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

I'm the Canadian who was detained by ICE for two weeks

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

561–570 of 903 posts

Re: I'm the Canadian who was detained by ICE for two weeks

#561

Post by rsanek »

gs17 wrote: post #365
BrandoElFollito wrote: post #12

I traveled to the US (from my country -France- and many others) for 12 years. About a trip every month. The last time was 10 years ago. I never had any problems (outside the horrible behaviour of border officers who show you that you are not welcome). I was stopped once by a policeman when I did an illegal car maneuver (which is tolerated in France), and when he realized I was a tourist with family, he just said, "Be…

> outside the horrible behaviour of border officers who show you that you are not welcome They've always (in my life, which is largely post 9/11) done that to US citizens too. Going into Canada it was "where are you going to? the beach, eh? have a nice day!", coming back seemed to be performed under the suspicion that our passports were fake and our car was made out of drugs. Despite doing nothing wrong, we were alwa…

never experienced this as a us citizen and I travel often. usually it is a polite "welcome home", otherwise it's a bored "ok you're good"

Re: I'm the Canadian who was detained by ICE for two weeks

#562

Post by frob »

leereeves wrote: post #548
fourside wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is ironic. I thought there was a big push from the right for less censorship and less moderation in social media. Now we’re flagging posts because the comment section may get heated.

> the comment section may get heated Have you read this discussion? It was already heated, although the comments posted recently have been better. Before greggyb asked why it was flagged, the top comments were about "the dumbest bully from their grade school" and "team grade school bullies". Does that not sound like flag-worthy discussion to you? Name calling like that buries legitimate discussion, like the claim tha…

When the people in charge are acting like the dumbest bully from my grade school, then yes, it does sound like valid critism and a legitimate point of discussion.

Re: I'm the Canadian who was detained by ICE for two weeks

#563

Post by tac19 »

motorest wrote: post #559
tac19 wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really irrelevant to the point being discussed. I was just trying to give some context to the apparent hypocrisy the OP had identified, without adding my own opinion about it.

> That's really irrelevant to the point being discussed. The point is following the law. What point do you think it's being discussed?

The point that started my original response. Explaining a new, apparently hypocritical, propensity to trust such government actions. Whether any of us agree with it or not, is irrelevant to the explanation of why it has happened.

Re: I'm the Canadian who was detained by ICE for two weeks

#564

Post by graemep »

ajmurmann wrote: post #549
graemep wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK does fine employers, its not sufficient to stop it because people work through dodgy contractors. The UK also fines landlords which has caused problems for people who look or sound foreign, including some British citizens (especially poor ones who tend not to have passports which are the easiest documents to check). The best proposal I have heard is to provide a cash reward to illegal immigrants for turning in…

What makes it hard to investigate the dodgy contractors? I don't fully understand why this is harder than identifying illegal immigrants.

The dodgy contractors take a markup for taking the risk away from employers. A lot of them are criminals with connections to people smugglers, are both willing and able to get away with things someone with a more legitimate business would not. They are a layer of plausible deniability.

Re: I'm the Canadian who was detained by ICE for two weeks

#565

Post by kragen »

morkalork wrote: post #494
kragen wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with you, it is observably true that many people take different positions on the issue and then demonize those who disagree with them, converting it into a partisan issue. Another commenter (now deleted) made the claim that, saying an issue shouldn't be partisan is “ just saying ‘everyone should believe what I do’ but in the lexicon of people who look down their nose at the general public. ” They added,…

And here in lies the problem: wedge issues. Taking something, blowing it out of proportion and turning into a partisan issue on purpose. Abortion, LGBTQ rights, immigration. It becomes impossible to have nuanced, rational discussion about those topics, and its on purpose. One side thrives off of making them emotional, hot-button issues. Shunning discussion of it here or elsewhere because it's an emotional, hot-button…

Abortion, LGBTQ rights, and immigration are inherently deeply emotional issues, but that doesn't in itself make them partisan. It increases the risk that they will become partisan, but often enough and in enough places they have not been. Politicians—not just on one side or even on just two sides—generate support for themselves personally and for the political class as a whole by converting them into partisan issues. Venkatesh Rao has written a very thought-provoking analysis of the current dynamics of the situation in https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2020/01/16/the-internet-of-beefs/.

