What are you banned from? Why?
quora.com
quora.com
In any case, I myself (an american citizen) have been treated with extreme disrespect and a total lack of professionalism when crossing the border at this same checkpoint by car from the Canadian side to the American side. The particularly ridiculous part of this was that after I waited an hour for them to tear everything apart in my car looking for contraband -- at which point it's been verified that I was doing nothing wrong -- they continued to be completely antagonistic.
Edit: I filed a complaint about this, which did lead to a supervisor calling me back and talking to me on the phone for probably 30 minutes. The supervisor was reasonably pleasant, but unapologetic. (Is it reasonable that someone be forced out of their car in the middle of winter and not allowed to get their coat?) He claimed that he put a "warning" on the officer's record, though this didn't seem credible. He again and again seemed to imply that I might have been smuggling, after which I had to remind him that my car was extensively searched and cleared.
> He again and again seemed to imply that I might have been smuggling, after which I had to remind him that my car was extensively searched and cleared.
No no, you're definitely guilty. But if they can't find the contraband you're one of the smart drug smugglers, and thus even worse than the dumb smugglers they catch everyday.
To understand what may happen to the US visitor read this book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30524537-the-russians-ar...
I can confirm it's not fiction as it was written by father of my friend.
TL;DR from goodreads:
During a short business trip to California, Irishman Denis Sugrue was arrested and accused of spying for Russia. But this is no Cold War thriller - this is 2005 in Bush's America.
Facing ten years in federal prison, Sugrue must negotiate the corrupt corridors of American justice and attempt to convince FBI agents that the fact of his innocence outweighs the embarrassment of a failed prosecution.
The agent did not over step his powers. In fact, the agent did the correct thing. No job. No entry. This is typical for most visa requirements. The officer will simply not risk it.
As an unlucky citizen of the world; At the different visa processes I have been (or friends) through, it is about checking the boxes. You got a list of stuff to have/have not. Check? Entry. Miss one? No entry. It seemed to me that your language, face, or accent don't play much.
Part of that is an act to add pressure and help expose lies. But the American agents can be dicks at times, even for reentering citizens.
It is scary to hear these things. Like a black truck driver who got pulled over who said he had stuff in the back that he had to deliver in so many hours and that he had a job to do and the officer allegedly replied the driver wouldn't have a job by the time the officer is done.
What is really screwed up is people assume that just because I put on a uniform or a badge, I am now somehow perfect and incapable of bias. No, that is obviously not true. We all have biases we need to be aware of and actively work to mitigate.
The funny thing is it doesn't even have to be about race. It could be that someone has a personal/departmental vendetta against you. Now every time you go to work they could pull you over and (I assume legally) ask you questions bla bla making you so much late every time. What are you going to do? What is your employer going to do except let you go? Who will believe you?
No, the agent said the reason was he lied. I imagine the magic word is consultant? We can do better. I remember Linus' recent rant about security people in the kernel. No, security is not paramount. In fact, security is useless without usability. This applies in the real world as well.
>No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Note how the early part specifies citizens, the latter part specifies persons. At border control a person is in jurisdiction of the USA legal system and so, according to the literal text deserves equal protection of the law.
I'm aware the established interpretation differs, however, the writer of the amendment clearly meant to extend the rights and protections to all IMO.
There's still due process to consider at the border, but applying border controls is pretty well established as due process.
True, but the Supreme Court has repeatedly decided that the 5th amendment imposes both due process and equal protection requirements on the federal govt, just as the 14th imposes them on the states. E.g., see Lawrence v. Texas.
> "...applying border controls is pretty well established as due process."
This is a pretty vague statement, but it not really true in any sense. The constitutionality of our current border control practices is still being vigorously litigated.
However you seem a bit confused. You started talking about due process, but now you appear to be shifting the goalposts to 4th amendment issues.
Your statement, "applying border controls is pretty well established as due process", doesn't really make sense. Due process is only one of the many thorny issues that embroil the border search exception, and the exception's constitutionality along due process lines has not been decided by the supreme court one way or the other. Perhaps I should ask you, how did you arrive at "pretty well established"? Can you provide a bit of case history?
