Green card applicant banned from ever coming to USA because of a checkmark | Hacker News Reader

Green card applicant banned from ever coming to USA because of a checkmark

linkedin.com

87 pointshiphipjorge48 comments

I know this from my own experience, HR departments in most smaller companies in the US are unfamiliar with US immigration laws and are sometimes cavalier about the forms. When a mistake is made they think that it's just an oopsy and it'll work itself out. They have to fill out I-9s all the time even for American employees. It would be easy for someone to just fill it out by rote not realizing the horrible consequence. Also speaking from experience, even specialist lawyers make mistakes so getting an immigration specialist does not inoculate you from a game over situation. The decisions are often arbitrary and not consistent. This is even more an issue when directly dealing with a border agent who has infinite power, is not a lawyer, yet has to deal with nuances of immigration law. You can't appeal (unless perhaps you go the congress route but I've am not familiar with that option). All the people here who bravely sit in their high tower and pronounce judgement about this consequential error have either never had to face the same situation but I'm sure they've all had bad speeding tickets and other bureaucratic errors go against them. I'm sure they feel much different then even when the consequences are not as severe. And if you really just think tough luck you deserved it then you are just a bad person.

This might help; it might not:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ombudsman

Excerpt:

"Members of the United States Congress serve as federal-level ombudsmen in their oversight capacity over federal agencies, and employ staff specifically dedicated to legal compliance enforcement and investigations of maladministration on behalf of constituents."

So, maybe write to some of the members of United States Congress, and/or the people that work in their offices (staffers)...

Also see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ombudsmen_in_the_United_States

Opinion: The U.S. could use more Ombudsmen, specifically at Federal, State, Local, and Agency levels...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers

"Separation of powers, therefore, refers to the division of responsibilities into distinct branches of government to limit any one branch from exercising the core functions of another. The intent of separation of powers is to prevent the concentration of unchecked power by providing for checks and balances."

Not saying I'm right... those are just one man's opinions...

Anyway, good luck with your case!

The morale of the story: don't sign incomplete forms.

As for the GC case, I believe he can still make it work if he makes enough noise to get noticed by governor-level politicians. As a backup plan, he can immigrate to Canada: about the same culture, with only a few minor differences.

Whether he really needs to make it work is another question. As I get older, from time to time I entertain the idea of eventually retiring to a cheaper country, as the likely alternative is be robbed by the cruel healthcare system in my 50s or 60s.

I agree that America is the best place for ambitious smart single dudes without health problems, but as those dudes get older, they quickly realize that their exceptionally well paying job doesn't buy them a house near their workplace (especially in SF!), that all the family related things are ludicrously expensive and that any moderately severe health issues will empty their nice 500k savings accounts real quick.

How can you avoid signing ‘an incomplete form’ when so much problems can be caused by marking a checkbox? How can you avoid someone doing that after the fact?

I think he should have checked the fourth box. [IANAIL]

If someone else completed this, the problem is that to check the fourth box you must add some "Alien or Admission number" that the other person didn't know. It's easier to check the first box that doesn't ask more questions.

Edit: I like the explanation in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21932422

That's a radio group, not a set of checkboxes. Exactly one must be selected--the form isn't valid with none marked.

The only real way to get something like this fixed is (if you live in SF proper) to contact Rep Nancy Pelosi’s office, or Sen Feinstein or Harris’ offices.

I know someone who had their GC application indefinitely postponed by USCIS until Pelosi’s office started asking questions. Then it was magically approved.

My mother had to do the same with her Congresscritter.

Although it is possible this kind of insanity could be legally reversed, the personal strain and financial cost would be huge. Purely pragmatically and not because it's right, I would get on with my life in some other country and try to put this behind me.

What a stupid situation

> When taking the job, I signed an incomplete I-9 application, which later was completed by the employer stating that I was a U.S. citizen.

This seems real shady on the employer’s part. I wonder if that is something they encouraged.

Remind me of a UK national I know who used to work for one of the biggest US corporation in the 90s. He was based in the US and had to come to a trade show in Europe at the time of his work permit renewal. For some reason that's still unclear, it was denied. As he had a rather high level position, the company set their best lawyers on the case. The CEO was even involved and phoned his connections. Still no dice.

He ended up working for one of their European offices. The weird part is that he could still travel freely to the US without visa, so it was not even some security agency interference (and it was before 9/11 anyway.)

