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Comment by 8draco8 | Hacker News Reader

I live in Europe. From my perspective going to US looks like going to some kind totalitarian country. First I have to got visa which is not automatically approved because I'm Polish not British. Then I have to go trough a lot of, mostly pointless, security checks, checking social accounts, interrogations, scans and manual personal revisions. On any stage of that I can be handcuffed and sent back to Europe for almost no reason. It's sad but from where I sits US starts to look like all of those countries they was fighting with "for the freedom".

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We had serious plans to go on holiday to the US this year. I have been in the US at least a dozen of times, and absolutely love the desert states, Oregon, and Washington.

Entering the US was already a large hassle, but with Trump's travel bans, rumors of phone, laptop, and social media checks, we have decided to postpone our travel plans until the political/security climate improves.

Semi-related: we were in the market for a new car. One of the factors we decided to go for a European car this time (we had a Ford Focus before) is that we'd like to support Trump America as little as possible.

Before you say that this is overreacting, hear me out: the US belongs to US citizens. If you want this president, fine. But some of his policies, such as denying climate change and undermining journalism is going te have a large influence on the rest of us.

The majority of US citizens did not vote for Trump. Just thought I'd point out that most people DO NOT want this president.

Around half did want him? That's a significant of people to me, no matter if they have the majority or not.

Technically, only ~57% of eligible voters actually voted. Of those, about half voted for Trump. So only about 27% of all eligible voters actually voted for Trump. That is pretty standard for a US presidential election.

Those are the rules for democracy, so he is the legitimately elected president.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/10/13587462/...

So only about 27% of all eligible voters actually voted for Trump.

The remaining 43% voted for 'I'll take whoever wins'. So, ~72% of the eligible voters can be held accountable for him becoming president.

Those are the rules for democracy, so he is the legitimately elected president.

Definitely, it is legitimate, even if we don't like the outcome ;).

Not really a fair statement given the oddities of the electoral college. I know a lot of people in big coastal cities (New York, Boston, LA, San Fransisco, Seattle) who don't vote but are very anti-Trump. They know it doesn't matter because their states were always going to go strongly for the Democrats.

I'm not from the U.S., so my knowledge here is a bit sketchy, but wasn't one of the problems Clinton had exactly that some states which always voted for the Democrats fell to the Republicans this time?

Not really. Both bases stayed pretty true to their colors.

That's a slight simplification. There where over 200 counties that voted for Obama twice and now voted for Trump.

Right i wasn't including those in the "bases". 200 counties represents about 6% of the total number of counties in the country, and few of them are from states that "always vote for democrats"

Well, sort of. There were several states that Democrats traditionally won federally, but those weren't the "safe" ones like new York and California. The big thing Trump took from the Democrats was the Rust Belt states - the old industrial places like Michigan, which usually vote for Democratic Party presidents but have strong Republican contingencies and often have Republican governors.

The difference is that the Democratic party "rebased" itself. They've basically removed blue collar white people as a constituency that they focus on.

This created a problem, as the get out the vote efforts from groups like unions and others were tepid as a result, and the GOP isn't stupid and courted these voters pretty heavily. The other thing is that the Democrats over-relied on minority voters as a key base, which didn't work out for a variety of reasons.

I think strategically they missed the fact the ethnic voting requires an ethnic candidate. They also missed that certain key platform positions alienate ethnic factions of their voting base. In the old days, the Irish-Catholic political machines didn't run aging teetotaler baptists as candidates for a good reason!

Basically, Mrs. Clinton ran a campaign that was divided, disorganized and poorly administered, which crippled her ability to make appropriate decisions. Trump's opportunism, marketing savvy, and tight team made his campaign agile and tightly focused on the objective. When the campaign had internal divisions, he purged the dissenters and moved on.

No, no, no, she lost because of Russian hacking! /s

It seems like those people didn't feel the electoral college was problematic. Otherwise, voting would have exposed the vast discrepancy between popular opinion and the college. Even if Hillary had won, that demonstration could be used to spur reform of the election process.

Say the majority went up to 55%... We'd still need a lot more than that to change the electoral college.

And honestly, having big states control who becomes president just because of their population, given how independent states should function, is a cornerstone of the electoral college.

A presidential candidate can win the election with only 21.91% of the popular vote.

Something closer to that might be enough. However, I don't think that the electoral college could be changed because the parties responsible for changing it would be decreasing their electorates influence in the government which might be unpopular with said electorate.

> A presidential candidate can win the election with only 21.91% of the popular vote.

That's great and might seem scary to some, but nothing close to that has ever happened.

From John Q. Adams' 31% win to Clinton's 43% win, it depends on what you call "close."

> having big states control who becomes president just because of their population, given how independent states should function,

This used to be true, but as more government control has been ceded to the federal government I don't believe this to be the case. The President is not all powerful either, this should be a fully democratic election. Also, the electoral college was broken when states started alotting their votes in a winner take all manner.

> This used to be true, but as more government control has been ceded to the federal government I don't believe this to be the case.

Maybe this is the problem then? If you have less federal government control, and more state-level control then it wouldn't be as big of a deal if Trump is elected if you're a Californian. Likewise with a democratic candidate.

