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Comment by peteretep | Hacker News Reader

Worth remembering that visiting there (or Iran) will mean your ESTA privileges are revoked, and you’ll need a visa to travel to ‘merika.

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Holy moley, thanks for the heads up! Your comment should be the top comment, given the business of business which for us non-US citizens still requires often interacting with the said polity!

Also - US, hello? That kind of sucks. Tourism would be a great way to integrate these areas more to the "western" spheres of business (I'm not saying that is a valuable value as such, I take no sides, but I presume US would consider this still advantageous to it's positioning).

When I read this news I immediately thought I could go and visit the ruins of Babylon (yes, I can go and see pieces of it museums in non-ESTA-nulling places but it's not the same thing). Now - ancient babylon vs. ESTA privileges? Oh man, choices, choices.

I'm European-Kurd, and had to travel to Kurdistan Region (northern Iraq) for my sister's wedding a few years before I had to go to the US. I was denied my ESTA without a refund (it was $20 iirc, so not a huge amount but as someone who had just graduated, every penny counted for me) due to this exemption. Had to get a full visitors visa to go which took a lot longer, and was way more expensive. The exemption, which was put in place due to ISIS in 2013, seems reasonable though unfortunate.

Years back i seriously considered an Iran trip out of general curiosity about the region. It quickly became clear this would inhibit future travel to the US so i figured it wasn’t worth the trouble. Super disappointing, it would be cool to see the area.

This was news to me and it turns out that this is indeed the case: https://e-visa.ie/usa/news/iran-and-esta. They mention the 1st of March, 2011 as the cut off point, but I haven't been able to suss out why it's that date exactly. I'm guessing it has to do with the Arab Spring, but that is just conjecture. Hopefully someone can correct me if I am way off base.

Just get another passport. Or have them stamp your entry on a piece of paper separate from the passport.

Notice it says in the article:

> Entry: If there is evidence of travel to Israel in your passport entry is unlikely to be granted.

Israel will, upon request, give you a removable sticker for your passport instead of stamping it if you also need to travel to unfriendly countries. I'm sure Iraq will figure out the same thing. (despite the irony!)

> Just get another passport.

That unfortunately is a very dangerous and very bad advice in this case. The ESTA doesn't just check your passport for evidence of you being traveled to these countries. They ask you if you did. If you tell the truth, you don't get a visa waiver. If you lie and they learn about it from some source you can be in a heap of trouble. This trouble can include deportation, inability to ever again enter the USA, complications with entering many other western nations, etc.

I don't know about the probabilities of them figuring out the lie. It can be anywhere between "being hit by lightning" and "almost certainty". The potential consequences on the other hand are known and quite dire.

I guess it depends on the passport you are holding, doesn't it? Having a German one gives you the highest number of countries without visas, so I personally wouldn't mind. Something people travelling to Israel and the Arabic world are coping with two sets of passports anyway already.

Different if you are from another country, read poorer and not part of the Western world.

usually such places (destination under embargo or sanctions) are happy to not mark your travel document in any way and let you through. they may issue a booklet to indicate when your stay there should end which you can discard when you're out.

The problem is if the US authorities ever find out, you may be fully banned from the country. Is that a risk worth running?

I guess it depends on where you live, and if you have regular reasons to come to the US. I live in Europe and have visited the US maybe three times in my life, and I wouldn't necessarily be terribly sad if I could never visit again. So, I'd take the risk.

This, plus also if you change passports because they happen to expire or you lose them, the trail is completely broken. US immigration doesn't have a clue, not from global flight data, not from your IDs. The negative side is you have to lie on ESTA form which sucks, but the whole US approach to Iran is plain stupid and amoral so I didn't mind it.

I went to Iran, it was the most amazing 1-week trip vacation I've ever done (Damavand, Isfahan, Yazd, a bit of Tehran). Amazingly friendly people, everybody spoke english, most signs are dual farsi/english, and the best part - its completely untouched by mass tourism. Feels surreal in current world, in the best way possible.