My other response was a somewhat sarcastic reply to The constitutionality of our current border control practices is still being vigorously litigated.. It's the details that are being litigated, not the overall detention and search of foreign nationals.
Border controls wouldn't be wrong, it would be if you did unlawful searches and such that would be wrong.
Out of curiosity what legal move makes the State not obliged to prosecute the Federal government under this amendment for breaking the State law? States wouldn't be able to ratify it (it seems to me: otherwise they'd be making laws allowing unequal treatment of persons), so it must be pretty early and high-level - presumably there's a blanket Feds can do as they please (wrt state laws) that makes this possible?
Entry without a visa also represents a relaxation of policy that existed 30 years go (just 10 years for Hungary!):
/sarcasm
I'd find it hard to argue.
Americans knowledge of geography could certainly be improved. I don't think it means anything negative about the people though.
Celebrating ignorance is one reason we have the current administration and Congress.
Ordinary citizens do not vote on issues affecting an individual country. I'm sorry, you're just going to have to accept the fact that not all Americans are well educated.
Putting nuclear weapons at the finger tips of someone is a big responsibility.
>Ordinary citizens do not vote on issues affecting an individual country.
They vote on representatives that tend to have a policies that might. See for example those running on platforms on building border walls, kicking out immigrants, banning people from other nations from entering them, pulling out of climate change agreements, etc.
>I'm sorry, you're just going to have to accept the fact that not all Americans are well educated.
I accept that's the fact now. I don't accept that that should be a fact for the country's future.
I also accept that we should do better in Geography. That'd be swell.
When you have tweets like this [0] from politicians it gives the impression that people do actually think like that.
[0] https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/705171336381923328
Regardless of the truth of the particular story related, there are sufficiently many similar stories I've heard that this one rings true.
And it's hugely negative for the US and its reputation abroad.
If you are white and a foreign national, the worst thing they will do is kick you out. They tend to jail their own citizens for much longer for no reason.
However, if you're a Muslim, come from a Muslim country, or are just dark-skinned, try not to be called a terrorist sympathizer. They will probably not provide you basic human rights and will ignore any embassy's attempts to get you back. If you're in the Southwest, try not to be called a Mexican, they may deport you there with no cause.
I've attended to computer security conferences in the past, that would not be the first time some security guy is arrested for no reason at the US border.
I'm not saying YAY ARREST WOO!, I'm saying at worst it's a waste of time and maybe money to get on a flight.
I am a US citizen and I expect to cross the border exactly once if I leave. We are the evil empire and sure that has benefits, but no place else has used large scale Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical weapons which is probably why we assume others will.
We overthrow democracy's, assassinate leaders, torture, fund terrorists, and ignore the rule of law, but trust us we are the good guys just like those lovable Romans.
Well, no other nation has used nuclear weapons in war, but several have used chemical and biological weapons.
PS: Russia has probably used a small scale nuclear weapon for assassination. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvine...
But, I was simply conceding the point. Radiation is a very nasty way to kill someone over days, but they could have also used chemical means, a bullet, or a guy with a stick. They chose to use nuclear material to make a point.
Edit: Traditional bombs kill large numbers of people very easily. But, radiation poisoning is unusually nasty which is one of the reasons even kiloton scale nuclear weapons are considered so evil.
You can add helium nuclei (Alpha), electron's (Beta radiation) etc. Arguably the worst Neutron's which are not directly ionizing even though they carry a lot of energy, penetrate most things, and often cause what they hit to become radioactive.
Again it's really not about the carrier. We call it radiation because it's high energy that's causing problems. It's not like 450nm photons are deadly unless you have an insane number of them. But, if you had enough you could still kill someone with blue light.
This seems pretty simplistic. First, not sure if dude is being racist; second, al-Qaida will want to not look obvious. Profiling visitors isn’t a good approach for security.
Wait, what?
Questioning a group of teenagers is discriminating them based on age, not skin color. They're looking for drugs.
Not everyone is treated the same by border control, thus it is perfectly viable to blend in and get away with whatever you're trying to do.
There's no mention of that in the article.
I am from Hungary too, and FYI: we are not a dumb group of people who all have the same opinion on everything, and we somehow all 'profile people based on how they look'.