And the current setup actually works pretty well. You should get diminishing returns on popular vote in a republic. Otherwise you have some areas that dominate others instead of a balance. In other words, you don't punish people/states that are not highly populated. It may not have worked out for us this time around, but it's more fair. If you want a different system, then abolish the Republic and the States.

If Hillary was up to 55%, a feat not reached by Obama, the discrepancy between the college and the popular vote would be huge, at minimum 10%, which would top the already few instances of a president winning without the popular vote.

Actually no. Literally all the cities listed are in states that have agreed to a compact [1] that would award all electoral votes to whoever wins the popular vote. The thinking being that such a system would be easier than getting rid of the electoral college. It goes into effect if 61.1% of electoral votes are part of the compact.

What is it with non-US citizens in this thread? Honestly, none of you seem to have a good understanding of US politics and are being very insulting.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Inters...

But not all states are part of the compact, so they still could be convinced to join it, and a higher popularity vote margin would be more persuasive. Hillary's vote margin was smaller than Bush(2004) and both of Obama's. A 7%+ loss like 2008 would make a discussion about the electoral college more pertinent, since it's such a rare case that someone wins without the popular vote. My argument was that if people wanted to advance a position of reform, it would help highlight the college as being too far away from the popular vote.

Except a discrepancy between popular opinion and the college won't matter because the party who wins is the one that the problems of the electoral college worked in favor of. The electoral college was already brought up when Trump won while losing the popular vote, but it's just seen as "whining and complaining" so it just drops off pretty quickly.

> The remaining 43% voted for 'I'll take whoever wins'.

Or they lived in some of those insane regions where only a single voting office served thousands of people and couldn't affording standing outside for 8+ hours, or they couldn't get a tuesday off (sane countries allot a whole weekend for voting), or they couldn't afford to get sufficient id to satisfy their state's demands. (Yes, i know, mail-in voting is a thing, but i'm sure there are good reasons to keep people from using that as well.)

There's plenty of reasons otherwise eligible voters didn't vote beyond "didn't care" and many of them are "they were prevented from doing so by institutional problems".

only a single voting office served thousands of people and couldn't affording standing outside for 8+ hours

Really, that's how it is in US? Any semi-decent country is responsible for creating comfortable conditions for anyone to vote.

Here in Poland there were 28k voting offices for 30 million of potential voters, so there's on average little more than 1k voters per office. It is almost impossible to be waiting in line for more than 5-10 minutes, even in the most crowded offices.

It's one of many voter suppression tactics in urban areas.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/opinion/long-lines-at-min...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_Unite...

Elections are mostly regulated at the state and county level, which causes a lot of disparities in registration law and polling place funding. Invariably every election during the non-stop coverage, you'll see the pictures of the long lines wrapped around blocks in cities throughout the country, but especially in Republican controlled swing states. I think it's an utter failure of our society that we can't hold elections with fair and accessible voting methods.

Sadly, yes, but it's not everywhere. Jerrymandering is used by both parties to lock-in districts for particular candidates. Then voter suppression is used to keep people away from the polls, mostly used by the old Jim Crowe states, this nonsense dates back to slavery from which the US is still recovering.

'Democracy in America', by Alexis de Tocqueville is still about as valid today as when it was written. In that he describes this scene where townspeople literally shoot at a farmer to keep him away from the polls. Not all that different than the gun toting individuals who show up to polling places today to 'protect' the vote.

Yes, that is really how it is. State legislatures controlled by Republicans do everything in their power to disenfranchise minority voters. This includes gerrymandered districts, removing early voting days, not allowing early voting on Sundays, requiring an ID to vote, and calling into question the validity of the voter registration of minorities.

> Any semi-decent country

Feel free to replace with "No true Scotsman".

You know, "I'll take whoever wins" might very well be the best way I've ever seen of putting that.

It isn't a very good way, because it describes everyone who did vote, as well, no matter who they voted for.

Blaming people who didn't participate is an interesting standard. Youre assuming at everyone eligible to vote can vote.

A large number of Democrats voted for Trump by not voting at all.

They made a choice to let Trump win, just to tell Hillary (and the Democratic Party) that they didn't like her!

https://www.forbes.com/sites/omribenshahar/2016/11/17/the-no...

There's also voters who regret voting trump and voters who say they would switch from Hillary to trump.

This ignores the other parties, which can explain most of the disparity. In Michigan, other candidates got about 1% of the vote in 12 and 5% in 16. Even if it helped Trump win, labeling them "spoilers" just ensures that our terrible system will have this happen again.

Is the system terrible because the person you wanted to win didn't?

No, I can't imagine wanting either of those people to win.

But you still have to choose between those two. By voting -preferably.

Do you "have" to?

Not voting is a form of expression as valid as any other.

You really don't have to accept a very bad candidate and by doing so you signal future candidates the availability of "free" votes.

Now, I admit that voting NULL is a stronger message, but is it really an option?

No. They are the people saying I need to choose between them. Supporting either is not in my interest, they will not earn my vote by being slightly less abhorrent.

Our system stabilizes at two parties. Other parties aren't viable until/unless they hit a point where they can eat one existing party, or large parts of both. This happening will in short order kill one or both existing major parties, some brief chaos will ensue, and we'll end up with two parties again. Labeling does not cause this.

Fixing that would be great (most sensible solutions would probably also fix our massive gerrymandering problem at the same time) but is unlikely to happen any time soon.

