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Jordanian citizen was denied re-entry to the US on eve of his PhD defense at JHU

cs.jhu.edu

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Re: Jordanian citizen was denied re-entry to the US on eve of his PhD defense at JHU

#21

Post by EliRivers »

TylerE wrote: post #19
UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #12

I wonder if this is one of those vague "security" problems. It seems like if people get denied for normal stuff (overstaying, violating their visas, etc) they're told and can at least fight it a little. But when you get a black mark against you it seems like you get stuck in an administrative blackhole where nobody is authorised to tell you WHY or they themselves don't know. It was the same way with the no-fly list f…

It's actually good security practice. If the terrorist's find out they got flagged because of X, now they know not to do X any more.

Surely we want them to stop doing bad things? :p

Re: Jordanian citizen was denied re-entry to the US on eve of his PhD defense at JHU

#22

Post by lquist » 

  America when will you be angelic? 
  When will you take off your clothes? 
  When will you look at yourself through the grave? 
  When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites? 
  America why are your libraries full of tears? 
  America when will you send your eggs to India? 
  I'm sick of your insane demands.
From Ginsberg's "America" (http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/america.html)

Re: Jordanian citizen was denied re-entry to the US on eve of his PhD defense at JHU

#23

Post by [deleted] »

devon_air wrote: post #4

I can understand what he's feeling as i'm in a very similar situation. I was offered a job by a San Francisco-based startup in January. I applied for a visa at the local US embassy, the interview went fine and the consular officer said she was happy to approve it but that I had been flagged for an additional background check which should take about two weeks. Five months later and i'm still stuck in "Administrative P…

[deleted]

Re: Jordanian citizen was denied re-entry to the US on eve of his PhD defense at JHU

#24

Post by davidw »

l33tbro wrote: post #20
weego wrote: post #10

Are we going to trawl up and link every single case of someone being denied re-entry to the US? It's just getting rather tedious. Though as the constant karma farming off similarly tedious and usually poorly researched and written blog posts of the last week continues unabated perhaps I am in a minority of readers who gets their news from decent sources and likes to come to HN for interesting technical articles.

Hmmm, I think HN is pretty great for interesting news from decent sources (usually Atlantic, NYT, New Yorker, etc). I also think people getting questionably denied entrance to the US is pretty newsworthy given the bomb that has been dropped in the last few days. Maybe don't click if it doesn't interest you?

If you read the guidelines, it's pretty clear that simply being "newsworthy" is not really what this site is supposed to be about:

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That US immigration is f'cked up is not exactly new or interesting in any case - and certainly not "intellectually gratifying". Do you remember when Linus Torvalds had bureaucratic problems with his green card?

Re: Jordanian citizen was denied re-entry to the US on eve of his PhD defense at JHU

#25

Post by nraynaud »

TylerE wrote: post #19
UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #12

I wonder if this is one of those vague "security" problems. It seems like if people get denied for normal stuff (overstaying, violating their visas, etc) they're told and can at least fight it a little. But when you get a black mark against you it seems like you get stuck in an administrative blackhole where nobody is authorised to tell you WHY or they themselves don't know. It was the same way with the no-fly list f…

It's actually good security practice. If the terrorist's find out they got flagged because of X, now they know not to do X any more.

a bit like a government. If it find that doing X is frown upon by its citizen, it better hide it before the citizens make it stop doing X any more.

edit: this is obviously false, since by taking the monopole of violence, the government also has to drop some barbaric practices. And this is all due process and defense rights are about, limitations of the government power. Call it unfair, but drones are unfair too.

Re: Jordanian citizen was denied re-entry to the US on eve of his PhD defense at JHU

#26

Post by sp332 »

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #12

I wonder if this is one of those vague "security" problems. It seems like if people get denied for normal stuff (overstaying, violating their visas, etc) they're told and can at least fight it a little. But when you get a black mark against you it seems like you get stuck in an administrative blackhole where nobody is authorised to tell you WHY or they themselves don't know. It was the same way with the no-fly list f…

The worst one I know of was when they wouldn't let Nelson Mandela into the country because some computer had flagged him as having ties to terrorist groups. Condoleezza Rice personally went to the airport to wave him through security. She was so mad, she might have single-handedly taken the teeth out of that system.

Edit: more info, and some evidence that I was right :) http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-04-30-watchli...

Re: Jordanian citizen was denied re-entry to the US on eve of his PhD defense at JHU

#27

Post by TylerE »

EliRivers wrote: post #21
TylerE wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually good security practice. If the terrorist's find out they got flagged because of X, now they know not to do X any more.

Surely we want them to stop doing bad things? :p

Yes, but this will stop them from doing EASY TO CATCH bad things. It's like anti-bacterial soap. Think about how badass that 0.1% that ISN'T killed is.

Re: Jordanian citizen was denied re-entry to the US on eve of his PhD defense at JHU

#28

Post by raverbashing »

devon_air wrote: post #4

I can understand what he's feeling as i'm in a very similar situation. I was offered a job by a San Francisco-based startup in January. I applied for a visa at the local US embassy, the interview went fine and the consular officer said she was happy to approve it but that I had been flagged for an additional background check which should take about two weeks. Five months later and i'm still stuck in "Administrative P…

Well, it's not recommended to quit the job before you're sure you can go (securing the visa, etc)

I'm not blaming you, but visas have a non trivial chance of being denied

Re: Jordanian citizen was denied re-entry to the US on eve of his PhD defense at JHU

#29

Post by gilgoomesh »

johnnyg wrote: post #16

Unless you walked through Alaska on a land bridge, you too are an immigrant. We can either embrace the strength of a democracy to turn the huddled masses into a productive force for good or we can choose to turn inward. Guided by fear, we are making the wrong choice.

> Unless you walked through Alaska on a land bridge, you too are an immigrant.

Uh... isn't that also immigration?

Re: Jordanian citizen was denied re-entry to the US on eve of his PhD defense at JHU

#30

Post by jdotjdot »

TylerE wrote: post #19
UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #12

I wonder if this is one of those vague "security" problems. It seems like if people get denied for normal stuff (overstaying, violating their visas, etc) they're told and can at least fight it a little. But when you get a black mark against you it seems like you get stuck in an administrative blackhole where nobody is authorised to tell you WHY or they themselves don't know. It was the same way with the no-fly list f…

It's actually good security practice. If the terrorist's find out they got flagged because of X, now they know not to do X any more.

It's only a good practice if X is very, very highly correlated with (and only with) being a terrorist.

It's not really that great security practice if you're missing a ton of real terrorists who don't do X, and you're catching a lot of non-terrorists who do do X, and no one can figure out what's going on since no one knows what X is. That's not protecting our methods; at that point, it's really just picking people out randomly.

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