Administrative Purgatory

> DHS and USCIS aren't idiots; they can tell there's a world of difference between a former Soviet republic(e.g. KZ,KG,UZ,etc) and other -stan countries.

I am a white and Christian European, the sort of person who generally does not get much scrutiny when traveling internationally. Yet quite often when I fly into the USA, the mood of the Customs and Border Patrol officer changes markedly when he notices that I have a Kazakhstan tourist visa in my passport. Since the officer is not allowed to ask you right out “Are you Muslim?”, I once got the indirect question “Did you travel to this country because you sympathize with the belief system of its inhabitants?”

I would hope that DHS staff in offices vetting visas are more knowledgeable about the world, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they weren’t.

Thank you for your advice, unfortunately, I'm from the one -stan country ineligible for the Diversity programme: Pakistan.

They can make specific requests. It's just like tweeting at CEOs: terrible for democracy, but often surprisingly effective.

It’s not about that; Congress-people making an inquiry can often cause someone’s visa application to jump to the top of the work pile.

Mozilla could also reach out to the State Department, though under the current administration I wouldn’t expect much help.

Probably true, but also ridiculous.

That's probably because it's often used to describe lawyers, which have a pretty notorious representation, as a whole.

That's because the US has an insidious, persistent, and wide-spread strain of anti-intellectualism. I can think of no time prior to college outside my home when being smart was actually considered "cool". In the US, "cool" is bossing other people around, and smart people get in the way of that. It's why Presidents like GWB purposefully put on a "dopey" persona, and it works.

When I first heard "boffin" I too thought it was derogatory, because, why would someone use a slang term to describe someone as smart if it wasn't in a snarky or derogatory manner?

Americans instinctively assume “boffin” is derogatory because it’s totally absent from American parlance (iOS autocorrects it to “bogging” in US), so without the cultural context it just sounds like a goofy word, like “doofus.” In an American context, it’s not a word that sounds as if it’s being spoken with admiration, so the true meaning is counterintuitive.

I associate it with The Register. A lot of British slang sounds silly to Americans.[1] Construing it as derogatory is not an expression of American anti-intellectualism. It's the opposite - the term sounds to us like it's making fun of smart people especially due to certain writers overusing it.

[1] A parody of this: https://www.memecenter.com/fun/3500907/my-face-when-american...

How old are you? By 1983 "hacker" already had negative connotations.

>vintage coder

woops, my apologies, carry on.

Don't think I'll be adding this "social media" account information to any visa request.

Makes a lot of sense; companies need to do business with other companies, often abroad. If you have to get work permits for visits and meetings, that would hamper the economy on both sides. Not sure about the elitist part there.

This is after all partly why the US tax system is so complex... It's well-known that tax preparers lobby against tax simplification.

Still happening today if you saw the news this year.

In principle I don't disagree with you; the US certainly had its share of purely bureaucratic boondoggles (e.g. Veterans' Affairs). And were it not for the TSA, our almost systematically acerbic customs officers, overbroad do-not-fly lists, the excessive systematic distrust placed on foreign visitors (e.g. by requiring visas even from close allies), and (most recently) travel bans designed to cut off families from each other, I would agree with you in this specific case. But these aren't just happenstance resulting from bureaucratic fumbling; these are conscious policy decisions.

We did after all just experience a national episode of confusion by a seemingly organic process (fake news) which turned out to be orchestrated by a foreign power for its own benefit. It's not unthinkable to me that (purely as an example) Russia also tilts public discourse in such a way as to make it politically untenable to dismantle, or even let stagnate, these self-destructive security apparatuses.

It's entirely possible the answer is very simply, "the xenophobic voter block really is so committed and influential." No conspiracy there, and that's a very useful answer. It tells us exactly where we need to focus our energy to fight these policies. I personally doubt that xenophobes are so educated about international travel as to pay sufficient attention to the workings of the visa system that it matters to them in the voting booth that Swedes need visas for nerd conferences, but I could very well just be biased.

That's my fear... It's scary when someone with a private, nationally destructive agenda ends up in a position of power, buoyed by voters who only care that they make a show of loyalty over some unrelated and pointless hot-button issue. Politicians have gotten really good at identifying and exploiting those lately...

Global businesses love hiring people from outside the US because they love paying them a far lower salary than a US citizen would command.

> Many more than want to go to, say, Argentina. So our immigration laws need to be a bit more strict to restrict what could be a flood of immigrants

I disagree with this statement. The immigration laws of the United States need not be more strict; if anything, they should simply be more fair. The biggest problem with our laws is that they leave far too much up to discretion. If you turn in this stack of paperwork and if the person reviewing the application finds that you have met the requirements and if the person reviewing the application doesn't simply say "denied," then you may receive a visa.

Decisions of immigration, visa, and consular officers are not reviewable by any court or administrative body. You are not even entitled to know why you were denied. The reviewing individual may simply deny you for no reason at all.

That's not fair.

> Second, we are understandably paranoid about security

I also disagree that our paranoia about security is "understandable." I don't believe that it is. Virtually every action we have taken since That One Big Attack By Terrorists That Everyone Cites has shown that we're less paranoid about security and more paranoid about looking secure. Those are two almost totally different things. This means that our government takes wild actions that make us look secure--like simply banning all nationals of several countries, even people who happen to be dual-nationals of those countries--while accomplishing little.

That's unwise.

I can go to Sweden (and thus the entire Schengen zone, i.e. most of Western Europe) with just a passport, no visa. Why is the reverse not true? Europe is just as popular a destination as the States. Is there a flood of Swedes trying to illegaly immigrate?

"Unity" and "culture" don't "make America great". (Nor does the US even have a single culture. There are dozens within a mile radius of where I sit.) Greatness is only bestowed by others, and, non-Americans have really started looking down on America thanks to its antagonistic travel policies that strain friendships, families, and business ties.

Seems to me that the visa-free program should be expanded to include more VWP countries. Not sure how much risk we'd incur from accepting Icelanders sans ESTA.

Hmm is that why Canada is likely to deny him entrance as well?

> US-friendly Western country.

Wouldn't that be Eastern countries, technically speaking? unless you used it as a synonym for "First" world countries.

If you by "a few" mean "9".

For what it's worth, visa-free travel is not really a privilege extended by a country, but an expression of their degree of trust.

Many European countries accept U.S. travellers without any additional filings because they trust U.S. passport holders, generally speaking (except the ones they have files on, in which case they'll already be following that up when you get there). The U.S. does not necessarily trust Swedish passport holders in the same way that Sweden trusts U.S. passport holders.