>but is unlikely to happen any time soon.

It's guaranteed not to happen as long as you vote for the big two parties, making sure it doesn't is one of the things that gets bipartisan support.

While I agree a win for a third party likely end with the new party entrenching itself like one of the current two, that seems like the best way to get a new party devoted to fixing this to emerge.

"Those are the rules for democracy, so he is the legitimately elected president."

Absolutely according to the rules in force in the USA. Other countries have different rules, and I don't think that there is some set of unique 'best rules' for this.

UK tomorrow many of us are voting for the mayors of 'combined authorities'. The voting paper has two columns for each candidate and you get to state a first preference and a second preference - they call it the supplimentary voting system

https://www.wmcaelects.co.uk/frequently-asked-questions/

It will be 'interesting' to see how this one works in an election that noone especially wanted and that traditionally has a very low turnout - but at least we are trying different approaches.

"Conservative Mr Street took 216,280 votes to Mr Simon's 210,259. He won by 3,766 votes after second preferences of those who opted for other candidates were counted.
Mr Street said it was the start of a "new, urban Conservative agenda".

Overall, 26% of eligible voters chose a candidate with most people staying away from the polling stations on Thursday." [1]

So, the man has a majority of less than 2% in an election where just a tad over one quarter of those eligible actually voted. He is in charge of a unitary authority where most of the constituent authorities have Labour administrations.

What kind of mandate do you think this chap has?

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2017-39817224

Technically, 27% of eligible voters voted for the Republican party. How many of those voted for Trump is unknown. But it's definitely less than all of them.

> Those are the rules for democracy, so he is the legitimately elected president.

Those are the rules for American democracy, which has many flaws, an inherent two party system being one of the major ones.

Yeah, but look at the alternative. There was no winning in that election :(

Thanks for bringing up, since it is a relevant point. However, it still does not change the fact that he is now leading the most powerful nation, with all its consequences.

I have always wondered how hard it would be to switch to direct voting rather as opposed to the system with an electoral college. Is it impossible because the current system is codified in the constitution, or does it 'only' require an amendment. If so, was there ever a serious attempt to change this system?

You would have an NYC-LosAngeles government nearly every time. Clintons for life.

The system was designed to avoid the concentration of power you desire.

Why exactly would this be the case? As far as I can see most people don't live in this two cities?

And saying the US system "was designed to avoid the concentration of power" sounds like a sad joke from an European perspective (First-past-post-system, extreme presidential powers etc.)

Those "extreme presidential powers" were not in the system design.

They were submitted as (sometimes secret) change requests by every president post WW2 and accelerated by presidents in the last ~20 years. Unfortunately, the code review team didn't remove the changes and tacked on their own during the process.

Worst code review team in history. But thanks for the explanation, that makes it a bit more clear.

>They were submitted as (sometimes secret) change requests by every president post WW2 and accelerated by presidents in the last ~20 years.

They started way sooner than that, the first major one was the Louisiana Purchase. Basically non-Washington presidents have been trying to expand their power.

Most people do live in a small number of counties (~146 in ~3000). The US system is essentially designed to distribute voting power over land, rather than per capita.

It was designed to distribute votes to slave owners in order to appease the southern states. It was never about protecting small states or distributing over land.

When the constitution was first signed if votes had been distributed by population the Southern states would have essentially never had a voice, which was a non-starter for them. Considering that these states were also the economic power houses of the US, not including them was also a non-starter. The electoral college coupled with the 3/5ths compromise was the eventual solution to this problem.

Parliamentary representation and more than two parties would fix things up a treat.

Most Parliamentary representation I know do still have seats allocation based on districts/political areas, and thus the biggest issue people have with electoral system would still be there. Even the EU with the EU parliament have degressive proportionality system where the larger the state the more citizens are represented per seat.

In the end, the idea that low population area have more impact-per-voter comes from the need to keep people united and making sure that high population areas don't completely out vote the needs of the other areas. The obvious alternative is independence, so instead of one united states you would have several smaller countries based on common needs.

I think 'proportional representation' might have been what they meant.

I like NZ's MMP (Mixed Member Proportional) system, but there are others that work too. Anything that results in fewer, bigger districts electing multiple representatives should break the power of gerrymandering. And Proportional representation makes 3rd parties viable, which gives you more than a single forced political axis, and just might lift the level political discourse above the current 'My team, right or wrong'

> I have always wondered how hard it would be to switch to direct voting rather as opposed to the system with an electoral college. Is it impossible because the current system is codified in the constitution, or does it 'only' require an amendment. If so, was there ever a serious attempt to change this system?

The constitution simply says that each state gets to appoint its electors as it sees fit.

Wit that in mind, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact [0] commits states that adopt it to appointing their electors in line with the national popular vote: e.g., in the 2016 election, had it been in force, every state that had adopted it would have chosen electors for Hillary, regardless of how the vote in that state fell.

So far, it has been adopted in principle by 10 states and the District of Columbia. However, it doesn't come into force until adopted by enough states to achieve an absolute majority in the electoral college; currently, it's 105 votes shy.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...

> Is it impossible because the current system is codified in the constitution, or does it 'only' require an amendment.

1.) The constitution can be changed 2.) The thing the changes the constitution is an amendment.

