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Comment by gambiting | Hacker News Reader

So I always wondered - what happens if your flight has to make an emergency landing on US territory and you don't have a visa? Are the passengers held separately until they can board another flight, so they don't have to go through customs in that case?

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This reminds me a recent story when Norvegian Airlines plane was forced to land in Iran due to [engine problem][1].

As a result:

  The passengers have now officially entered Iran,
  and no longer are allowed to enter the US under
  the visa waiver program. This means if any of
  them are flying onwards from Oslo to New York
  (which many are) they have to go to a US embassy
  and ask for permission. They might have to do it
  for the rest of their lives.

[1]: https://www.airlive.net/boeing-737-max-8-stuck-in-iran-since...

I can't see a single sane thing about this situation, and none of my senators seem to give a shit. When I call my comments are "noted."

It's a bad idea. It shouldn't be that way.

“You should exercise your right to vote”

“Clearly, since this is the policy, it indicates that this is the will of the American people and a majority support the policy.”

It indicates no such thing.

Agreed!

So vote for someone else the next time around and tweet @$incumbent (or let them know in some other way) that you just voted for $othercanidate because they do not take your concerns about $subject seriously enough. Basically just be vocal about your issue.

The list of current policies which are wildly unjust or flat-out insane, and for which this strategy would have to be applied, is always much longer than the list of candidates. There are no US elections, ever, in which it is possible to vote for any candidate who would not have to receive a long list of such twitter posts. I don't see how this strategy can work.

In a republic that doesn't work. Citizens have one lever to control policy: vote for or against their representative. We see this all the time with statements like "I don't like X's view on abortion but I think Y's position on climate change is even more damaging so I'm voting for X."

Do you believe this will have an effect?

Probably not in the short term and only if enough people start doing it. I like the idea of making it clear for the people you're voting for and against why you're voting/not voting for them. Hopefully, it'll influence their future platforms.

If you contact your congresscritter over their official congressional channels - email, phone, Twitter, plain ol' letter - and tell them you plan to vote for/against them because of $X, a very polite intern will tell you that they will record your support/opposition to $X but that they cannot pass along your comment on voting to your congresscritter.

Be sure to share that with their campaign: that's how you get that message through.

They can't "pass along your message" specifically but when they get several hundred people saying they didn't vote for $boss because of their stance on $issue they will find a way to let $boss know about the pattern.

The sane thing about it is that it keeps the rule system simpler.

I wish there was a follow up for this article. At the end it says

> Special arrangements will have to be made between Iranian and US authorities.

Which makes it sound like they worked something out so that this doesn't effect their travel.

I mean, it happened less than 2 weeks ago - it's possible nothing has been worked out yet.

Yeah. This seems like a back burner issue for everyone except maybe a couple people on the flight who have trips to the US planned already. In any case it's minor enough that a reasonable solution will probably be reached unless there happens to be a geopolitical flare up and this minor issue gets used as a pawn.

Oh wow, I never checked the date. Thank you!

>They might have to do it for the rest of their lives.

They could do this only once every 10 years (after applying for a tourist B2 visa).

A transit C-1 visa is usually only valid for few months though, so this can still screw you over if you transit through US regularly. And no, you can't apply for a B2 visa "just in case"(I mean you can, but I doubt such request would succeed).

Well, I suppose the simplest solution is that they declare their passports lost or stolen and ask for new ones before getting to the US.

The new passports won't have traces of their entering Iran, and the US will not get their hands on the old passports and never know they were in Iran.

You can't lie if an official document asks if you've ever been to Iran though. So this could be an issue if ever applying for a green card/citizenship in US.

>You can't lie

Demonstrably false.

"Gosh, I must have slept through the whole thing!"

That didn't really matter. The statements are considered false even if you didn't know them to be false.

Cuban agents used to put the stamp in a separate paper instead of the passport so you don't have trouble if you plan to go to the US later. Not sure if that's needed anymore.

Ah. That explains a lot. I've gotten these stamps-on-paper before, and never knew why.

Israel does the same thing.

Before legal travel to Cuba from the US you just needed to not use an ATM which apparently would work. They had no problems making sure you would spend money there and accommodated Americans to not get in trouble.

One of the ESTA questions is

> Have you traveled to, or been present in Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia or Yemen on or after March 1, 2011?

I wouldn’t recommend answering this or any other CBP question untruthfully.

Don't you have the right to remain silent and not answer?

Sure, if you are American. If you're not, then you will be simply denied entry if you refuse to answer.

It's hard to be silent towards an online checkbox.

Sure, and they have the right to put you on a plane to somewhere else.

From memory, there was a similar incident in China last year; where a flight had an emergency landing and passengers (without a Chinese passport) were kept in the airport terminal overnight, as the airlines didn't organise a temporary visa allowing them to enter the country.

Almost expectedly; food, drinks and bathrooms weren't necessary provided, which is how the incident made the news in the usual "worst flying experience" kind of way.

It happened to me, although it was a long time ago, and things have changed. I was en route going from the UK the long way to Australia. I was scheduled to change places in Los Angeles and we were diverted to Las Vegas. Due to the rules about crew flying times, etc., I had an unscheduled 24 hour stopover. Then instead of direct to Melbourne it was Honolulu, Papeete, Auckland, Sydney, Melbourne.

In our case we got processed, and and assuming nothing flagged up you were given a temporary visa, told not the leave the city, and told to be back by a certain time. Or else.

But times have changed - I don't know what would happen now.

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