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

Another awesome US immigration experience

seldo.tumblr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 240 posts

Re: Another awesome US immigration experience

#101

Post by tmktmk »

This is the biggest non-problem ever:

1) Did the author get in? Yes

2) Did customs do their job and scrutinize the person's paperwork? Yes

3) Was the person held for an inordinately long time? No -- 3 hours is not a "long time." If you can't deal with the fact that you just flew (potentially) halfway across the world in an airplane

4) Was the author unduly molested or given harsh treatment, perhaps by being denied food, water, medication, or otherwise harassed? No -- the author points out that there was a water fountain and snack machines, and the author was not strip searched, nor was he otherwise harassed/degraded. Sitting in a waiting room while your paperwork clears is "not a big deal."

Please stop blowing things out of proportion, and criticizing the US for no reason. I've immigrated to and lived in 3 different countries, and BY FAR the procedure described here is not difficult or tedious. If you can't deal with a a 3 hour wait, how can you deal with anything? Patience is a virtue.

BTW -- I was a paying awe.sm customer -- I just cancelled my account due to this overblown blog posting. Enjoy.

Re: Another awesome US immigration experience

#102

Post by y1426i »

This is not an immigration issue. There is no place for common sense in government matters. Some day computers will take over the decision making and we will have a joyous experience coming in or happily avoid this country because the decision will be known.

Re: Another awesome US immigration experience

#103

Post by natrius »

ajg1977 wrote: post #26

Pointless, wasteful bureaucracy I think few people would consider border controls to be any of these things. You were flagged somehow and that sucks, but if you don't like the immigration procedures of the US you are free to either a) live elsewhere or b) try to take action to change it (we are a democracy after all). On the other hand, venting on a blog isn't going to do anything but irk people who wish they were fo…

"Venting on a blog" is most certainly considered action in a democracy. That's basically what the Federalist Papers were.

Re: Another awesome US immigration experience

#104

Post by ajg1977 »

lbarrow wrote: post #96
jimmaswell wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't like US immigration? Good, don't emigrate to the US. Once enough people do this that it starts to affect the US GDP I'm sure there will be some change. Less immigrants would negatively affect the GDP? I've heard the opposite many times, but I'm not an economist. Why is that so?

There's no realistic situation in which having another person working in a country decreases its GDP. GDP is simply the sum of all goods and services after net exports and investments. Given that a working person is, by definition, producing a good or service, their contribution to GDP is always positive.

Not always true - see Wall St circa 2008.

Re: Another awesome US immigration experience

#105

Post by strictfp »

mailshanx wrote: post #98
seldo wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Understand that my native country, Trinidad, has laws still on the books that make my sexuality illegal. You have to be pretty shitty to be worse at respecting my dignity and principles than that, so the US has a low bar. But yes, I could pick some other first-world country to move to. In fact, I lived in the UK for seven years: in that time, I made as much progress in my tech career as I did in my first six months i…

>>In fact, I lived in the UK for seven years: in that time, I made as much progress in my tech career as I did in my first six months in the US. Can you elaborate on that?

Let me guess. In the UK you are promoted based on years of experience, in the US based on competence.

Re: Another awesome US immigration experience

#106

Post by jakejake »

mscarborough wrote: post #72
Permit wrote: post #25

>They keep taking breaks to crack off-color jokes about each other’s sex lives, and moan about how hard they’re having to work tonight. The jokes might be uncalled for, but you just told us they were under-staffed and had hundreds of extra people to process. I can see why they'd be upset. Especially when absolutely zero of the hundreds of people they talk to in a day are happy to see them. I get the impression you've…

One of the first rules of service industry is that you don't complain about your job in front of the customers. I haven't worked retail but have done plenty of years in restaurants. I'm not sure how you can use "you've never worked in the service industry" as some kind of trump card, as this kind of behavior could easily get you fired from any half-decent service industry position.

Government employees in certain agencies, as I understand it, are practically impossible to fire. There's so much red-tape and bureaucracy that you practically have to burn the building down to be terminated, and even if that happened, the employee would probably sue the state - which would settle the case for undisclosed millions.

Re: Another awesome US immigration experience

#107

Post by ajg1977 »

natrius wrote: post #103
ajg1977 wrote: post #26

Pointless, wasteful bureaucracy I think few people would consider border controls to be any of these things. You were flagged somehow and that sucks, but if you don't like the immigration procedures of the US you are free to either a) live elsewhere or b) try to take action to change it (we are a democracy after all). On the other hand, venting on a blog isn't going to do anything but irk people who wish they were fo…

"Venting on a blog" is most certainly considered action in a democracy. That's basically what the Federalist Papers were.