This guy (immigration lawyer) is good at resolving these kinds on SNAFUs.

https://www.kuver.com/

US immigration law is so draconian with so many gotchas, it's impossible for any person to keep track of all the actions they need to take.

This linkedin post is an example of one of those gotchas.

Does anyone know that employers need to reverify I-9 docs for visa hires everytime they get a new ead card or a new I-797? Does anyone know that drivers license needs to be renewed every single time? Whoch means taking an appointment, standing there for a day and showing the same shit documents all over again? Only to receive the drivers license after 2 months by snail mail?

Does anyone know that this has to be done even if they change jobs?

Does anyone know that if they move from one location to another they not only have to refile paperwork with USCIS, they also have to update every change in their address?

Oh btw, god forbid the USCIS cannot process documents in time (six months). They will then straggle along for 180 days or 240 days or god knows what number of days apply to what cases. What happens to I-9 in these cases? What happens to drivers license in these cases? Is the employee supposed to continue working or what?

What happens if the employer forgets a step? What happens if a lawyer makes a tiny mistake? What happens if the arrogant jerk of border control makes a mistake during reentry in the US? Why does the US consulate need to have everyone give an appointment with ALL documents again and again just to stamp a visa? What happens when they delay the process?

And I haven't even started talking about green card yet. Imagine doing all of the above for 10 years, 20 years and then being trapped for a gotcha in some paperwork somewhere? A mistake by a lawyer, by some employer. Wtf!!! Are they supposed to abandon their family, kids, friends and leave the country for this gotcha?

Are they saying that USCIS never makes mistakes?

I could go on and on. The process is incredibly bureaucratic and nightmarish. People lose their mental and physical health dealing with this shit. Families get separated routinely because of bureaucratic anarchy.

And this is all for EDUCATED workers and immigrants. This does not even scratch it for refugees, daca and others.

My serious advice to anyone who likes their life is to not come to the US. If you are already in the US, exit now. Take your job and projects with you. Go to another country where you can focus on your family, kids and maybe a business.

This is an unpopular position, but nevertheless it is the truth: No one has the right to emigrate to the United States. No one. No other country is criticized so heavily for having stringent immigration policies, this despite the fact that the US immigration policies are some of the loosest in the world.

I don't think that this was being argued. Being denied a Green card is fine, but doing so on the basis of an obviously tampered form doesn't seem fair.

Loose in what sense? Deporting someone because their employer lied on a form seems like a misfired punishment.

Deporting the employer would be fairer.

> the US immigration policies are some of the loosest in the world.

No they are not. They are absurdly restrictive and even kafkaeske.

"No one has the right to emigrate to the United States. No one."

This is besides the point entirely.

If the US is a great nation, then they can figure out out to deal with such errors, which will happen frequently.

It should be embarrassing for the nation that put 'a man on the moon' to not be able to figure out 'paperwork'.

This is about process, not immigration.

This story doesn’t pass the smell test. Author claims their employer did the necessary and expensive legwork to get them a US work visa, then author signed an incomplete I9 and their employer filled it out incorrectly without double checking the necessary documents, then the people responsible move and the company folds. I guess stranger things have happened but seems likely to me this was visa fraud.

If he didn’t overstay and had nothing to gain from the wrong checkbox being marked, that doesn’t make much sense.

I think it does if you are skeptical of the author’s account. I think it makes sense that someone not authorized to work in the US would lie on their paperwork after previously expressing frustration at the immigration process

For OPT, the employer (apparently) doesn’t take part in the process of getting the visa. I think the best skeptical take would be that maybe he didn’t tell his employer he had OPT status, so maybe he avoided filling out that part of the form, signed it, and hoped for the best.

He could not have OPT in 2012 (it requires a year of study), when this form had been faxed. He states as much, mentioning that his life was different "During the first year in the U.S." right before telling about this job.

So the best skeptical take is that he went to work illegally, was given I-9 and did not fill it because there was no box for his status at the time "alien, not authorized to work". Then the employer, who is hiring illegals and is not exactly straight edge either, filled it for him. This does not make much sense, though, since it would not matter for the employer without the section 2 of the form, which lists documents proving the eligibility for work.

He still broke the law but, maybe, not to the degree where he earned a ban from the U.S. This depends on how long he worked illegally.