You're prescribing a lot of "this is how the US political system should work" without really (it seems) understanding it.

Due to the electoral college system, correlation between "voting for Trump" and "wanting Trump as a president" isn't 100%, so you I'm not sure you can make strong conclusions based on 2.2% difference in popular vote.

Yet... Depending on how the rules of the game work the outcomes are totally different. Worth pointing out.

No, the point is, depending on the rules of the game, people vote differently. E.g. under the current system it makes no sense for republicans in NY and CA to vote... If the popular vote actually counted, the popular vote would be different (it's like quantum mechanics applied to psychology - if people know that you observe them, they change their behaviour)!

Not voting because of being in a red/blue state seems to happen to both parties. A change to the voting system would probably change behavior and (hopefully) increase voter turnout in general. :)

Though if we look at where the majority of the population lives (NY/CA) and how blue those states are he has a point here.

Speculation nonetheless though.

He has half a point. The other half is that a lot of democrats avoid voting as well, since their state is already blue.

And vice versa on both counts for red states.

Depending on the rules of the game, people also campaign differently.

That's irrelevant in this case, isn't it?

In reality. Yup.

You could say that ~70% of the voters did not try to prevent him becoming president.

Exactly! But this seems like a feature of a Two Party system rather than a bug? What happened to the Free Market and competition?

The natural "free market" tendency to form monopolies as dominate parties buy out smaller ones.

Trump voters of course didn't prevent him becoming president. They wanted him, so they voted for him. That doesn't count in my book. So with 55% turnout, that leaves 45% who didn't vote. Still a large portion.

you can say that about pretty much any Democratic government with few countries exception where it's voting mandatory and actually enforced which is very rare combination

But that is US' problem, not the world's. It's up to you to clean up in your own house and not make excuses.

The who-voted-for-whom discussion in one of adjacent subthreads just sounds like airing dirty laundry in front of everybody - nobody cares, it just makes you look bad.

He won according to the system that's been in place for 100-200 years. You don't get to support it until it works against you and then complain about it.

"That's been in place for 100-200 years"

The gerrymandered system with even more party control is not the system that has been in place for anywhere near that amount of that time.

The parties in place dont have that kind of history either.

Our voting laws are different, even non-white men can vote now! (though they are disenfranchised as much as possible.)

Basically, the system is constantly in flux, ad yes, we get to complain about it all we want and change it (again.)

Nope, gerrymandering has no effect on the presidential election because states are not having their borders redrawn.

There are maybe two states that have large electoral college districts that could be impacted by it, but they are irrelevant in the larger picture.

The electoral college system has obviously been a terrible idea for years. Plenty of people also vocally complained about it in 2000, for example.

But changing it requires changing the Constitution, which requires a supermajority of state legislatures—and the electoral college shifts power from citizens and the federal government to states.

It actually doesn't require changing the Constitution. States are allowed to allocate votes however they want. Several states have passed laws that say: when enough states pass a similar law to determine the presidency, all of our electoral college votes will go to the winner of the national popular vote.

This hack lowers the barrier, but not by enough, at least yet.

A relatively large amount of states (by electoral votes) don't support it and have held that position (and tried to change it) prior to the election.

And others (such as myself), voted for Trump only because he was the only alternative to Hillary. (Better option than Hillary, but not by much. There were other options of course, but they did not have a chance at winning). I should also specify that I voted for someone else in the primaries.

I don't know what it's going to take to break the 2-party system in the US, but people continuing to vote for "the other" candidate just because they hate "the one" certainly isn't going to influence change. I've been voting Libertarian in (almost) every race I can, for at least 15 years now, and I'll keep "wasting" my vote to send the signal that I want more parties in the system. (As in, I want to see BOTH Jill Stein and Gary Johnson at a podium in the debates, and given equal time.) I'm willing to "waste" my vote in order to tell BOTH the D's AND the R's that they do not represent my desires for governance.

We also have 2nd turn of election in Europe. Basically people need to choose between 2 candidates. I'm under impression that most of libertarian voters would vote for Hillary if they had to choose between two options.

I had hoped a bit that the security checks would actually go down during the Trump administration since he has property in the tourism sector. Maybe it will take until the last few years when political points weights less than personal wealth.

what's wrong with Japanese and Korean cars? according ADAC Japanese are by far most reliable cars beating all European brands, top 10 most reliable cars usually consists of half normal Japanese cars (eg. Toyota Corolla) and half niche European cars you will hardly see on road (think Porsche)

Nothing. We also considered some Japanese cars, but we found that they were generally more expensive (than e.g. similarly spec'ed Skodas or Seats).

uh, Seat is very well known for being very unreliable and by far the most unreliable brand of VW concern, Skoda is decent but pretty bad value against Koreans, if you equip Skoda same way as Korean you end up for sure on higher price. Japanese in general cost slightly more, but it's worth it for better engines, high quality, low risk of stealing and decent resell value, while Seat has zero value

I can't really imagine someone in US butting any of brands you mentioned, Seat is pretty bad deal even in Europe

Sorry, but the ADAC had excellent reviews for the Skoda models that we considered and good reviews for the Seats. I'd rather take their word than hearsay. Again, these models were cheaper than similar Japanese models, that we had also looked at.

