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Comment by smcl | Hacker News Reader

This doesn't sound like a great idea. A friend of mine with an Indian passport and a valid UK work visa was visiting Northern Ireland and decided to try to sneak a quick bus trip into Republic of Ireland. Their bus was randomly stopped and everyone's passports were checked (these are pretty infrequent, I believe), the police quickly noticed they didn't have a valid visa for Ireland, took their details and then took them back to the North. Later that year he had a bit of trouble visiting mainland EU, the immigration officials cited his previous attempt to illegally enter Ireland - evidently it had been logged in some EU immigration database and can follow you around for a while.

And this is just Ireland, I imagine the repercussions of getting denied from the US are a little more severe.

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Being denied entry isn't illegal, and isn't necessarily going to adversely affect future entry attempts. Overstaying your visa, or illegally entering a country on the other hand is a crime. If you have committed crimes in a country, you will have a harder time getting in next time.

careful: there's a difference to point out here - Visas are for entering/exiting the country and are the stamps on the passport. Then you can stay as long as you have your residence permit.

Example:

    #when you enter the country you get 
    DS2019: 1yr #residence permit
    Visa: 1yr   # from when you enter the country
    until you leave the country:
      if your contract get renewed (DS2019++)
      else illegal

the visa in your passport is worth nothing when inside the US. the fact that the two are confused might be very misleading.

Overstaying your visa is not a crime. The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) contains only civil penalties for an immigrant who overstays her visa. This means that immigrants with an expired visa will not be charged criminally or serve time in jail.

Entering country illegally however IS a crime.

Ireland is a member state of EU. It's understandable how that can affect EU's view on you. I don't know what US could affect. Perhaps some country that US invaded and is in control off?

You don't think the EU and the US share information here?

I was confused at first, then I remembered UK is not a Schengen member - if you get a UK visa, it's for the UK only; if you get a visa for any other EU country, you can go wherever you want in the EU, except the UK. Weird situation :-)

Ireland has opted out too. UK and Ireland are part of a "Common Travel Area" (a region that doesn't require passports to travel within, and which includes other islands in the British Isles), but aren't in Schengen.

There's exceptions in the other direction as well: Norway, Switzerland, and Iceland aren't EU members, but Schengen visas are valid there.

I presume this was many years ago. There aren't any border checks I know of between the North and South or Ireland these days. I take the bus and train to Dublin all the time and drive there quite often and have not seen a checkpoint since the 90's.

The only bus I ever took from Dublin to Belfast and back was boarded by immigration and our papers checked.

This was 2006.

That's very strange. According to wikipedia: "There are no longer any operational customs posts along either side of the border."[1] The last check I remember was in the 90's and I don't think it was a customs check, it was a military checkpoint.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Ireland–United_King...

It may have been them looking for someone specific - it was the middle of the night, and the Garda aren't exactly the most talkative of government agencies.

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