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Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

You started a hellish flamewar with this, and perpetuated it badly downthread. That's seriously not ok and we ban accounts that do it, so please don't do it again.

It's not what this site is for, it destroys what it is for, and it evokes worse from others. Not cool.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

p.s. Also, you posted this twice. Please don't do that. (The other one was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43229712 and I've marked it as a dupe and merged the replies here now.)

Fair enough, no argument from me there! I appreciate your moderation effort Dang! I was way out of line and not in a great mental headspace, and deserved to be flagged to oblivion.

Thank you for moderating this board!

You don't make examples of people.

You treat them equally by the law.

You do not put people in solitary confinement for nine days - or twenty days - and without giving them any idea of what is happening, or notifying anyone where they are. This is cruel and unusual punishment.

As an immigrant myself, I think it is cruel and inhumane to hold someone in detention indefinitely for unspecified accusations.

I think it is cruel to wish this upon others like you have done.

if you think that holding someone in solitary confinement plus another month in jail is a valid response for her case, i think you are a bad person.

i’m sorry that german border control treated you badly, but that woman did nothing wrong to you.

The thing is, in Europe, precisely in European Union, people can travel and work freely with minimum formalities across all 28 EU countries and in Norway. It's easy for European citizen (and the person in question was from Germany which is an EU member) to forget that some countries are still that deeply not civilized.

Notwithstanding that, the person should just be deported immediately, but instead was detained for multiple weeks. Is it how it supposed to be dealing with visitors?

Is America great again already?

"still that deeply not civilized."

All countries, including EU countries put restrictions on foreigners coming for work and require specific visas. And rightly so.

Not sure how to interpret your quip...

I'm not sure I understand. What do you feel she did wrong?

> Before I got my US passport, the German immigration staff would always treat me like shit, but with the US passport, I'd make sure to flaunt it so I'm not treated like yet another South Asian or Middle Eastern national.

Given the behavior of the current administration, I fear soon you will be back to be treated the old way even with US passport.

> I fear soon you will be back to be treated the old way

And if it comes to that I'll leave for my ancestral country or for a Gulf State at a G42 or ADIA type organization.

Oh? My understanding so far was that she claims to have wanted to visit a friend in the USA, and is only accused of wanting to work. Can you please pinpoint to me where you got the information?

This is her instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jessica.lia.tt/?hl=de

She lists LA like a tour date in her bio. I'm not sure if that already qualifies as intent to work in the eyes of border patrol though. But it might.

> CBP agents at the border accused Brösche of planning to violate the terms of the visa waiver program by intending to work as a tattoo artist during her trip to LA, Lofving said

Yes. Accused. That article does not mention anything else.

I personally believe that just an accusation is NOT enough to justify that treatment. In fact I don't believe that even if she did intend to work the correct thing would have been to send her back. But an accusation?!

When transiting an international border in the US, visa status information is available to CBP along with a quick perusal of the person's social media (EU states do the same if not in a VWP program).

Her social media has shown she was working as a tattoo artist on tour in LA with dates - direct violation of the VWP because it's an employment role.

This makes no sense. What law do you think she violated? And you're certainly painting Latin immigrants with a wide brush, there are a TON of us who came in illegally.

On the VWP, you cannot work - it's a visit visa.

If my parents broke the terms of their visas when they immigrated or my wife when she came on her F1 we all would face similar experiences.

Same in Germany as well.

They could have just denied entry though.

It's a visa violation, so the rules require a formal deportation as a deterrent. A country like Germany or France does the same as well.

Hopefully European nations will reform their immigration system based on this, but based on the German election results, there's no hope.

Expedited removal is part of their existing authority to deal with fraud and misrepresentation with visa entry requirements. It only requires a few hours to process and results in a five year ban from the United States as a deterrent. Detaining someone indefinitely under these specific circumstances is not something that happens in France and Germany. And until now wasn’t something that was happening in the United States.

https://immigrationforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Fact...

Formal deportation does not require imprisonment for weeks, I personally know someone deported on arrival from Spain and they were sent back to their home country a few hours later. There's no reason to do it, it costs more for the country deporting someone, it doesn't improve the deterrence since the deported will be banned from entry for a while.

> but based on the German election results, there's no hope.

I don't understand what you mean by this.

I think in a perfect and just universe, the most fitting end for this post would be for it to be perfectly preserved, with your actual name, in perpetuity, in the worlds most popular and enduring history textbook. Imagine your children's grandchildren reading this sublime example of the casual banal brutality of our time, even among regular everyday people.

I sincerely hope for that future for you, and for all of us.

I agree that a month was far too long and she should have been sent back much sooner. But, she 100% intended to violate her visa and I simply can't imagine calling a criminal being imprisoned for 1 month before being sent home, "brutality".

Absolutely.

I would yell this from the rooftops loud and proud if I was running for office in the Bay Area as a D (because I worked with them early in my career and am a party member).

Most 1st and 1.5gen Asian and Latiné Americans would agree with this statement I gave.

[flagged]

Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> This is complete bollocks. She did not try these shenanigans.

VWP is NOT a work visa. It's a visit visa.

Not even that. It is not a visa. It is a bit of virtual paper that says you don’t need one. Where did I imply it was a work visa?

[flagged]

You can't attack another user like this here. If you do it again, we will ban you, so please don't do it again.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

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