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Comment by ChrisBland | Hacker News Reader

I understand your frustration and there is no excuse to be dehumanized, and treated like cattle during your proceeding. After saying that...a visa oops, snafu, miscommunication, is still your responsibility. A great quote is 'Ignorantia juris non excusat' which translates out to 'ignorance of the law excuses no one'. Upon hearing stories like this, I can't help but wonder, if you had your visa taken care of before you tried to re-enter the country, would this situation have happened? Were you singled out for your race, sex, behavior, or were you singled out because you were not legally allowed to be there? I know that may come off cruel, and like I said, no one should have to endure how we treat detainees, however this issue seems to resolve around your mistake.

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As a practical level, I agree with you completely. On an ethical level, however, I find it difficult to put much blame on the OP. To quote Madison:

"It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?" [1]

Mistakes are human and they happen. It should be the responsibility of our nation's immigration officials to help people through the inevitable difficulties and mistakes that happen in a system as complex and Byzantine as our immigration system. Yet the post-9/11 trend seems to be that immigration officials see themselves more as a pseudo-police force rather than civil servants. As such, the default suspicion of any non-citizen and "guilty until proven innocent" attitude the OP describes is not surprising.

Even if whatever mistake she made is a critical one that should prevent her entry into the US until it is resolved, I cannot see any justification for deporting her and forbidding her from reentering for 18 months.

When people try to live and work as productive and positive individuals in the US and our legal system actively treats them in a hostile and suspicious manner, justifying it by a minor clerical mistake [2], we have a duty as citizens to recognize the real problem and work to correct it.

I find it ironic that in an earlier age we (as a country) ridiculed the "papers please" culture of Soviet Russia and assumed that we (as freedom loving Americans) could never become such a country.

[1] Federalist #62

[2] A visa is a piece of paperwork. If immigration officials were deported every time they made a mistake on their paperwork, prevailing attitudes towards immigrants might be very different within their ranks.

Internet high five for quoting the federalist papers! If only more people in our country (or Washington) would read them we would all be better off.

So the main point I was trying to make was this: She was not discriminated against because of her race, her sexual orientation, her religion, her actions, her associations. She was singled out for not following the rules, which, she admittedly knew that there was an issue with her visa before trying to enter the country.

While I can understand there are hurdles to jump through, the thing is, everyone has to jump through them. There were no 'extra' requirements for her that she didn't know about. The immigration system is meant to treat everyone attempting to enter the country uniformly, not fairly. While that may suck, its the only option that scales. Otherwise we will be left to the judgment (and corruption) of CPB officers. I would much rather her be turned away for not having visa documents in line every time than it be a crapshoot/flip of a coin if you get to stay based on the mood of the CPB officer. That is a trade off I am willing to accept with our immigration system.

What irked me a bit about her writing was to me she appeared to have some sense of privilege because she worked as an entrepreneur and in tech. That if only the immigration officers would listen to her work they would overlook her invalid visa documents. That somehow her case was different than those who had relatives in the country who had missing documents, than the agriculture worker just trying to make a better life for himself and his family. Everyone should be treated the same and the same rules should apply to all, no matter your role, industry, etc.

'Ignorantia juris non excusat'

This would have been logical with short and understandable laws.

Nowadays, however, it's impossible to know the law in it's entirety. (Nor is it possible to deduce logically from similar known laws).

If it's literally impossible for an expert to know all the laws (let alone a common citizen), 'ignorance of the law excuses no one' is a meaningless sentence used to dismiss a much, MUCH bigger problem.

Try saying it this way:

"Well, you should have known what no human being is able to learn. You're not a super human? Too bad."

There is no need to know much about immigration laws to successfully navigate the US immigration system. All you need to know is that CBP has the power to deny entry for any reason whatsoever, and the best way to avoid triggering that code path is to have your papers in order. Have an outstanding visa application? Reentry visa expired? Passport expired? Lost your copy of the I-20 form? It's very simple, just don't travel. It doesn't take a supreme court justice to know this. It's inconvenient and cruel, sure, and it could use reform, but it is what it is.

