Afghanistan's All-Girl Robotics Team Can't Get Visas to the US | Hacker News Reader

Afghanistan's All-Girl Robotics Team Can't Get Visas to the US

forbes.com

94 pointsfazkan22 comments

This is certainly disappointing to see, but it's not new and it's not surprising. It is incredibly difficult to get a travel visa from Afghanistan to the US, last year's refusal rate was 74%.

If Canada wants to jump on situations like this (attendees can't get in), they should simply stop the grilling of U.S. professionals traveling to Canada for conferences and meetings.

Determine and tell Border Patrol that this is not work or a form of work they need to hinder.

Make this clear to the public, including the U.S. public.

Market the amenities and relative affordability of Canadian venues. And the coincident "tourism" appeal for many U.S. attendees.

Profit.

I don't know. I don't participate in these things, for many years. But, it seems attractive to me...

Why do organizations still organize international events in the US? I've heard of to many events hangstrung because their attendees were denied entry into the US these past couple of months. Move these events to Canada, Mexico or Europe until US border policy becomes a bit saner again.

There's a picture of the 6 girls in this link:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&obje...

previously https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14673603

Why in the world should we care, especially when the overwhelming majority of their countrymen don't believe they should be engaged in the activity at all?

Are you serious? US has been ther for over a decade now. One of the US goals is to promote democracy and education of women to detract from taliban ways which indeed help the US perogative, rightfully so IMHO. Even if you agree with the 'travel ban', it seems completely counter productive, careless, disrespectful, and destructive for the state department (or other powers that be) to not handle such scenarios with care and elegance. But I guess that's bureaucracy for you. Exactly one of the reasons why some were opposed to the ban to being with.

Right, the US project for 15 years now has been explicitly to destroy their traditional society via, amongst other things, emancipating their women. My question is why I or other Americans should care about that goal.

It seems like a travel ban is a really effective way to make sure that we don't in fact need to care how they run their society.

Let's also blame suffragettes for destroying our own traditional society.

I mean, if the US had lost a war, been occupied by people with the explicit stated goal of destroying their existing social fabric, who then heavily funded and sponsored "suffragettes" at the point of a bayonet after stating this was a key tactic in doing so, yeah, people might be concerned!

You should revisit the assumption that the travel ban would be effective at all. Saudi Arabia isnt on that list. Think about that for a sec. Of course we know why, because there are other national self interests involved. Of course every government has had its share of hypocracy clearly aligned with the nations self interest. Just call it like it is and don't be naive. Calling for repealing sanctions on Cuba because of 'political prisoners' should make one chuckle when looking st Saudi Arabia is concerned .

What an ugly thought. I don't know where to begin addressing you.

First, why must we help the oppressed when their local oppressors aren't concerned? Is this what you're asking? You can't possibly be serious.

Second, just because a majority of Afghani men believe something doesn't mean they all do. Those girls presumably had some support in pursuing robotics. It's more than likely the men in their family are supportive.

If there's one thing I would expect everyone to agree on, it's that helping those girls is a noble goal. They are competing on an international level despite living in an environment that stifles their creativity and freedom.

I definitely can be asking why the US apparently has an interest in spending vast amounts of money and lives, mostly from flyover country or Afghanistan itself, in the interest of changing Afghan society in a direction most Afghans aren't down with. It's extremely non obvious to me.

I'm guessing you have some moral premise about it being virtuous to spend other people's lives and money to help "the oppressed", by some construction, but I'm not sure how explicit you're willing to be about that premise, and I'm fairly sure I and many others don't agree with any plausible formulation along those lines.

changing Afghan society in a direction most Afghans aren't down with

Is that really so? Before the Russia invasion, Afghanistan was a relaxed country that attracted hippies. I have also yet to meet an Afghan in the West who would be against women working in robotics.

You might find this of interest if you weren't aware of it: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/weekinreview/18bumiller.ht...

The Russian invasion was in a large part driven by the population of Afghanistan rebelling against the central government attempting to impose that sort of liberalism. This isn't particularly controversial, even the baseline Wikipedia article about the invasion mentions this in the first couple paragraphs.

Afghans in the West are a ridiculously unrepresentative sample; you might as well talk about the views of Americans in Mecca.

You can ask and claim whatever you want. That was never in question. What I do question is whether you're serious or just trying to bait a response.

As for the moral premise you're presuming I hold, please spare me your intellectual gymnastics.

Explain to me how Afghan society would be changed by allowing a small group of girls into the United States for a few days -- so they can participate in a robotics competition.

This veneer of non-interventionism and pragmatism is no more than a facade you hide behind.

I am in dead seriousness not interested in playing just-the-tip with social engineering in central Asia; nor am I interested in wielding one segment of their population as a weapon against another in an attempt to "reform" their society, which is exactly what PR exercises like the story in question are aiming to support.

You owe me an explanation as far as why we should be messing around with their society in any respect, not the opposite.

Because care about something in which other are not caring makes the difference?

Maybe because giving a hand to a historically disadvantaged group of people IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO. I'm astonished that I even have to type this out for you.

I'de say that morally it is righteous, in the most basic sense of the word, but also you should remember that it's always easy to talk words and call for the spending of money that is not yours, to help others. Enacting these things in the real world is a different beast, and something as seemingly benign and harmless as "helping out the oppressed", can have unintended consequences.

Africa aid is a fantastic example of these consequences. The west have gradually realised over time that giving aid to these impoverished countries has far too often substandard effects to the long term health of the local communities. The aid creates dependancy, it breeds corrupt african polititians/war-lords who funnel-up all the aid money,. In summary something you'd think "Yep, definitely moral and righteous!" can do damage, even if I believe effective aid to africa is a thing we should do (but i believe a lot of the aid systems in place presently are utterly shambolic).

Give a man a fish and all that...

In the end politics and people are always more complicated than you think, more than I, you, or a little quipy saying could grok. So deriding and shouting at people (like you blatantly did to the parent comment, which was somewhat insightful and not low quality) who maybe just try and look at things from different angles, be the "Tenth Man" so to speak, isn't going to solve absolutely anything, and more relavently is not something you should be doing on HN, at all.

I think some were quick to dismiss you, but I think you actually ask a question that's truly non obvious for a lot of people.

Why care about others? Why care about anyone else but ourselves?

Personally, I feel it's because we're stronger together. The more united we could be as a race, the stronger our race would be. We'd probably innovate and invent quicker, leveraging the potential of each one's evolutionary traits.

It would also eliminate our biggest threat. Other humans have been a large cause of danger for a long time. If we could bend together at full scale, we'd eliminatea huge problem.

Finally, I think it's also because our happiness depends on others too. Feeling loved and appreciated is necessary to us. Having people to play, laugh and party with, people to eat with, to exchange and interact with while feeling safe and accepted is probably a fundamental human need. Giving it to others is one of the best strategy to in turn receive it from others. So caring for others is a good way to have others care for you.

Now, I'm being generic. Why care for those specific Afghan girl is probably even harder to understand. I'm not sure I have the full answer. I think it's simply that not doing so would be counter productive to the goal of uniting all humans. And as I explained, there could be good reason to want this outcome. But not everyone is convinced that outcome would be best for them, or that defaulting to universally caring for all is the best way to reach that outcome. Maybe that's the case for you. In which case, there's only a few possibilities. What's best for you isn't for me. You're wrong in thinking it's best for you. I'm wrong in thinking its best for me. Or we're both wrong.

Either ways, I think we could all do with talking more about this, because its actually not obvious, at least to a large number of people.

It seems your account has been using HN exclusively for political battle. We ban accounts that do this, so please don't. Instead, see the following about the intended use of this site:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

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