Even if this trip would ban me for life from US which is practically impossible with current tech, trips like these are 100x worth it. Can't recommend enough.

> US immigration doesn't have a clue, not from global flight data

They may not be actively checking, but the information is definitely available for them. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27275163

Some info, yes. Definitely conclusive? I don't think so. It can be ie in form of my name & passport number. Which after changing the passport can suddenly point to number of persons from my area.

Even if it includes my address (which I highly doubt), it will be different than it was 10 years ago.

Eventually, they'll get there. But I am fairly certain today they are not there and they don't bother for average Joe anyway. For me personally, the experience, especially in hindsight for what it offered, was/is well worth this minimal risk.

The problem with the U.S. and Iran is between the governments and small sections of the population, not the general population. Of course you met friendly and amazing people!

Iran is on my list of places I'd love to go though. I can't imagine how awesome it is. There are so many sites I'd love to visit but I know as an American it's not a good idea to go right now, unfortunately.

> the whole US approach to Iran is plain stupid and amoral so I didn't mind it

What about the Iranian approach to the U.S.? What if Iran stopped development of nuclear weapons and attacking U.S. forces in Iraq and elsewhere, or sponsoring organizations that are destabilizing the Middle East? It's not like they're not also agitating the situation. It's in their best interest because that way they can maintain power.

I'm more and more becoming of the opinion we need to take away all the toys of these governments (U.S., Iran, and others).

> What about the Iranian approach to the U.S.? What if Iran stopped development of nuclear weapons and attacking U.S. forces in Iraq and elsewhere, or sponsoring organizations that are destabilizing the Middle East? It's not like they're not also agitating the situation. It's in their best interest because that way they can maintain power.

It takes threee to tango in this situation

Provocations and aggressions that maybe the US should perhaps stop doing:

- presidential candidates gleefully parodying beach boy songs about bombing Iran. [1]

- spending many 10s of billions of America’s hard earned tax dollars surroinsing Iran with several dozen military bases. [2]

- Assassinating or supporting Israel in assassinating Iranian scientists abroad.[3]

- or assassinating Iranian military leaders [4]

- Organizing violent military coups to replace democratically elected governments with Radical Islamist puppet dictatorships [5], [6]

- Gatekeeping nuclear power by releasing destructive viruses into the world to destroy Iranian Nuclear research labs [7]

1. https://youtu.be/U7s5pT3Rris

2. https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1XmUD73hHQVBbdm8UcI...

3. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/29/middleeast/iran-mohsen-fa...

4. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Qasem_Solei...

5. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27état

6. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/cia-assisted-cou...

7. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph241/holloway1/

I can list out lots of dumb and bad things that Iran is doing too, but that's besides the point. There are multiple agitators and lots of dirty hands, and that is the point.

Your frame of reference is something something U.S. bad. Others have a frame of reference that is something something Iran bad.

Both governments are bad and both continue to provoke and attack each other. For Iran it's in the current regime's best interest to stay in power. For the U.S. it's multiple other reasons.

Again, we need to take away the toys of these childish governments.

1 week in Iran sounds like torture. I spent 6 weeks there and felt like it was not nearly enough. Trip of a lifetime.

Not at all, highly enjoyable and very intense. No plans beyond Damavand, I just let it all roll as things and people were coming

You get stamped into Kurdistan. It's unobtrusive. As other posters have said, refreshing your passport before traveling to the US works.

That's what I wondered. It is pretty easy to get a second passport in Germany for cases like that, e.g. Israel and certain Arabian countries. Show one passport to country A, the other one to country B.

Lets say you have two passports. One Irish and one Russian. If you use Russian passport to enter Iraq, will you still have trouble with ESTA with your Irish passport?

You're asked to fill in a questionnaire when entering the US as a foreigner. I think lying at the 'did you visit...' questions would be grounds for the US to declare you 'persona non grata', so it's not a risk you'd want to take if want to keep the possibility of entering the US again.

IIRC ESTA only asks for 5 years of travel history so maybe it wouldn't affect people who don't plan to visit the US in the next 5 years...

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