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 for the longest time too, but because that wound up impacting a few powerful Americans it was eventually sorted so now you can at least fight it a little or do additional background checks to get off of it.
The worst part is that these security black marks seem fairly easy to get: family member or friend a "terrorist?" Share a name with someone "bad?" You're now on it. And nobody you can actually talk to can either tell you why or has the authority to remove you.
I would blame it on bureaucracy, but that is an easy out for a policy which is partly intentional -- Americans don't want people visiting, working, or studying on their shores. They have made that abundantly clear over the last ten years.
> Americans don't want people visiting, working, or studying on their shores.
This is utterly false and unfair. Please don't lump the entire US population with a few ignorant morons who have not seen the world five miles outside their home town. A quick look at our universities is proof enough that what you are saying is incorrect. The last time I visited MIT it almost felt like I was outside the US.
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.
I agree, blaming it on "bureaucracy" or "big government" is the least insightful thing someone can add to the conversation.
Of course it's executed by a bureaucracy -- what else would we expect, Batman's going to manage the program? The assumption that it's going to be executed by a bureaucracy should be part of the reasoning when setting policy.
Either this was an expected outcome (in the collateral damage sense or in the "good keep him out" sense), or it should have been and people should have known better.
There are better, more accurate literary and historical analogies than "black marks". Things like yellow stars, scarlet letters, that kind of thing. aka reason number 235135 not to be proud to be an American.
"if people get denied for normal stuff (overstaying, violating their visas, etc) they're told and can at least fight it a little."
I think this is true when the person is in the country but when they're not they can't enter when it's being worked out, even if there are no security issues. (but I'm a US citizen and don't have any direct experience)
I am not US citizen but visa policy is virtually same for any issuing country. Getting visa (any kind) is privilege not right. Government has full discretionary right to refuse entry to anybody whom is not citizen.
Not saying it is fair system but it is what it is. Except full open border policy I don't see how you can fix system.
Every year I meet more expats working or studying here from 6 months to several years in order to build skills to take back home. Since I live close to JHU, most of them are scientists.
But yes, an economic depression causes political pressure on immigrants due to the lack of work/school for native citizens.
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 Processing". All enquiries have come back with a blanket "matter of national security, we can't give any more information" cover. It's extremely frustrating. What makes it even worse is just the incompetence of it all. I have been going back and forth to the US for nearly ten years to see family pretty much every summer without a problem, why am I only now subject to an extremely lengthy background check?
My wife quit her job and we gave up our house in anticipation of our move and we've effectively been in limbo since.
If anything, the way we've been treated has made me never want to step foot in the US again.
There's a big difference between work visas and tourist visas, to you should expect it to take significantly more time. The fact that the company is a startup probably doesn't help either, since they may not have been around very long.
I know that doesn't help, but visa issues are always complicated and there is always risk involved.
The one thing I'm taking home from that letter is this:
the embassy called him back to say that they had found
the problem. They said that if he came in, they would fix
it. Instead of fixing it, they stamped CANCELED across
his student visa without explaining what was wrong, and
refused to answer any questions as to why.
In short: The american embassy has no compunctions whatsoever to lie to citizens of other countries.
For me as citizen of another country, this means that i will need to treat anything any representative of the US-american government says, no matter how high, or more importantly, low they are on the totem pole, is highly subject and likely a lie.
Nothing special here -- law enforcement agencies in the USA are allowed to lie to people like this as well. There is a reason defense attorneys here keep telling people that if they are ever arrested they should say nothing until a lawyer is present. Somewhere on Youtube there is a video where a former cop describes how he once told some kid that he should write an apology letter to the family he stole from, and the cop would deliver it; that "apology letter" was presented as evidence in court, as a confession.
Trickery is a matter of course for the US government, at basically every level.
As an immigrant in the US, watching HN lately has been enlightening. Absolutely none of this is new- and it's also almost entirely unrelated to PRISM. Despite the fact that tech companies have been struggling with insane visa rules for years, it's only now that we start posting about individual injustices, now that we can file it under the banner of "government bad"?
Why would this be unrelated to PRISM? As this guy doesn't know what he's accused of, and we have no idea what PRISM is looking for, assuming they're unrelated is as fallacious as assuming they are related.
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.
I think HN is seriously at risk of having jumped the shark for good. This NSA thing blew the lid off - the front page is completely full of articles about politics, with more each day about all kinds of different things.
