US revokes all South Sudan visas over failure to repatriate citizens | Hacker News Reader

US revokes all South Sudan visas over failure to repatriate citizens

reuters.com

51 pointsgpi37 comments

Is the supposed to spur other governments into action?

I could imagine it might have the reverse effect. Plenty of governments would like to see their best and brightest return home, complete with lots of money, stopping brain drain and giving their economies an influx of money and sharp minds.

If China wants to I can envision a future in which Shanghai and Shenzhen have vibrant expat communities. It's not rocket science.

It's not even that far fetched, given some places such as hk are already full of expats

I'm not sure Hong Kong is the model China would use if they wanted expats.

Fair take

> I could imagine it might have the reverse effect. Plenty of governments would like to see their best and brightest return home

I can't speak for South Sudan specifically, but for Latin America, expatriates are a source of remittances that are very important for their birth countries' economies. $23 billion in remittances went from the US to Mexico in 2013 <http://www.pewhispanic.org/2013/11/15/remittances-to-latin-a...>. Another $10 billion to Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. The US provides 78% of all remittances to Latin America, and 98% to Mexico.

A full 2% of Mexico's GDP is from remittances—larger than the petroleum industry <https://www.as-coa.org/articles/weekly-chart-oil-and-remitta...>—and 10-17% (!) of the economies of the other three countries.

it's not so simple because many countries make lots of money from remittances of people working abroad in wealthy countries. setting up industry takes time; in the meantime they've lost a huge source of income.

It's supposed to spur South Sudan into action.

It is absolutely clear now that any person in the US without a US passport, i.e., anyone with a visa or green card is now at the whim of the current government and should get ready to get deported and stripped of their visa if the say the wrong thing, participate in the protest, or if T*p decides that he doesn't like their home country.

So, a question: can Musk loose his US citizenship?

I mean, Musk does have two other citizenships, and between this and the tariffs on the island full of penguins, I can easily believe either or both of two future incidents where Trump signs an EO to order deportation of anyone with SA or CA citizenship due to their respective governments not cooperating with something or other.

usually in most countries you can remove the citizenship if there was fraud in obtaining it (and maybe for some national security reasons), but I don't know the US laws (not that anyone respects them now...)

Definitely need to start a “Deport Musk” movement.

Of course he can.

But he won't. Because a core pillar of this movement is that rules are for other people.

I was under the impression that the government of South Sudan was 'fragile'...

Do the US even have diplomatic comms with the government there, or is it possible emails have been landing in an unmonitored sudan_gov_enquiries@hotmail.com email address?

Would it matter if it did or didn't? The cruelty is the point for this regime and its supporters.

What's most fascinating is that many of the latter insist that they shouldn't be judged by what it does.

Not important. This is just testing the water with places most Americans have either not heard of or can't place on a map.

I'm sure most Americans can figure out South Sudan is just south of North Sudan. Ditto for East/West Virginia.

I doubt most Americans can point to Sudan on a map.

"Why do I need to know where any other countries in the world are, the United States is the best anyway!"

going after undocumented people by going after documented people

But they are both documented - they know their names, their home country, they might even have their passports with them. The presence or absence of documents is irrelevant.

Undocumented in this context typically means they lack the necessary visas or documents to legally be present or work in the U.S

That's rather ridiculous terminology, isn't it? It's not about the documents, but about the permission the documents represent. It's like calling theft "undocumented retrieval of items", because I lack the documents to prove those items are mine - even when documents do exist, that prove those items aren't mine.

It’s a synecdoche.

The terminology came about because people didn't like them being called "illegals".

Are you sure? There is a subset of illegal immigrants that walked across the border and talked to nobody. No asylum waiver with a border patrol person, nothing.

That group is entirely unknown and undocumented to the Federal government.

I dont think its a reference to any other kind of immigrant.

What do we call this? Oh right group punishment.

Struggling to see how this bears any relevance to tech

About as much as all the pro homeschooling articles we have been reading here for months.

A lot of people in the tech industry in the U.S. are on visas. Including a lot of the YC co-founders.

Not only is this relevant to Tech, it’s relevant to YC tech.

At the very least it’s as relevant as the regular immigration lawyer AMAs.

This wave of fascism has been at least in part paid for and cheerlead by SV.

Wait until your business is suddenly out of critical developers because Trump woke up and decided to kick out legal aliens.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/05/trump-admini...

The Trump administration is currently cancelling tons of student visas for international students. A significant reason why the US is the biggest tech hub is because so many people want to come here for undergrad and grad cs programs and then join the workforce here, including by founding companies. A world where our universities can't draw the best minds from around the world is a world where tech in the US falters.

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