Screw it – Travelling and not arriving | Hacker News Reader

Screw it – Travelling and not arriving

diotalevi.com

55 pointsdavidw27 comments

I've been thinking about this consequence of government ineptness for a while now. The problem is that politicians think (rightly) that they have gamed the feedback loop that is public opinion successfully. What they haven't recognized is that there is a much more serious and devastating long-term feedback loop, that will not just remove the politicians but thrash the whole country. The global brain drain that benefitted the US following WWII was not accidental or inherently one-way.

The only thing we're not seeing (or at least I'm not) is any country advertising themselves and sticking their neck out as a refuge. If there was, you could see the drain start swirling pretty quickly.

What they haven't recognized is that there is a much more serious and devastating long-term feedback loop, that will not just remove the politicians but thrash the whole country.

How do you expect that this will cause the politicians to be removed? My observation has been that, thanks to poor-to-nonexistent economics education, politicians are able to turn this backwards, getting people fired up for mercantalist, protectionist policies. Those intuitively sound good, although completely discredit by economists, and wind up worsening the problem -- all with the blessing of the people.

They work in 9-10 hour shifts, 24/7, with hundreds of people to check (often people who doesn’t know any English word) during peek times.

Quite frankly, the expression "peek time" in this context is nothing short of hilarious. Well played.

"people who doesn't know" is funny also, I wonder if it is intentional.

Sorry, I'm not a native english speaker. I fixed the typos in my blog post.

No worries, me neither..

Somehow, this sort of thing pisses me off way more than the TSA crap. Also, it's much more directly related to startups and their future in the US and elsewhere. I don't know what they do with the comments from the web, but I did take the time to contact my congressunits.

...

Unfortunately, the article seems to have had a virtual stone hung 'round its neck. Hrmph.

FYI, paper > phone > fax > email > web form at at least one Congressional office. If you want to make an impression, buy a stamp. (If you want to make a bigger impression, you can hack the system a bit: send a certified letter with return receipt requested to your Congresscritter care of a committee they serve on. A staffer will open it, quickly discover it isn't committee business, and send it to the Constituent Services staff at the politician's office in one of the committee's envelopes. You think they ever forget to open physical mail from the Ways and Means Committee?)

> And I was going (ingenuously, naively, stupidly certainly) under a touristic visa because it was simply the only option (more on that later) to go there. > > Refused entrance because I was going to do unauthorised work in the US

I can't think of any way that the customs officials could have known that he was going to do work unless he told them. It seems to me then that the naive stupid thing was not trying to enter on a tourist visa, but telling the officials that he wasn't really a tourist. When dealing with government officials, a little discretion can go a long way.

Some people believe that lies to immigration officials are acceptable, others feel that one should answer honestly or not at all. To the extent that "naive stupid" means the same thing as "honest and principled", you are correct. Perhaps he should have sought legal advice before entering, but I would presume that the author made this choice consciously based on his personal values. I wouldn't insult him by calling him naive and stupid unless you are certain your personal values are better than his.

Hi, I'm the OP of the blog post.

Just to clarify (as I did in the comments section of my blog). You can say whatever you want when you go through customs: that's just a summary screening.

But when you go to the secondary check, you have to give a sworn statement; and they do some clever tricks to "warn" you and suggest you to tell the truth.

Indeed - what you say is very important. You can legally enter on the visa waiver in order to attend business meetings. If you do this for extended periods you will probably be required too prove that you aren't being paid, have your residence overseas, etc. (IANAL)

In my experience a good immigration attorney is requirement for doing any of thus kind of thing otherwise you're taking an uninformed risk.

Again and again we see people migrating from closed to open technologies, often despite initial strong advantages of the closed platform.

I wonder if the same thing could happen with innovative startup markets.

A country with a completely open emigration process which does not have too much corruption and reasonable internet access might be able to capitalize on this.

I believe Singapore is trying this.

From everything I can find on Singapore's official immigration site, they have similar requirements to any other nation: http://www.ica.gov.sg/page.aspx?pageid=151&secid=150

What are you referring to? I'd be interested to find out.

Just don't get caned while you're there.

What do big international companies do when they want to send someone from a non-US office to work on a short term project in a US office?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-1_visa:

It is a non-immigrant visa, and is valid for a short amount of time, generally three years. L-1 visas are available to employees of an international company with offices in both a home country and the United States, or which intend to open a new office in the United States while maintaining their home country interests. The visa allows such foreign workers to relocate to the corporation's US office after having worked abroad for the company for at least one year prior to being granted L-1 status. The US office must be a parent company, child company, or sister company to the foreign company.

This seems to be a perfect fit for the author, does it now?

I don't suppose so - the L-1 only seems to apply to the situation posited by GP, i.e. someone going from a non-US office to a US office.

In author's case, it doesn't seem like he was going from one office of the company to another. Seems like the H1 (as mentioned by Vivtek) would better suited for him.

Edit: Disclaimer: I am not an immigration expert :)

If it's short-term, a regular H1 business visa is three months extensible to six. You're still paid at home, not in the States, but that's often a legal fiction because your salary is reinvoiced as an international transaction.

That's what we're doing with a technical salesman from Budapest in a little tech venture of mine.

People come into the US every day to meet clients, visit suppliers, talk in conferences etc, usually on tourist visas. The author's story really is outstanding, I don't know whether it's a particular customs official or his answers.

But it seems to me the author's point is the lack of community in EU startups, rather than the usual HN US visa discussions (which, as non-American, I find greatly exaggerated - if you're not resourceful/motivated enough to build a product outside the US or, if you really must, find a way in, you might consider if a startup is really your thing)

Lots of HR people, lawyers, and contacts within the immigration offices.

Perhaps this is a case where the phrase "Tis easier to ask forgiveness than permission" applies?

Except that, in the case of the USCIS, "forgiveness" isn't in their procedure manuals.

Yeah. Once you're busted, it's hard(er) to ever get a real visa again. Unfortunately, that's the "illegal" part of of "illegal immigration." In AZ, you might even spend some time in jail...

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