I suppose things may settle down again - they have after other big events, but... I worry, I worry.
(And for the record, for those who conflate not wanting to see every article about this with not caring about it - I care about it deeply)
My worry is that HN on PRISM is turning into the 24-hour news cycle on CNN. There's little new information lately, but upvotes are being given for contemporary relevance (arguably at the expense of quality of submission) and comments are turning into the same speculative circles of discussion.
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?
While I agree about missing the technical articles; I appreciate seeing these, as I actually had no idea about the seriousness of some of these re-entry issues.
Maybe the solution is a dedicated HN technology page, and a separate, dedicated "Of interest" page.
Their decision was probably based in some way (assuming it's based on available information, which is admittedly risky) in his marriage to a foreign national while expressing interest in moving to the states, and the embassy's reluctance to chance him violating his visa permissions and in some way moving here with his wife in a permanent resident-alien w/o a visa type manner.
Not claiming to know anything special, but if that really is the only perturbed variable, it most likely hinged on that. Or familial ties that are somehow inscrutable. All conjecture, but I find these single cases to be ridiculous, because there are competent individuals in government who oft do what they're supposed to, even if the whole government mechanism appears corrupt and broken. Most likely there was a legitimate reason, and of course we only have one side of the story here, by an associate professor and his PhD student.
> but I find these single cases to be ridiculous, because there are competent individuals in government who oft do what they're supposed to, even if the whole government mechanism appears corrupt and broken. Most likely there was a legitimate reason, and of course we only have one side of the story here, by an associate professor and his PhD student.
You'll understand only when you face it. What legitimate reasons are you applying to justify treatment of any or every person on the planet as potential threat? Without a means for recourse. And then if you're agreeable to the logic of scrutiny and transparency from others then why not apply the same logic to the individuals in the Government?
I have been told by other foreign graduate students that getting married in another country (possibly even married at all) violates that student visa agreements. One girl is French and marrying an American, she was told that if she goes to France to have a wedding ceremony that she would not be allowed back in to America. This sounds exactly like what happened to this student. It's shameful and bizarre, but it appears like these are the rules however poorly they are communicated (my friend had NO idea as the university filled out her visa application and did so incorrectly 4 years ago).
The problem is that there is no due process for these things.
You're always playing a bit of a lottery whenever you interact with, well, just about anything. But when domestic police screw up (or not!) and you get in trouble, there's at least a process in place that tries to smooth things out. It's still not a guarantee, but if you didn't actually do anything wrong, the process makes a decent stab at ensuring that fact comes to light.
But start crossing a border and everything changes. A single wage slave having a bad day can ruin you. Low-level consulate worker decided you screwed something up, even though you think you didn't? Well, too bad. Go find another country to live in.
For whatever reason, we completely throw out all these principles the moment we look at people crossing a border. And worse, everyone thinks this is fine. Foreigners have to rights, and people seem to think that's how it should be.
Well, this "problem" with sort out itself, eventually. Taking the ridiculous border controls, the economic situation, disregard of human rights (specially for foreigners), it means that the US is rapidly becoming an unattractive place to work, study and even go on vacation. Before long, you won't have many people trying to get in.
Guess where the entrepreneurs, scientists and highly skilled workers will go? Hint: not the US. What that means for the future of the country is left as an exercise to the reader.
I can't believe that in 2013 we are still worried about which piece of land someone were when he got out of the womb.
That's why I left US for the UK back in 2006. (Even though UK now is not better than US, at the time they were able to recognise the benefits of letting highly skilled people in).
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.
"Immigrant" does not mean "descended from someone who came here". Some people were actually born here. Yes, we are all descended from immigrants (some of us from those who walked from Asia), but that doesn't make us and our children's children "immigrants" as well.
...not sure what sort of "moral debt" (second bullet point) Omar had to the country - is there some reason he should have had to contribute anything to the US economy? Its not like the military where you commit to extra years of service for the financial inducements attached to further study. He's probably already contributed more than most Americans just in his research during the years of his PhD. As an American doing a PhD in the UK, I don't feel I owe a "moral debt" to contribute to the economy here when I am done.
Perhaps because recent events have me grasping for sources of positive news from Americans, I am touched by the sincerity and tone of this letter. I would much rather believe that the attitude expressed in this letter is that of most Americans.
