist through a factory reset. Though I've not heard of such malware for flagship phones.

I have heard of malware like this, and engineers that found it at Google were instructed by higher ups to ignore it and never talk about it without explanation. Good luck getting anyone close to this to go on the record about it though given such things normally come with corporate or government gag orders. There are hundreds of privileged vendor binary blobs on most flagship devices not even Google gets source code…

I think this is broadly not true.

Sure, the NSA can probably pull this off. Thing is, the NSA probably does not need to do this at immigration.

I seriously doubt that this is a realistic problem if your threat model is anything less than "The NSA is very interested in me". In that case I don't see how you could trust any phone, regardless of it having been in the hands of border officials or not.

Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

#299

Post by skobes »

bubblethink wrote: post #277
sjtgraham wrote: post #12

How does the Supreme Court’s elimination of Chevron deference affect USCIS’s ability to narrowly interpret the EB-1A regulatory framework, particularly at Step 1 of the Kazarian analysis? I am specifically interested in two areas: (1) whether, under a strict textual reading of the judging the work of others criterion in 8 C.F.R. § 204.5(h)(3), participation in code review where the beneficiary evaluates and approves…

What has Chevron got to do with EB-1A adjudication? The Kazarian step 1 step 2 stuff is hokey. It is ultimately a subjective evaluation that will remain under the executive.

Wouldn't this fall under Auer deference (agency's interpretation of its own regulation)?

There is some uncertainty about whether Auer deference survives after Loper Bright.

Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

#300

Post by monerozcash »

miotintherain wrote: post #11

Hi Peter, thanks for the AMA! I work for an American company and I am based in Europe. I visit the US for work every now and then. I heard a lot of horror stories regarding border entries. If I am ever in a situation where the border police asks for access to my personal phone and pin code, what are my options? Can I refuse and what happens then?

The typical solutions deployed by some European bigcos are:

1) only bring burner devices

2) have your devices travel separately using some courier service

Yeah, they can still request your social media profiles and whatnot. You are not particularly likely to be denied entry because you don't have your normal devices with you, this is not very uncommon these days.

Of course it's better to be able to say that your employer requires you to do this, so it's probably good to ask your boss to write up such a policy. Otherwise "why?" could be a pretty uncomfortable question.

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