Maybe. It's one "academic year." If he was on the F-1 learning English before that, does that count towards the one academic year of study?

It might if he had been in English classes, accredited to issue OPT. Seeing that OPT is available only for bachelor and master degree level of education and he states that he started with the elementary level of English it does not seem very likely even ignoring the fact that he also writes he only spent 6 months studying before passing TOEFL and applying to a business school in CA.

>Obviously, it was a genuine human error

i'm not sure what about that is obvious.

And even if we accept that this was human error, when the form you're signing says in big print multiple times that you can go to jail for filling it out wrong, maybe don't just skip that section? I understand that this is a hard situation for this guy, but simplifying this as "one checkmark" is pretty silly. His argument that he didn't check that box is beside the point - he signed his name to an inaccurate form, which still puts him in the situation of misrepresenting his identity.

The guy wasn't some refugee fleeing a country under exceptional circumstances, he was a well-off professional moving for work. there's no excuse for not hiring an immigration lawyer to make sure all the paperwork is absolutely perfect in addition to taking a huge amount of care and double checking everything.

Please consider the situation with empathy. A real person, who by all appearances would make a good citizen, is unable to live in the country of his choice because of a single clerical error. Perfection is too high a bar to hold anyone to.

being able to live in your country of choice is a privilege denied to a huge number of people who have never made a clerical error that looks identical to lying about their citizenship.

I understand this guy's problem, and i'm sad for him. but looking at it from the perspective of everybody else who's ever gone through the immigration process, or the people working on the immigration process, i can also understand why this situation couldn't really have any other end result.

Please read my comment above and stop being an argumentative pedant.

Form I-9 is primarily an employment document, not an immigration document.

> Form I-9 is primarily an employment document

The form is a requirement to be able to immigrate to the US. No form, no imigration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_I-9

You can immigrate to the US without ever filling out an I-9, if you never work as an employee while in the US.

On the other hand, a US citizen who never leaves the country might fill out dozens over the course of a career, depending on how often they switch jobs.

"i can also understand why this situation couldn't really have any other end result"

No, this is not true. Mistakes happen all the time, everywhere. This guy had no motivation to lie on a simple form.

If you want to see how this works, check with your bank. Mistakes are made all the time processing money, and usually things can be fixed.

This has nothing to do with the immigration process. My wife is an immigrant, all our headaches with those idiots didn't involve a single I-9 form.

> is unable to live in the country of his choice

That's not how things work. You don't have a right to pick and choose which countries you enter, let alone live. Emigrating is a privilege that's granted by the host nation. If a nation asks a prospective imigrant to not commit fraud or misrepresent himself while applying for a privilege, no one should be surprised if they reject your application when you are caught providing false information.

Since he presumably meets the qualifications for many countries (he's a capable manager, who would benefit his employer and improve the host country's tax earnings), there are probably many countries which would welcome him, and in that sense he does have a choice where he can live, does he not.

And is it his fault some idiot ticked the wrong box?

"some idiot ticked the box wrong" is reading the blog post uncritically. that's obviously the author's perspective here, but it doesn't really make sense.

he signed his name to a blank section of the form. that signature is an attestation that the blank section immediately above it was filled in truthfully. it can't be both blank and filled in truthfully. that somebody ticked off a box in that section later on is beside the point (all the other options appear to require additional information, which was also not provided, so whoever ticked off that box made a decent assumption).

it's a mistake in the same way as signing a blank check is a mistake

And now the US loses another talented individual. Is this really the best system?

> Since he presumably meets the qualifications for many countries

Actually he doesn't, because one of the very basic requirements is to not commit perjury in the application by providing a document claiming he was an US citizen when he was not.

And I find it highly unlikely that an employee not only forgets to fill in the box attesting his legal status in the US but also an anonymous third party happens to fill it, and fills it the wrongest (and most convenient) way possible.

If "by all appearances" you mean "according to one autobiographical blog post". My default is empathy because it feels good and costs me nothing, but I don't think authorities have the same luxury when considering the claims of arbitrary individuals who could easily be pathological liars. The Bay Area tech ethos of "disruption" often boils down to bending or flaunting the rules to achieve what you think is a worthy goal, and this guy obviously felt the calling of San Francisco quite strongly. Now you're telling me there's no way a person who spent all those years single-mindedly focused on long term residence in SF would ever check the wrong box on a form if he thought it would somehow improve his chances of achieving a lifelong goal?