Re: I'm the Canadian who was detained by ICE for two weeks

#566

Post by kragen »

fourside wrote: post #543
kragen wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly because the comment section will inevitably collapse into a partisan flamewar.

This is ironic. I thought there was a big push from the right for less censorship and less moderation in social media. Now we’re flagging posts because the comment section may get heated.

This has been HN policy since the beginning, and while HN is usually still quite unpleasant, policies like this one are largely responsible for preventing it from being worse. There are social contexts where discussions of topics like US immigration policy can do good rather than harm, but HN is not one of them.

Re: I'm the Canadian who was detained by ICE for two weeks

#567

Post by jkrshnmenon »

refurb wrote: post #464
Gigachad wrote: post #13

Governments need to start putting out travel warnings on the US. It’s becoming an increasingly dangerous place to visit.

They should put travel warnings on every country then. The woman in question tried to self-sponsor a TN visa after being denied earlier at the Canadian border. I can understand why USCBP starts to think “this woman is trying to commit fraud” not “innocent mistake”. I know most countries would detain and deport people attempting to commit immigration fraud. Not sure why people should hold the US to a higher standard t…

Most countries don't have for profit prisons or detention centers.

Re: I'm the Canadian who was detained by ICE for two weeks

#568

Post by motorest »

queuebert wrote: post #145
jajko wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smart immigrants shouldn't migrate to US anymore, period. Not if you have more than just very short-sighted dollar signs on your eyes. Its just plain out stupid thing to do, to be treated worse than garbage. This is how institutionalized xenophobia looks like. The fact is, I've read very similar articles about how US treats any non-US citizens a decade or two ago. Nothing changed dramatically, people just bring these…

> Why the fuck would anybody with any amount of dignity cause it upon themselves willingly? Presumably because their home country treats them even worse? At least that's the point of the refugee program.

> Presumably because their home country treats them even worse? At least that's the point of the refugee program.

I personally know multiple non-US citizens who did their PhD at MIT. Most of them faced the requirement to temporarily move to the US as a major but necessary nuisance. I also know others who explicitly opted to skip their MIT application to enroll instead in an European program, with all the hoop jumping required to apply for visas being a major factor.

This was a decade or so ago. I assure you that right now things are not looking at better.

Also, people like you should really try to touch grass and try to learn how things are back in the real world. For a few decades now the US is far from being the top choice. In fact, the US doesn't even feature in the world's top 20 in quality of life, in spite of everything. What exactly do you think is happening?

Re: I'm the Canadian who was detained by ICE for two weeks

#569

Post by ben_w »

bloak wrote: post #275
greatpatton wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is rather funny as French are supposedly "terrible at foreign languages", but try to find a Briton that can speak anything else than English, it's like finding a needle in a haystack.

People say that, but do we have any proper data, preferably on assessed language knowledge rather than claimed language knowledge? There's some crap going on in France that English is specified as a requirement for many jobs even when it quite obviously isn't needed. So people lie and nobody cares. On the other hand, it seems to me that people in England are overly modest about their language abilities. I think if yo…

It's hard for me to be exactly confident when comparing my 25-year-old GCSE grade C (or was it D?) in French to the current numerical grading system, but I think it's it's somewhere around the peaks of these graphs: https://ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/2024/04/languages-are-sti...

My grasp of French is so monumentally bad, that last time I tried to say "I can't speak French" in French, the French woman next to me didn't understand because I said it wrong.

My German is coming along OK, but only because I've been living in Berlin since late 2018.

Re: I'm the Canadian who was detained by ICE for two weeks

#570

Post by anonshadow »

This is the money shot : "Companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group receive government funding based on the number of people they detain, which is why they lobby for stricter immigration policies. It’s a lucrative business: CoreCivic made over $560m from Ice contracts in a single year. In 2024, GEO Group made more than $763m from Ice contracts.

The more detainees, the more money they make. It stands to reason that these companies have no incentive to release people quickly. What I had experienced was finally starting to make sense."

Post reply on HN