He sounds like a brilliant student. However does anyone find it the least bit noteworthy that the US government is paying for foreign citizens' tuition and stipends while many of its own citizens are forced to go deeply in debt?
Grad school applications are generally treated with little attention to citizenship. Then PhD students work on research projects that largely are funded by government research grants. The US government really is paying to get some research done, and the universities are accomplishing this in the best way they can, by attracting the best talent they can, worldwide.
This article strikes home for me.
I came to the US to go to college, while here I got great grades, a job and eventually married a US Citizen and obtained citizenship myself.
Due to the fact that I followed the rules My sister (Medical Doctor in our country of origin) would get harassed and accused of wanting to stay ("like your brother" they would say) every time she came to visit me (For the record she has never overstayed her visas).
Eventually when it was time to renew her tourist visa she was denied and told to never set a foot at the US embassy again.
Quite sad really but there is no winning against USCIS.
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.
Wow! This really saddens me. But I experienced something similar. When I got married a couple of years ago (in India) I really wanted my one cousins (who I was really close to) to come to my wedding. Unfortunately, his lawyers advised him no to come stating that given the current state of affairs, his reentry to US might be jeopardized. This is in spite of the fact that he had lived in US for over a decade and paid huge taxes during that time.
The bit about the flight staff tearing up his ticket is a real problem. Flight staff act like they're Border Control. I'm a Jordanian with an O1 and they usually give me hard time when I try to board a plane to the states. I once almost missed my flight because they made me buy a ticket back in the same year, even-though my visa was valid for three years.
When the US has access to approx 10 billion 'metadata' from Jordanian citicens (probably more, I am quoting from memory), it means it has access to ALL their communications.
So if this poor man just happened to have the wrong social graph...
"We found the problem with your visa [silence]".
The [silence] means: there should be a 'CANCELLED' stamp on it. Why bother?
Having been through the system I can probably guess what he did wrong. F1 status requires that you show no intent to stay. If he had declared that Microsoft was sponsoring an H1B prior to re-entry and we as attempting to enter with a F1, then he broke the F1 rules.
This sort of event is shameful and near-indefensible but not new. If you're a foreign grad student in the US, be aware that this sort of thing happens all the time, and even trivial visa issues take a long time to resolve.
[+] [-] UnoriginalGuy|12 years ago|reply
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 for the longest time too, but because that wound up impacting a few powerful Americans it was eventually sorted so now you can at least fight it a little or do additional background checks to get off of it.
The worst part is that these security black marks seem fairly easy to get: family member or friend a "terrorist?" Share a name with someone "bad?" You're now on it. And nobody you can actually talk to can either tell you why or has the authority to remove you.
I would blame it on bureaucracy, but that is an easy out for a policy which is partly intentional -- Americans don't want people visiting, working, or studying on their shores. They have made that abundantly clear over the last ten years.
[+] [-] robomartin|12 years ago|reply
This is utterly false and unfair. Please don't lump the entire US population with a few ignorant morons who have not seen the world five miles outside their home town. A quick look at our universities is proof enough that what you are saying is incorrect. The last time I visited MIT it almost felt like I was outside the US.
[+] [-] sp332|12 years ago|reply
Edit: more info, and some evidence that I was right :) http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-04-30-watchli...
[+] [-] jbooth|12 years ago|reply
Of course it's executed by a bureaucracy -- what else would we expect, Batman's going to manage the program? The assumption that it's going to be executed by a bureaucracy should be part of the reasoning when setting policy.
Either this was an expected outcome (in the collateral damage sense or in the "good keep him out" sense), or it should have been and people should have known better.
[+] [-] VLM|12 years ago|reply
There are better, more accurate literary and historical analogies than "black marks". Things like yellow stars, scarlet letters, that kind of thing. aka reason number 235135 not to be proud to be an American.
[+] [-] TylerE|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pseut|12 years ago|reply
I think this is true when the person is in the country but when they're not they can't enter when it's being worked out, even if there are no security issues. (but I'm a US citizen and don't have any direct experience)
[+] [-] cunac|12 years ago|reply
Not saying it is fair system but it is what it is. Except full open border policy I don't see how you can fix system.
[+] [-] peterwwillis|12 years ago|reply
But yes, an economic depression causes political pressure on immigrants due to the lack of work/school for native citizens.