I don't like that sentence of the article, and I don't like how you generalize too.
"but I'm actually glad American border security doesn't discriminate."
Agree on this.
"Secondly, a lot of east europeans again think they are somehow as respected as west europeans"
This sentence is so condescending again. I don't care how respected I am based on my nationality. People I respect don't give a fuck about my nationality, and that is good.
I've been back to Canada a few times since, always with great trouble at the border. 2 hour plus interview. It completely ended an LTR that I had with a Canadian (I lived close to the border at the time) and the idea of emigrating there.
I don't go back, because it's not worth it and honestly it's Canada's loss, not mine.
It was probably their standard service rifles rather than machine guns. If it was around the mid 90s, the last three years, or some other period in-between with heightened terrorist threat, they were there for your security.
Unlike US policemen, French soldiers have never killed civilians until now, so you should feel quite safe when seeing them. They also don't arrest you, act aggressive or interact at all with civilians unlike border guards, so I don't see any link with the current topic.
Your comparison of US Policemen and French soldiers isn't fair. I've known a couple people from France of Algerian descent, you can imagine their opinion of French police isn't too dissimilar of yours about US police.
I was talking about the soldiers though, and how they are actually harmless to civilians.
Police is of course a different matter, even though they still are far less lethal than in the US. As far as I know, in the US soldiers don't patrol the streets and their role is taken by the police force however, so that's why I compared them. My wife is not from Europe and I live in the "Arab district" of my city, so I have a reasonably good understanding of how our police force works.
Submachine guns are automatic pistols, which is to say they fire lower power pistol ammunition, and, like pistols, usually have shorter barrels than rifles. Typically also have accuracy comparable to pistols rather than rifles.
That is Charles de Gaulle Airport, but I have seen the same type of soldier at train stations in France. Regardless of what it's called, that is the type of weapon they have.
And I think that when we demand respect towards proper terminology from people in other fields, we should have the courtesy to do the same. It is similar to calling a monitor a PC or a computer case a hard drive. And being afraid of weapons does not matter here, quite many people are afraid of computers also.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Thalys_train_attack
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2015_%C3%8Ele-de-Franc...
I created an account to publish my (modest) app to the App Store. I overlooked the security question because this is a really stupid way of securing an account. I paid the super hefty annual fee to get in.
Later down the line, I had to authenticate myself for some reasons I forgot. As a 2FA thing, they asked me for my security questions, which of course I didn't have (the communication with the friendly Apple guy on the phone was interesting "Try `security questions are stupid` as an answer?").
In the meantime, they told me they required some additional documents to confirm my subscription. I politely asked them to cancel that, I'll create a new account since there was apparently no way I could recover the original one. The problem escalated until someone from the US called me to deal with the problem (I was located in Asia at the time).
The not-so-friendly person on the phone refused to help me recover the account, as well as refused to cancel my current subscription (the payment had already been approved and the money withdrawn from my credit card payment, they didn't want to issue a refund. "We can't do that", she said).
I then argued that well, I will not provide whichever document they asked, and they'll have no choice but to 1. cancel my subscription and 2. pay me back. The unfriendly person told me that I'll get a refund in a month, and that I was subsequently banned from the App store and the developer program. She then proceeded to hang up on me. I won, and take pride of being banned from such a toxic place.
I was arrested when I was a 10 year old for being a little shit and stealing candy from a pharmacy. They asked for all court records which of course I cannot supply and a certificate from the british police stating that there are no warrants out for me and such.
Such a certificate is only sent if you can prove an address in the UK with two utility bills, I haven't lived in the UK for 3 years. -- I managed to get this but now they want my entire police history, which can only be obtained by a freedom of information request and will return nothing since my record is sealed.
Effectively, I'm banned from Canada.
The kicker? I've been to Canada a bunch of times because my company has studios all over the place there.. but now I can't go due to this eTA thing.
Bit of an arse for suggesting he was lieing about being a freelance web dev though.
But now, it's apparently harder to cross the border than then ocean. :-)
If that's an error, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com, as is anyone with questions about their account.
Banned users' good comments are often unkilled by fellow community members using HN's 'vouch' feature.
Perhaps some sort of tourist visa?