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Comment by readthenotes1 | Hacker News Reader

" Once you demonstrate that you are in fact a citizen of the US, you cannot be denied entry, and IMO all the regular Constitutional protections should immediately apply."

I am not a constitutional scholar, but very few of the rights given to the government specify citenzry as important. Most of the rights specified as not granted refer to people or persons, not citizens.

So your sentence should be "once you demonstrate that you are in fact a person in the United States..."

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Well technically, the border agent is in the United States. You, presenting your passport are outside the United States and requesting entry. This has consistently been the basis for the "border exception". By requesting entry, you place yourself under the jurisdiction of the border officer however you are not physically present in the US, so you do not benefit from its legal protections.

So what country's laws apply if you kill the jerk who cut in front of you in the line to talk to the border officer?

Oooh, I like this one. Force the courts to claim jurisdiction or say it is in fact anything-goes inside this box.

It's a nice rhetorical question, which is why I raised it.

In practice, it's probably like the county in Idaho in which a law professor once posited you could get away with murder[0] because there'd be no "jury of your peers" to convict you.

[0]: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=691642

If you'd prefer to read about this on Wikipedia, there's an article:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_Death_(Yellowstone)

> By requesting entry, you place yourself under the jurisdiction of the border officer however you are not physically present in the US, so you do not benefit from its legal protections

This doesn't sound right - if it was true, border officers would be free to mug and rape.

A non-citizen doesn't have any inherent right to enter the country at all. If they are allowed to, it's a privilege generously granted by the state—and as a privilege, it's entirely conditional and revocable. That being said, guests of the country must always be treated fairly and honestly, just as you would treat a guest in your home.

You are almost entirely wrong, of course. Visitors in the US do indeed have rights.

For comradery, I'm loving where this is going. I do wish we more consciously accepted that all persons have inherent rights. Looking forward to a world gov that tries to do good things someday... a la Bicentennial Man.

Sure they do, just not the right to enter the United States.

No, they are 100% correct. People who want to enter the country are not visitors in the US, by definition. And the comment didn’t say that even aspiring visitors to the US have no rights - it said they have no right to enter the country.

They didn't claim visitors in the US don't have rights. They -- correctly -- claimed that border agents can refuse to allow entry to visitors for any (or no) reason.

According to the UN declaration of human rights, Article 13 specifically, which the US signed onto, we actually shouldn't even be able to block people at the border.

"Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state."

You are misunderstanding that. It's "within the borders" not "across the borders." The second clause of Article 13 grants rights to leave countries, and to return to "his" country, which implies a right to deny non-citizens entry.

That countries can (as a rule) deny non-citizens entry for whatever reason they so desire should be obvious.

That says the opposite of your claim. "within the borders of each state" Once you wish to cross into another state (nation or country) your freedom of movement is subject to limitations

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