Admittedly, we haven't looked much at Korean models. That's mostly because my wife (I don't have a driver's license) had no experience and consequently no opinion about them.

At any rate, we ended up buying a Skoda ;). And I see Porsches here nearly every day :p.

skodas are decent cars, it's just they are priced too high compared to Korean or even some Japanese brands which are better in all aspects

The Ford Focus sold in Europe is assembled in Germany [1]. The current US border control security climate dates since the Obama Administration.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_of_Europe#Facilities

> The current US border control security climate dates since the Obama Administration.

That is demonstrably and absolutely false.

Then Bush? Because most of what Trump tried to change in terms of border security has been sacked by judges. Travelling to the US now isn't harder than a year ago (except for the laptop ban).

it is vastly different and more difficult because of the way border agents are performing their job, not because of any change in law.

Yeah, travel to and inside the US really started to suck during the first term of the GWB administration.

To point out the obvious, that was when 9/11 happened.

Most of this stuff is a reaction to that, and it still lingers.

I was on a student visa during GWB. It was bad. All my mail from home arrived opened and resealed with DHS-labeled tape. Boarder crossings were interesting, but nowhere near those when i lived in the middle east. My favorite thing was being seated beside someone who was clearly an air marshal.... armed but asleep on the aisle seat of my row.

I let you support your vocal 'false' with data.

As for Canadians in Trump era: 'Refusals of Canadians at American land crossings dropped 8.5 per cent between October and the end of February compared with the same five-month period a year earlier, according to U.S. government statistics. The total number of Canadian travellers denied entry also dropped: 6,875 out of 12,991,027 were refused entry, a refusal rate of 0.05 per cent. Between October 2015 and February 2016, 7,619 out of 13,173,100 Canadian travellers were denied entry to the U.S., a refusal rate of 0.06 per cent.'

http://www.macleans.ca/news/number-of-canadians-turned-away-...

Trump didn't become president until January 20th. That time period is still primarily the Obama era. It will be more relevant to see the numbers from February - June.

Most recent stats are for February and from the link CAN -> US travels are up 7.2% compared with February 2016 http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/170420/dq170420b-en... June stats will be released 18-Aug

And how much of that is because brown/muslim canadians, the ones most likely to be refused, just arent risking the trip? All sorts of groups are saying it is too dangerous (schools, boy/girl scouts etc).

The money is still going to an american company.

Well, sure but it's also going to the Europeans that work in that factory, and to the local community through taxation. It probably benefits the local community just as much, if not more, than it would benefit Ford.

Not to mention, the government backed pension/retirement funds of many European nations are at least partially invested in global securities indexes and more conservative US corporate bonds. Which means many countries technically own chunks of Ford.

Also, surprise! European nations often sell their municipal bonds (to fund local projects) to American companies. Using Ford specifically as an example, I know someone who works for a local municipality in Finland and travels to Detroit every so often to sell their muni bonds to the US auto companies.

TL;DR the global flow of capital is absurdly interconnected. Trying to "hurt" a nation by not buying their goods can just as easily hurt your own country.

Which is globally owned

Yeah, but American companies leave and hide as much income and money offshore as possible for tax reasons so buying something outside the states is rarely going to give money to America.

Companies are private enterprises who's main purpose is to make a profit. They don't hide money offshore, they move money wherever it's not taxed as much. And the EU is pretty rough about that stuff anyway, especially when it comes to US corporations.

Car manufacturing is also a rather tough business to be in today - definitely not the money hiding type, but rather the "we build a factory in <insert industrial town with unemployment here> if you give some sort of tax break for a couple of years".

The personal device snooping is new.

It's not.

No it's not. Just the widespread knowledge of it. Happened to a friend of mine >5 years ago.

I hope that this sort of decline puts downwards pressure on flight and accommodation prices so it's cheaper to visit.

Is there any real change in the entry procedure to the US after Trump became president? I wouldn't think so.

If you were happy to visit Obama's US, you will hardly find any difference in Trump's US.

It's like you haven't been reading the news for the past four months. So much has changed, and it is so much of an anything-goes clusterfuck right now that it's hard to keep up.

Obama never tried to revoke visas while the people holding them were in the air.

I think there can also be a big shift in who is given a visa, without there being much visibility. Time will tell. That's not part of the entry procedure but is part of border policy more generally.

I really try to avoid political discussions on HN, as I dislike both of the major parties. I would suggest you read a book called 'Operation Troy', what Obama did IMO is much worse than revoking a visa, he extrajudicially killed an american citizen with a drone strike not in the field of battle.

So if I read a book about Obama abusing the power of the US presidency, how will that impact my thinking about whether the approach to border policy has changed under the new administration?

You avoid political discussions by bringing up a completely unrelated subject that attributes negatively to an ex president?

Did the travel ban affect you? Are you from one of the six affected countries? I read a lot of commentary about how the travel ban has influenced travel decisions, but I'm not seeing much practical impact to the vast majority of travelers.

Everyone has a right to vote with their euros of course, but I am curious if a single traveler has avoided France because of their policies in French Guyana, the Magreb or Sub-Saharan Africa or avoided China, Turkey or most Middle East countries because of human rights records? How about avoiding Italy or Greece because of widespread corruption or the U.K. because of the Brexit vote.

Avoiding travel because of political disagreements would mean that people would only visit places that are exactly like they want. It's geopolitical inbreeding.

