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Comment by thorwasdfasdf | Hacker News Reader

>> Wang is alleged to have made fraudulent statements on this visa application. Specifically, in his visa application, Wang stated that he had served as an Associate Professor in Medicine.

seriously, that was the fault they found? it was just a mix up with his occupation. so what if he was military?

this isn't going to end well. If we randomly go arresting chinese people trying to return to china, they're just going to do the same back and US citizens are going to get arrested in China for equally BS reasons.

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> Wang is alleged to have made fraudulent statements on this visa application. Specifically, in his visa application, Wang stated that he had served as an Associate Professor in Medicine in the PLA, from September 1, 2002 through September 1, 2016.

> In reality, when interviewed by officers of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at LAX on June 7, 2020, Wang provided information that he was, in fact, still currently a “Level 9” technician in the PLA, employed by a military university lab.

> According to court documents, Wang was still employed by the PLA while he was studying in the United States and he made false statements about his military service in his visa application in order to increase the likelihood that he would receive his J1 visa.

He stated on his visa application that his employment with the military ended in 2016 when in fact he continued working for them. That’s visa fraud right there. You cannot knowingly provide materially false information to obtain US immigration benefits. They were totally right to charge him.

Imagine for a second, that you're filling out a visa application and you've stopped working for the army and started working another research job. Now, if you're still being paid, on retainer you could say that you're still working there or not, it could be either way depending on what definition you use. He probably just forgot what he wrote on his visa. How was he supposed to remember every last detail of a visa application from 4 years earlier?

Imagine if they ask you, the next time you go abroad about every last detail on your visa application, do you think you could remember every last date of where/when you were employed?

who knows, maybe his wife filled out the application for him, or his secretary.

jailing people for a simple visa application mistake is a big mistake. Bascially, they're assuming he's a spy. whatever happened to "innocent till proven guilty"?

Active-duty military of a foreign nation gets special attention at borders. As you might expect.

When I was in the USAF my unit got invited to participate in a shooting competition in Innsbruck. At the time, Austria was a neutral country (that is: not in NATO or the Warsaw Pact), so we each had a special document from their Foreign Minister giving us permission to enter while in uniform and handle weapons.

https://imgur.com/a/5ZDNWBI

This PLA Major knew that his J1 visa would have been held up (best case) or denied (worst-case) so he lied on the application about who he worked for. Customs & Border Protection is actually being low-key about this, because as an officer in a foreign military who lied and entered the country and then worked at a research facility, he could easily have been charged with being a spy.

> still currently a “Level 9” technician in the PLA

A civilian technician at the military is still quite far from "active-duty military officer." It's like calling a civilian contractor at US Army an army officer.

> It's like calling a civilian contractor at US Army an army officer.

Is this difference really so significant?

I don't think being an active mid-level military member, when he stated he wasn't, is a BS reason. I'd expect China to treat U.S. spies similarly.

if he really was a spy, don't you think he would have remembered his cover story a lot better.

What he told the CBP isn't even in contradiction with his application: "Associate Professor in Medicine in the PLA" vs "Wang provided information that he was, in fact, still currently a “Level 9” technician in the PLA, employed by a military university lab".

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