> there's no excuse for not hiring an immigration lawyer

1) You're quite the zero-tolerance guy, aren't you?

Except it's not that simple. Form I-9 page 1 is to be filled out by the worker within one day of starting a new job, and page 2 afterward by the employer within 2-3 days.

So you don't have time to have your immigration lawyer actually look at it, unless you got some pre-filled form, which doesn't normally happen. In fact, you fill in page one and return it to the employer for the next step.

2) Having said that, I appreciate the original blog post bringing this to my attention, and plan to be more careful with this form than the last dozen times I've signed it.

I'm pretty sharp with US employment, tax and passport forms, yet that's the first time that I've heard somebody being banned for an I-9 mistake.

> Except it's not that simple.

The case presented so far is actually quite simple. The prospective immigrant is required to state if he is a citizen, permanent resident, or alien authorized to work. That's the employee's job, not the employer. If the employee forgets he is an alien and claims he is a US citizen then that's a problem.

> Except it's not that simple. Form I-9 page 1 is to be filled out by the worker within one day of starting a new job

Looks like its any time up to the first day of work, however the wording is a little confusing. How can you start work without accepting a job offer?

>> Employees must complete and sign Section 1 of Form I-9 no later than the first day of employment, but not before accepting a job offer.

> I'm pretty sharp with US employment, tax and passport forms, yet that's the first time that I've heard somebody being banned for an I-9 mistake.

The form clearly states some severe penalties for not answering honestly. Seems like the author got off lucky!

>> I am aware that federal law provides for imprisonment and/or fines for false statements or use of false documents in connection with the completion of this form.

>> I attest, under penalty of perjury, that I am (check one of the following boxes):

>> Employees must complete and sign Section 1 of Form I-9 no later than the first day of employment, but not before accepting a job offer.

> Looks like its any time up to the first day of work, however the wording is a little confusing. How can you start work without accepting a job offer?

It doesn't sound that confusing to me. You accept the job on date X and agree to start work on date Y; between X and Y+1, you must fill in this part of the form.

It's not uncommon to have a gap between accepting a job and starting it (in tech, at least), that's what I did as I wanted to take some time off between jobs.

something seems off though. IIRC with an I-9 you need to also provide artifacts supporting your ability to work in the US. it's curious that the article doesn't mention what documents he used and if they were appropriate for a different category.

since he didn't have a green card at that point nor US passport obviously, what documents were used to supply that evidence? e.g. "i used X and Y, which US immigration should plainly see does not support a claim of being a US citizen"

I don't know the current situation, 30 years ago there was a period where my wife was working on her foreign passport + a letter from immigration. (Which was a total joke as the letter had no anti-tamper measures whatsoever, nor was any verification done against their data. I do not recall the state of technology back then to know how high end a setup you would need to forge it--with modern tech I could easily forge it with the stuff within 3' of me as I write this.)

Indeed.

1. The form has been faxed in March of 2012 judging by the text on top.

2. According to his linkedin profile he was going to a business school in 2012 and 2013.

3. His article states that he has taken OPT to work for a year after graduation and at the end he got job offer at MuleSoft, which was in 2014.

So what was his work authorization in or before March 2012? It could not be OPT since he just started his degree in 2012 and OPT requires a year of study ( https://www.uscis.gov/opt ). He does not seem to have any work authorization other than OPT in 2014, when he has taken the job in MuleSoft so he has not started his GC application at the time (otherwise he'd had an EAD and would not need to go to Argentina for a year to get an L1 visa in the first place). So, given only the information from Linkedin I cannot see how he could possibly be authorized to work at the time. The fact he has not filled I-9 correctly just corroborates this.

> I'm pretty sharp with US employment, tax and passport forms, yet that's the first time that I've heard somebody being banned for an I-9 mistake.

Accidental false claims to citizenship are a "whoops, game over" situation which crops up on immigration advice forums from time to time. The USCIS policy manual [1] specifically mentions the I-9 citizenship question as grounds to make an inadmissibility decision, and cites relevant immigration appeals cases.

[1] https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-8-part-k-chapter-...

Interesting. It requires willful intent (this person had none) and proof of timely retraction (this person made numerous good faith attempts), both of these tests should clearly not be met.

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