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Comment by chuhnk | Hacker News Reader

Is anyone in this thread muslim? Just curious.

I am muslim. Travelling to the US looks very different since 9/11. I was born in the UK, grew up here, scottish accent, fair skin, british passport, work in tech. I still get "randomly selected" every time I travel to the US. Every so often when I've landed somewhere I'll be asked to wait in some immigration section for 1-2 hours, while they do God knows what. I say nothing. I keep my mouth shut. I wait for them to do their checks and I go about my business. Travelling to the US is a pretty terrible experience if you're muslim. I make sure to appear as non-muslim as possible whenever I'm travelling there.

Note: I have no plans to travel to the US while Trump is president.

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I recently met a Scottish man at a tech conference in the US. He was born in KSA and it seemed like he has lived most of his adult life in the UK.

I asked him if he was worried: he had arrived in the US just after/during the Executive Order 13769 debacle. He was crystal clear that he felt very strongly that since he had done nothing wrong that he should have nothing to fear from authorities. He claimed that his entry into the US this time was uneventful, but one time in the past (~2004-2010?) he was detained for several hours because of something that sounded like mistaken identity (some horrible Soundex match for someone on a list, probably).

I don't know whether/which religion he might prefer. He wore no religious ornaments or other items that would signify that he might be muslim. If it's relevant, he looked similar to how many Middle-Eastern/Medditeranean men I've met.

Anyways, it's a [second-hand] data point for an Arab-state-born individual who seemed to have different feelings.

For my part, I apologize for poor treatment you've gotten at the border and I hope you're able to visit again in the future.

"I have no plans to travel to the US while Trump is president."

Statements like this baffle me. Literally no-one in any position of authority cares if an individual doesn't want to come to the USA.

Also, if you exclude the USA for its border policies then you also have to exclude the majority of countries in the world, most of which have stricter controls, especially in Muslim countries. You are basically restricting yourself to Europe.

> Statements like this baffle me.

I think it's hard for someone who's not muslim to understand how toxic the current situation feels for muslim people. Would you say the same if a black man told you he'd rather cross to the other side of the street if he sees a policeman walking towards him?

My comment was about how people assign themselves a self-importance that is meaningless in the the grand scheme of things. Not sure why you are talking about race or religion.

I'm not sure why you attribute this to self-importance. It's a real risk and a fair concern. USA border and immigration officers sounds hostile and antagonising from the stories I heard on Twitter (over the course of the past week).

It will take me close to 24 hours to reach American soil. Depending on my luck, I might either:

a) pass without issue, or

b) hand over my phone and passwords and/or complete CS puzzles (which may also include period of detainment)

They can turn me back for any reasons and I would have lost thousands of dollars: if my answers were unsatisfactory, if there were some prejudice against my look, or even if the officer(s) were having a bad day.

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