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Comment by seszett | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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