[+] [-] devon_air|12 years ago|reply
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 Processing". All enquiries have come back with a blanket "matter of national security, we can't give any more information" cover. It's extremely frustrating. What makes it even worse is just the incompetence of it all. I have been going back and forth to the US for nearly ten years to see family pretty much every summer without a problem, why am I only now subject to an extremely lengthy background check?
My wife quit her job and we gave up our house in anticipation of our move and we've effectively been in limbo since.
If anything, the way we've been treated has made me never want to step foot in the US again.
[+] [-] raverbashing|12 years ago|reply
I'm not blaming you, but visas have a non trivial chance of being denied
[+] [-] mbreese|12 years ago|reply
I know that doesn't help, but visa issues are always complicated and there is always risk involved.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Mithaldu|12 years ago|reply
For me as citizen of another country, this means that i will need to treat anything any representative of the US-american government says, no matter how high, or more importantly, low they are on the totem pole, is highly subject and likely a lie.
[+] [-] betterunix|12 years ago|reply
Trickery is a matter of course for the US government, at basically every level.
[+] [-] piqufoh|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] untog|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] piqufoh|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] weego|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] davidw|12 years ago|reply
I suppose things may settle down again - they have after other big events, but... I worry, I worry.
(And for the record, for those who conflate not wanting to see every article about this with not caring about it - I care about it deeply)
[+] [-] chaz|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] l33tbro|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdotjdot|12 years ago|reply
Maybe the solution is a dedicated HN technology page, and a separate, dedicated "Of interest" page.
[+] [-] lmgftp|12 years ago|reply
Not claiming to know anything special, but if that really is the only perturbed variable, it most likely hinged on that. Or familial ties that are somehow inscrutable. All conjecture, but I find these single cases to be ridiculous, because there are competent individuals in government who oft do what they're supposed to, even if the whole government mechanism appears corrupt and broken. Most likely there was a legitimate reason, and of course we only have one side of the story here, by an associate professor and his PhD student.
[+] [-] monsterix|12 years ago|reply
You'll understand only when you face it. What legitimate reasons are you applying to justify treatment of any or every person on the planet as potential threat? Without a means for recourse. And then if you're agreeable to the logic of scrutiny and transparency from others then why not apply the same logic to the individuals in the Government?
[+] [-] lanaius|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forgotAgain|12 years ago|reply
Why make that presumption?
[+] [-] mikeash|12 years ago|reply
You're always playing a bit of a lottery whenever you interact with, well, just about anything. But when domestic police screw up (or not!) and you get in trouble, there's at least a process in place that tries to smooth things out. It's still not a guarantee, but if you didn't actually do anything wrong, the process makes a decent stab at ensuring that fact comes to light.
But start crossing a border and everything changes. A single wage slave having a bad day can ruin you. Low-level consulate worker decided you screwed something up, even though you think you didn't? Well, too bad. Go find another country to live in.
For whatever reason, we completely throw out all these principles the moment we look at people crossing a border. And worse, everyone thinks this is fine. Foreigners have to rights, and people seem to think that's how it should be.
[+] [-] mathattack|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] outworlder|12 years ago|reply
Guess where the entrepreneurs, scientists and highly skilled workers will go? Hint: not the US. What that means for the future of the country is left as an exercise to the reader.
I can't believe that in 2013 we are still worried about which piece of land someone were when he got out of the womb.
[+] [-] twoodfin|12 years ago|reply
Wanna bet?
[+] [-] avaku|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnnyg|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gilgoomesh|12 years ago|reply
Uh... isn't that also immigration?
[+] [-] Thrymr|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdmitch|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kohanz|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] OldSchool|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lutorm|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xanmas|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qdpb|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maguirre|12 years ago|reply
Quite sad really but there is no winning against USCIS.
[+] [-] lquist|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slaxman|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amasad|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pfortuny|12 years ago|reply
So if this poor man just happened to have the wrong social graph...
"We found the problem with your visa [silence]".
The [silence] means: there should be a 'CANCELLED' stamp on it. Why bother?
[+] [-] reccles|12 years ago|reply
If you break any rules you are pretty much SOL.
[+] [-] genwin|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pseut|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ekm2|12 years ago|reply
That he or she should not fall in love or marry an American while in the US?
That if this happens he or she should not go back to renew the visa ?