Just a point of fact: Trump isn't denying climate change, he's skeptical of the impact from human activity.

I think it has mostly to do with how the TSA treats us non Americans. We don't have to be from one of the banned countries. Every non American has to fear being asked to hand his laptop / cellphone and whatnot.

If it makes you feel any better at all, we Americans are also treated like dirt for the disloyalty of leaving the country in the first place.

TSA are not the people who would ask you for your cellphone and laptop.

> Semi-related: we were in the market for a new car. One of the factors we decided to go for a European car this time (we had a Ford Focus before) is that we'd like to support Trump America as little as possible.

What an exciting new world we live in, in which, before we do any kind of business or trade with a company which has a presence in a foreign country, we must consider all of the policies of that country's current, democratically elected leader--and if we don't agree with them, we refuse to do any business with that company, thereby attempting to punish the citizens of that country for exercising their right to democratic self-rule. How dare they have a different opinion. We'll buy local instead. That'll teach 'em to disagree with us.

What a sad state of affairs our world will be in if we all stop doing business with those who don't agree with us on everything. We might as well organize ourselves into separate entities and only do business within them. That would be...something like nations, without trade, no? But then here we are trying to force these other nations to do what we want, thereby erasing the distinctions between them.

And that's the real goal here, isn't it? The world becomes smaller every day.

Sounds to me like voting with your pocket book. How is this a bad thing?

Would you also object if I didn't want to purchase clothes that are manufactured in a way I find morally deplorable? Hey it's not the workers fault right?

> Sounds to me like voting with your pocket book.

It's very interesting that you would compare it to voting, because that means we're talking about citizens of one country "voting" for the leader of another country--which would mean interfering with another country's elections. Are you sure you want to stick with that analogy? :)

This is in contrast with the traditional definition of "voting with your wallet," which refers to refusing to do business with companies you don't like.

> How is this a bad thing?

In a nutshell, it's bad because it further contributes to polarization and division. This becomes a self-reinforcing cycle, leading to ever more "us vs. them" thinking. Eventually it's what leads to wars. Isn't it fairly basic political theory that nations which are economically interdependent are less likely to go to war with each other? If we can't do business with anyone who has different political opinions than we do, that's a recipe for...well, war.

> Would you also object if I didn't want to purchase clothes that are manufactured in a way I find morally deplorable? Hey it's not the workers fault right?

You're comparing apples to oranges. This is not a question of a company mistreating its workers.

By the same token, I could ask you why you would punish the innocent workers who didn't vote for the candidate you dislike. By refusing to do business with them, you are hurting them, and it's not their fault the candidate got elected. Even from a purely pragmatic standpoint, this is likely to drive them away, toward your political opponents, who can tell them, "See how nasty the other side is? They won't even trade with us anymore because they disagree with how we run our own country!"

That attitude is essentially a large part of why Trump got elected: the Democrats' constant condescension toward a large swath of the population alienated them. If you mistreat people, they aren't going to thank you for it, they're going to hate you for it.

Or, colloquially, you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

I guess I'm just more cycnical (possibly pragmatic) than you, because IMO it is "apples to apples". I believe that the US was captured by corporations long before Trump made it to office, and the only way to sway corporate opinion is to hit them in the wallet.

Sadly, as a foreigner, what I purchase is the most effective way to be heard. Besides, how successful is a business that blames potential customers for not buying their products? "We're gonna bomb them until they buy our cars dammit!"

I also disagree with you about why Trump was elected. I hear this condescension argument all the time but I think it's total BS. I suspect it's more about jobless (white) men and is a much harder (and real) problem to solve than simply being polite.

> I guess I'm just more cycnical (possibly pragmatic) than you, because IMO it is "apples to apples". I believe that the US was captured by corporations long before Trump made it to office, and the only way to sway corporate opinion is to hit them in the wallet.

Corporate power is indeed an issue, but I feel like you are changing the subject here.

> Sadly, as a foreigner, what I purchase is the most effective way to be heard.

I don't think your theory is logically coherent here. If you desire to punish the corporations which you say have captured the U.S., then which candidate was elected President is irrelevant. More than that, although Trump is an entrepreneur and far wealthier than Clinton, he is also far more independent than Clinton, far less in the pocket of the mega corporations. On this concern you should favor Trump over Clinton.

> Besides, how successful is a business that blames potential customers for not buying their products? "We're gonna bomb them until they buy our cars dammit!"

Sorry, I don't understand your point here.

> I also disagree with you about why Trump was elected. I hear this condescension argument all the time but I think it's total BS. I suspect it's more about jobless (white) men and is a much harder (and real) problem to solve than simply being polite.

Well, you're entitled to your opinion, but as a non-foreigner, I think you are completely wrong. In fact, your "jobless (white) men" line is merely repeating the leftist media's racist, sexist propaganda. Note that it is, by definition, racist and sexist. It's inherently condescending, but here you are protesting that condescension had nothing to do with it.

It's disappointing that you seem to be uncritically accepting this belief. It doesn't even cohere with the data: Trump received many votes from non-whites, non-males, and the employed. The votes were split primarily along geographic lines! But don't let that stop you from blaming angry old white men for all the problems in the world. Obviously, if it weren't for them, everything would be great...

