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Comment by jeff_vader | Hacker News Reader

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...

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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!

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

Israel does the same thing.

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

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.

"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.

>You can't lie

Demonstrably false.

>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).

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