This is pretty much the gist of it. I found this bit annoying:

> We spoke two totally different languages. Mine, the language of reasoned hope and optimism. Theirs, the language of suspicious cynicism, fear and ignorance.

It's CPB's job to be cynical. For every "hopeful optimist" there are hundreds of people seeking to abuse the system. It's simply a confusion as to the delegation of power. Even if you're someone in favor of accelerating legal residency for skilled people like the author, you have to acknowledge that that's a plea to be made to the political figures, not to CPB agents.

I disagree, large portions of the people traveling through airports are hopeful optimists going on vacation, honest ordinary people trying to play by complex, impenetrable rules, few of them are trying to game the system.

The real problem is the enormous numbers of false positives and the results on the unwitting victims

Was this a false positive?

I was thinking more of all the people who go through this because the US has NO formal emmigration procedure - in any other country you pass through a desk with a customs agent who puts a stamp in your passport saying you have left the country - in NZ, my country, they wont let you leave if you have outstanding fines or warrants.

In the US there is none of this, you just roll up to the gate, it used to depend of some airline minimum wage check in people tearing little green cards out of your passport and them getting to the right government person who typed them in correctly - lots of times it didn't work correctly and people would attempt to come back into the US a second time and then get tossed out because they had "overstayed" their previous visa. A number of friends have been through this insanity.

Now days the US does this electronically some how, it seems more reliable (hopefully) - but is still completely out of the control of the traveler and it still leaves one without a receipt, a stamp in their passport, indicating they have left correctly under the terms of their visa

>>For every "hopeful optimist" there are hundreds of people seeking to abuse the system.

Citation needed.

Seriously, Americans need to stop perceiving foreigners as unwashed masses, most of whom are seeking to abuse the system.

Indeed, it's strange looking in from the outside that they consider the country to be so precious in this fashion. I would not go if I were paid a large amount of money to do so, and I have been offered exactly that numerous times, so that's not just hyperbole either.

The US is not a shining city on the hill, it is a slowly sinking empire with walls made of disjointed, often incoherent words, that even the people charged with enforcing the measures extrapolated therein don't actually understand letalone hope to reasonably enforce.

15 million illegal immigrants are a damn good reason to perceive foreigners as unwashed masses seeking to abuse the system.

But most of those immigrants are sneaking into or being smuggled into the country, as opposed to trying to cheat their way through immigration and border security. The former involves a backpacking trek through the desert whereas the latter involves years if not decades of expensive, arduous bureaucracy.

Around 40% of illegal immigrants in US had valid visa when they initially entered the country but overstayed. Also significant number of people came into US on tourist visa but then exploited the system to change status through genuine or fake marriage to USC, asylum, study, etc.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142412788732391630...

How does changing status via genuine marriage count as "exploiting" the system?

Technically if you get married or plan to get married you are supposed to leave the country and get either fiancee visa or immigrant visa by applying at the consulate abroad. Many (most) people ignore this rule because there is no penalty and many immigration violation (like visa overstay) are waived if you get married to US citizen and change status inside US. You can also appeal immigration decisions. On the other hand if you leave the country with visa overstay, you can be banned for three or ten years from getting any type of visa (even marriage-based one) and the right to appeal is pretty much non-existent.

Overall immigration law is illogical mess with conflicting rules that can often be exploited if you have money and a good lawyer. But even with a good lawyer the system can fuck you over as in the case of that woman.

They may not have a choice. I can perfectly well see why they erect barriers and put large obstacles in front of people trying to cross their borders. The problem is rather that startups should not demand that you physically move over there. I have had the case several times and I had to refuse the project. Moving over there, is unpractical. Why not collaborate remotely with people around the world? Do people really need to sit next to you in order to work with them?

I would agree with your opinion if the American visa system wasn't a total mess.

"Having visa taken care of" is an incredibly easy thing to say but a very hard thing to do in reality without legal assistance, or more generally without a s*load of time or money resources to throw at it. Unfortunately many of us don't have these kind of resources available.

See my, and user henningo's comment elsewhere in the thread. The dehumanization, and being treated like cattle can happen due to overly wide flagging and/or technical glitches even if you hold a valid work visa. These are false positives.

The outcome (hopefully) ends up better than the author's.

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