What kind of influence on voters is OK in your books? Political rallies where you lie about what you'll do and about your opponents? Discussions with friends? TV ads?

What does any of that have to do with citizens of Nation A refusing to trade with companies in Nation B because some of the citizens of Nation B elected a leader whom the citizens of Nation A don't like?

That is the kind of attitude that drives people apart, creates hostility, and eventually leads to war. In what world is that a good idea?

Can you imagine Americans refusing to buy BMWs because they don't like Angela Merkel?

Barely, because for the most part USA citizens are politically inert and/or incompetent and they wouldn't care, but in theory it would be perfectly normal. Some people feel guilty for wearing (or even owning) furs, supporting an "evil" country or an "evil" corp is clearly a worse conduct.

You mean Americans rebranding French Fries as Freedom Fries because France didn't want to get in Irak?

And this is the fucking US here, it's not a backwater country the size of a town. When the US sneezes the rest of the world catches a cold.

People are right to pressure others as long as it's done on legal terms.

Remember that a minority of Americans voted for Trump—a majority voted against him. He is president because a majority of states voted for him, not people.

Trump is not that much worse than Obama, it's mostly the media, politicians, people in power that are able to convince you of that. Remember, Obama droppee 26,000 bombs on Muslims last year, but I bet you'd never heard about a single one.

Climate Change is mostly about politics, just like the War on Poverty and War on Drugs. Yes it's real, just like people have real problems with poverty and drugs, but people starve and suffer in 2017 because of greed, which leads to politics, not because of resources. Climate Change will likely worsen the resource situation, but it's not actually the real problem with humanity. We need to get over our little egos and figure out how to get off this earth and keep exploring.

Obama droppee 26,000 bombs on Muslims last year

Strange, for someone who received Nobel Peace Prize. To be fair, he received it just for being black, nothing else (it was just after he won his first term, he hadn't even had time to accomplish anything of significance).

So you're going to not support a country with a product you like because of a president that the majority of Americans didn't want?

If you have to travel to the US, fly via Shannon Airport in Ireland. A special arrangement with the Irish government allows you to pass through US immigration and customs controls while you're still on Irish soil. When you arrive in the US, you're treated as a domestic passenger. You don't avoid the intrusive interrogations, but they're a lot more polite about it because they can't detain you. If you're refused entry, you can fly home at your own leisure rather than being detained and deported.

http://www.shannonairport.ie/gns/passengers/prepare/us-precl...

Dublin airport also has the same arrangement - it makes travelling much easier.

And if we're honest, Dublin is a better airport than Shannon

Each time I've been through it the US immigration hall in Dublin has been a right 'zoo'

Don't know if it is still the case, but Canada had a similar arrangement last time I flew through Toronto (about 10 years ago)

Yes

Arlanda airport in Stockholm is also working on a pre-clearance arrangement like this[1], although it won't start until 2019 at the earliest it seems.

[1]: https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/national-media-release/united-s...

Oh that is great news! I love visiting the US but have passed up on several opportunities to travel there this year just because it seems like such a hassle. Still, I am about to make the trip for a work conference. Even though I know the majority of people go through without incident I am still nervous about having an experience like one of those news stories.

Some of the Canadian international airports have the same pre-clearance arrangement. But I've not found the security check people any "friendlier".

In any case they're currently working out an agreement with Canada such that US agents on Canadian soil can still detain you in the same way they can in the US:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/pre-clearance-border-canada-...

I'm sure they'll try to force the same agreement on other "trading partners."

Result for me: I will not travel to U.S. except for work. And when I do I will _only_ carry work devices and accounts. My employer can and will defend itself quit well.

Here's the full list from the CBP website: "Dublin and Shannon in Ireland; Aruba; Freeport and Nassau in The Bahamas; Bermuda; Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; and Calgary, Toronto, Edmonton, Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver, and Winnipeg in Canada. CBP also staffs a Pre-inspection facility for passenger/vehicle ferry traffic to the U.S. in Victoria, Canada"

GF traveled to the US for work, a conference in Houston. Everyone that looked Arab of Muslim was 'randomly' picked out of line. Some of the employees had to undress and squat in front of the TSA and one had to undergo cavity searches.

These were regular European citizens. Let's just say conferences will be help in Europe or Canada in the future...

Are you serious? Strip and cavity searches? This needs to be on the media.

What would it change?

it's not that uncommon even in Europe to be honest, if you will find German policeman who had bad day and you drive car with foreign (PL, CZ mostly) license plate you can be searched same way under suspicion of carrying drugs and you can do nothing about it and it's happening occasionally

do we have the same definition of "cavity search"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_cavity_search

yes but you won't find articles about this in international media, because it's just lowly Eastern Europeans

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWdD206eSv0&hl=en-GB&gl=GB

Guessing you've never entered England (Or are english yourself)? English customs are way worse than American ones, in my opinion.

I'm calling bullshit on this story. I can't find any reports of TSA conducting these types of cavity searches. Ever.

Perhaps they are confusing TSA with CBP?

I couldn't find the story I was looking for but here are a few. Both TSA and CBP represented here; the CBP stories are closer to what the grandparent post describes.

These stories describe sexual assault graphically (to various degrees).

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110906/11065015824/tsa-a...

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/06/woman-sues-borde...

http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/immigration/201...