Aye, they were just some guys blowing out their frustrations.

Or not.

Re: Another awesome US immigration experience

#108

Post by retrogradeorbit »

jacquesm wrote: post #78
mdasen wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the argument you're making. From the perspective of the United States, they don't need to care unless it adversely affects the United States. As such, the US can make whatever immigration it wants and it writes its own destiny and people can take it or leave it much like many offerings we see in life from companies, other people, etc. If a company is putting onerous conditions on its product, we'll switc…

If you feel like levelling the playing field a bit with respect to your accidents of birth then I'm quite sure that those countries would be happy to strike you from their registers if you asked nicely. On the other hand, since you were given this for free and it wasn't your fault you might as well enjoy the privilege. Personally I think all immigration controls should be abolished. The world will be hell for about a…

I've have thought about these lines before. Free movement of people is the final freedom. First they freed up the movement of goods (once upon a time you couldn't just order a product freely from another country). Then they freed up the movement of capital (likewise once upon a time you couldn't freely invest your money in a foreign country). If they freed the movement of people then you'd have a sort of anarchistic democracy. People would vote against war by leaving (most do already, but just end up in refugee camps on the borders), vote against poor economic policy by leaving, and vote for free enterprise by emigrating.

But over time I've come to see that these are the reasons this final freedom WONT be allowed any time soon. There is great power and profit in the hands of the state when you restrict the free movement of people. For instance, do you think Assad would be all for an open border around Syria at this point in time? Would that strengthen or weaken his power base? Likewise for all countries. Opening movement across borders is good for all free citizens of the world. But very bad for politicians and their cronies.

On top of this politicians in democracies have at their disposal an amazing vote winning tactic. They can at any time exploit the in-group/out-group evolutionary bias, invoke a terrible, external threat, and most of the fearful masses will fall for it and vote for them and their get-tough-on-the-immigrants platform. And so, although I share your vision of a more free world, it just isn't going to happen any time soon.

Re: Another awesome US immigration experience

#109

Post by seldo »

mailshanx wrote: post #98
seldo wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Understand that my native country, Trinidad, has laws still on the books that make my sexuality illegal. You have to be pretty shitty to be worse at respecting my dignity and principles than that, so the US has a low bar. But yes, I could pick some other first-world country to move to. In fact, I lived in the UK for seven years: in that time, I made as much progress in my tech career as I did in my first six months i…

>>In fact, I lived in the UK for seven years: in that time, I made as much progress in my tech career as I did in my first six months in the US. Can you elaborate on that?

I went to college in the UK. Before, during and after, I worked at a series of startups. I gained experience in PHP, MySQL, etc.. -- a slow but steady accumulation of skill. Then I got a job with Yahoo in the UK, who despite their (many!) flaws as a company are a world-class web development organization -- I learned more, but at much the same speed.

After a year, Yahoo moved me to the bay area, and the difference was shocking. The demands made of me professionally, the density of smart and talented people everywhere, the intensity of the focus on tech culturally and socially: it blew me away. I went from feeling like a spectator of internet technology to a participant at the leading edge -- in terms of the skills I had, the people I met, the sense of the industry's direction.

The bay area is where people invent the next big thing, continuously. London has improved substantially as a startup environment since I left, but it's still nowhere near the same league.

Re: Another awesome US immigration experience

#110

Post by jakejake »

seldo wrote: post #92
smsm42 wrote: post #65

Let's look at the incentives. The picture here is not pretty. There's a big incentive to squeeze budgets, of course, anybody who watches US politics knows you can't just get any money you want, especially when there's 2 dozen another 3-letter agencies competing for the same. There's some incentive to serve citizens better - since once in the country, the citizen can call his congressmen or his local paper and raise h…

One of those incentives could be if US citizens decided to complain about the immigration system -- the point of the post is to attempt to marginally contribute towards that happening.

As sad as it may be I don't think the average US citizen is concerned about a 5-hour delay for non-citizens at the border. The ordinary Joe is likely to be OK with 200 people being delayed if that results in a few people being deported and 1 person being hauled off to jail (which is pretty much what the OP said happened). I have a feeling the "average" consensus would be that it was worth in in order to keep those 4 people out.

I'm not saying I agree with this whatsoever - I'm just saying my gut tells me this mentality is likely to get you more votes if you are running for office in a border state. The average citizen is not thinking about the relatively small number of skilled IT workers and entrepreneurs entering the country. They are thinking about all of the unskilled labor that is coming in and "taking their jobs" as some people perceive.

That, plus I'm sure there is an aspect of "doesn't affect me - I have my own problems to worry about".

Post reply on HN