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Comment by philipwhiuk | Hacker News Reader

If you're trying to engineer loopholes out of citizenship laws, you're going to get yourself pulled aside.

The whole point of these arbitrary rules is entirely to make this sort of shenanigans impossible but to let in people who are using the system for the purpose it was designed.

That's why the rule about 'relevant to your travel' is vague. So that you can't weasel your way through it.

People who write this sort of app think border entry is two doors, allowed and denied. But there's also the guard who stabs people who ask awkward questions and their name is 'National Security'.

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No, it sounds like the author is well aware of that, and is instead just trying to get a read on what the gov's various systems are saying about him, so he can stay well within buffers of that.

He explicitly says that none of his data on the app would convince an official.

The point is - while all of these systems are fuzzy at the edges, that is not a bug. Letting people reside in a few countries at the same time, and to pick a tax residency like a new winter jacket is a non-objective for the border, tax and residency systems.

It's actually relatively simple to follow the rules that lead you down the well estabilished residency paths if you do the opposite of what the article suggests and leave enough of a buffer for every required number, so you don't need to think about it and the precise count can be handwaved by the officials.

Conversly, if you try to minmax the rules, you might find that most important systems still have an arbitrary human decision maker, who simply decides whether to apply a complex ruleset to the letter, or to be lenient.

> No, it sounds like the author is well aware of that, and is instead just trying to get a read on what the gov's various systems are saying about him, so he can stay well within buffers of that.

You don't need an app for that. You just behave like a normal person.

Hard disagree. You accidentally break an immigration rule, you face the consequences (if you get caught and the officer is not letting it slide).

No amount of "behaving like a normal person" (whatever that means) is going to save you in that situation.

> You just behave like a normal person.

?? I'm a normal person, and I don't need to count my days in and out of a country, I just take vacations when I like.

If OP did that, they'd lose their visa.

It sounds like you've never known anyone on a green card, or waiting for citizenship, or on a visa that requires a certain number of days in the country.

> To apply for British citizenship, you need to prove you were physically in the UK on your application date but five years ago.

This is an insane bureaucratic requirement (to have been in the country exactly 5 years on the day prior), and not someone the vast majority of people need to worry about. How does "just behave like a normal person" help keep you on the right side of multiple overlapping Kafkaesque requirements?

He's not trying to engineer loopholes. He's trying to comply precisely. You are right that there are some genuinely squishy things, but not all of them are. Tax residency is not a judgement call. Overstaying visas or visa waivers is not a judgement call. Residency requirements for immigration applications. etc

> He's trying to comply precisely.

Which is entirely what the laws are trying to stop you doing.

Governments don't want you to be 'just inside', they want you to be well inside.

The number is, for example 159 days in a tax year not because they are happy if you're there 160 days but because they had to draw a line somewhere because text is necessarily precise.

Unless you're rich, of course.

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