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/07/21/cbp-awards-us-citize...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/cnns-angela-rye-was-subj...

Reading these reports do you find the story 1) more likely or 2) less likely to have occurred?

Remember, he (or rather his GF) claimed the Houston TSA were routinely performing prison type cavity searches, i.e., strip, squat (and cough).

it's not random check, it's called profiling

i don't see why people have problem with this, what would be point randomly search old (white) retired woman, what risk she present? pretty much same goes for Eastern Asians, etc.

if you have biggest odds finding terrorist between dark skinned Muslims, then you will search them the most, nothing random or racist about that, it's like saying i won't take umbrella outside when there is 90% chance of rain because there is 10%chance it will be sunny

If you're going to profile and be proud... At least profile the correct demographic.

http://time.com/3934980/right-wing-extremists-white-terroris...

The study linked in your article has been updated (Spoiler alert: Radical Islam has retaken the lead by 2x)

https://www.newamerica.org/in-depth/terrorism-in-america/wha...

How would it look if we factored in the relative population?

> B-but you are more likely to be killed by white trucker driver falling asleep than a jihadist truck hijacker.

Misleading much?

Only in the past two years have there been more jihadist deaths. Not sure where you got 2x from? Unless you mean one particular year? You may want to re-read.

In reality the KKK has killed more people than all jihadists combined. That is one group.

The page states the following body counts: 95 Jihadist 51 Far Right Wing.

(bottom of the page)

So not quite 2x.

> Only in the past two years have there been more jihadist deaths. > In reality the KKK has killed more people than all jihadists combined. That is one group.

I am not familiar with the history of the KKK, but are they still a threat?

If you consider the recent incidents: Paris (how many times!?), Stockholm, St. Petersburg and Nice, do you really believe Right Wing groups poses a greater threat?

The KKK is like some mythical beast brought out every couple years to scare people.

It is almost non existent.

domestic right wing terrorist don't pass through immigration officers at airports

I suggest you look up the statistics on percentages of extremists who are/were white males.

Yes, but these extremists don't pose a thread to air security at the moment. Or as foreigners travelling to the US with bad intentions.

While it's certainly unfair for a large innocent group, it still avoids extensive checks for the rest.

they don't cross border so it's no point check for them at borders, most likely these guys don't even have passport

They seem to get the racial/sexual/agist profiling right at Schiphol (Amsterdam). I'm a white male in my twenties, and consistently get the patdown. Half the time that includes my inner thighs and the side of some guy's hand touching my balls.

I've come to dislike flying for the humiliating and demeaning security theater I have to go through for it. No way I would risk going through that in the U.S., where it's presumably worse and where I'm not a citizen.

I can barely convince myself to go to family weddings if I have to pass through Schiphol for them. At least with Schiphol I don't have the risk of being detained (or marked a terrorist for having encrypted data/voicing anti-authoritarian opinions/having contact with Muslims, "no rights applicable"), and if I were anyway I could defend myself well as I'm a somewhat savvy citizen.

I already go through great lengths to fly via small German airports, where the security measurers aren't dehumanizing. Perhaps I'll visit the U.S. by boat sometime.

Yes, it feels strange but me and my girlfriend have decided it is not worth it to try to go to america on holidaysfor now because of all these difficulties.

Quit believeing everything on the internet. I'm sure those things happen but are so far off the norm.

I've been to Europe twice this past year and I don't think it's any different.

In Italy there was military everywhere in Rome and Florence. At every monument and Big site there were military with guns looking at everyone. Sometimes stopping people.

I've never been patted down and searched as bad as I was in Frankfurt. Security and questioning was on par with US customs.

Don't even get me started on Serbia.

Europe, indeed. Try going to a museum in Paris. Not even New York has that level of military presence.

The UK seems to be trying its hardest to catch up.

India is going further and beyond[1].

[1] http://www.firstpost.com/india/aadhaar-mandatory-citizens-do...

This right wing wave is agaibst globalization. What do you expect?

On the visa price front they already beat everyone else. 115$ for half year visa? Or 450$ for two years visa? Great.

Walk in the park. I just got a Tier 1 (Exceptional Talent) visa. Total cost for mine and my partners (including flights home to NZ because, apparently, the world would end if people on working holiday visas were allowed to transition in-country)? £~5.5k

that seem pretty reasonable compared to third world country like China where I had to pay like 110€ for yearly FAMILY visa, because why not charge husband of Chinese citizen visa (plus had to renew it each year like some newcomer student) and you can't even work with this visa anyway, according Chinese government you should be freeloading on your spouse

now compare it with my wife in EU - 5 year residence permit for free, of course including work permit and also because she is taking care of our child she got free healthcare insurance

I agree with your observations, but I wanted to offer a positive viewpoint on them. One thing I learned about the US over the years is that a lot of law enforcement's heavy-handedness is an emergent property of supporting a country with extreme notions of personal liberty, not a reaction against it. The gamut of socially acceptable behavior is much wider in the US. That's necessarily reflected in how their police function, and shouldn't be to their detriment.

Fingers crossed EU will implement visa reciprocity rule. Fingers crossed.

so how is it going to make things better?

That's almost every developed country for an Indian passport.

You are right. Thats one of the reasons Ron Paul said we need a revolution over here.

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