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Comment by Havoc | Hacker News Reader

This has very strong "cruelty is the point" vibes.

There are a fair bit of international flights in the 10-12 hour range. Add some time to pack, get to airport, baggage check, get through security & how the flight times line up and this seems calculated in a way that is precisely not doable. Never mind people not perpetually online and only seeing this a couple hours later

Meanwhile there is to my knowledge no reason why this couldn't have been 48 hours. Still fast, but doable for anyone suitably determined.

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48 hours would also have been crazy.

This should be a bill introduced in Congress, discussed in committee, voted on, and enacted with a date months in the future when it goes into effect, so that people, companies and government agencies can prepare and plan ... you know like an country with laws and procedures.

That argument went out the door when the last administration chose to open the borders.

We have laws against that. But they were ignored.

I agree that we should obey our laws. However, I don't think "they broke the rules, so I can too!" holds, and I feel it's obvious that it's wrong.

An eye for an eye make the whole world blind.

The last administration did something you don't like, so this round let's be cruel to people that didn't have anything to do with it?

The Biden administration didn't "open the borders." That isn't a thing that happened.

Yes, but that's the line some people repeat to themselves over and over to justify the political violence being used against the immigrant community in the United States these days.

> "It's not our guy's fault for going after these people, it's your guy's fault for letting so many in"

They are just rationalizing their hate.

I really would like to understand what did last administration do to open the doors. Didn't they actually deport historically high number of people?

I think technically, in terms of "removals" based on an immigration judge ordering it, Obama still has the record. For "repatriations" which includes "removals", "returns" (no order, can be voluntary), and Covid-19 health related "expulsions", Biden holds the record.

I think data availability has been poor during the Trump administration, but from public numbers that I could find for spring of this year, it's not clear that even with all the raids the Trump administration is actually deporting more people than prior administrations ... but perhaps the goal is to keep more people in detention.

https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/immigration-enforcem... https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/yearbook/2019/table3... https://usafacts.org/answers/how-many-people-were-deported-f...

Yes, no way that any of this isn't finely calibrated to cause maximum misery. I was on the wrong side of the border when 9/11 happened, for months a whole chunk of my life was in limbo. Thanks to giving my bookkeeper emergency power of attorney in just such an eventuality we managed to squeak through but if not for that bit of foresight I'm not sure if we would have.

Wild. I flew domestically about a week after 9/11 and forgot that I had my leatherman in my pocket until I got to security... and the xray operator didn't see it in my backpack.

Oh that could have ended quite differently. I've had stuff that looked on second thought very much like explosive devices (little black boxes with a bunch of wires sticking out, internal pouch batteries) in my luggage on more than one occasion. I never so much as got a peep out of anything like that. But for some reason my elderly laptop is a real magnet for official attention and there is absolutely nothing non-stock about that one.

Why does it even need a time limit? Having the rules apply retroactively for existing holders is plain cruel.

I’m also confused as to why this is Microsoft-only advice. It keeps sounding like the proclamation involves adjusting an administrative fee for new visas (which, I guess, must be how it bypasses normal rulemaking procedures?).

How does that result in a fee for re-entering on a valid existing visa? Is this less about formal policy and more about Microsoft hedging against the possibility of chaotic and arbitrary enforcement? Which seems not-unlikely when a large bureaucracy has a rule change dropped on it with 24 hours to implement…

See other posts above. The proclamation explicitly states that the fee is due upon re-entry for existing visa holders.

They always do this because they know their EOs are legal overreaches and will be heavily challenged, but want to set the status quo to enforcing and normalizing the new policy as early as possible. They don't want to give their opponents any advance notice to organize or petition against their actions. Same story with deporting Kilmar Garcia in a hurry. I don't think the cruelty is the point exactly, but it's certainly a bonus for them.

I am firmly convinced this came from Stephen Miller (current homeland security advisor). Unnecessary cruelty to legal immigrants is his trademark style.

I smell "grift is the point" vibes.

It's both.

Sure, but for _trump_, it's definitely the grift potential. For the snakes that surround him with white supremacy, it's not really cruelty.

> This has very strong "cruelty is the point" vibes.

Hanlon's razor. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Regardless of what you think about the wisdom of the policy itself, implementing it rapidly is...probably not the best decision. But it's also par for the course for this administration.

It's not clear to me that this is an intended consequence of the policy change, or just Microsoft's attorneys being conservative in the face of chaos. A plain-text reading of the EO does not support the interpretation that people with existing H1B visas would be subject to the restrictions, but rather, seems like an ambiguity in the wording that a conservative lawyer could interpret in that manner:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/rest...

> Section 1. Restriction on Entry. (a) Pursuant to sections 212(f) and 215(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. 1182(f) and 1185(a), the entry into the United States of aliens as nonimmigrants to perform services in a specialty occupation under section 101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b), is restricted, except for those aliens whose petitions are accompanied or supplemented by a payment of $100,000 — subject to the exceptions set forth in subsection (c) of this section.

This level of carelessness is malicious. Reckless neglect at best.

That's an assertion of opinion, not a fact.

This administration has a pattern of implementing policies this way, regardless of domain.

> Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity

How is this adequately explained by stupidity? Sincerely, I truly cannot imagine anyone in the US government is stupid enough to think "15 hours is enough time". This is like, 3rd grade levels of thought.

You're confusing facts with the opinions of others.

Read the EO. There's literally nothing in the EO stating that pre-existing visa holders are subject to the new rules. Someone else is interpreting the EO, and you're assuming that their opinion is the correct interpretation.

> or stating that pre-existing visa holders are subject to the new rules

How are you interpreting "on entry"?

In the plain text manner. To me the more relevant portion is this:

> ...except for those aliens whose petitions are accompanied or supplemented by a payment of $100,000

Again, just doing a plain text reading, this seems to be intended to apply to new applicants, but they didn't explicitly spell it out. It's the sort of thing that would be debated endlessly in the rounds of legal review that accompany a...more traditional...change to law, but when done quickly via EO tends to get overlooked.

I see, you're saying the stupidity here is that they didn't clarify whether it applies to existing holders. Given that possible explanation-via-stupidity, it's unlikely that it was pure malice. I actually think you make a good point. I think the proposed method-via-stupidity is important for understanding your initial claim, I doubt many people have read the EO (indeed many will not even read the linked article)

Yeah, exactly. Given the text of the EO plus the public statements about it from the administration, it sounds like an ambiguous drafting, coupled with lawyers doing what they do best (i.e. the most conservative possible interpretation of any ambiguity).

I read it as, it either was accompanied by a payment already or it has to be supplemented

Where the supplement would obviously be for the existing ones

Except you have to ignore every prior word of the sentence I quoted to make that interpretation.

The language of the EO isn't clear, that's the point. Unless the administration comes out with clarification and guidance on what and who is in scope, then one can only assume either maliciousness or incompetence.

Unfortunately I think there is enough track record that the administration no longer has benefit of doubt from Hanlon's razor. e.g.

>“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains."

sauce: https://www.propublica.org/article/video-donald-trump-russ-v...

So basically, you don't know, and you're violating Hanlon's razor because you think its wrong this time.

The fact that this administration routinely implements policies of all types in this way suggests that rambunctious implementation is the default explanation for any particular outcome.

>you don't know

Neither do you.

Hanlon's razor is a good baseline when you have no information pointing to either option.

But when you have an administration that climbs onto a podium and announces they want to traumatize people, that's a pretty direct admission of malice in my books. You're free to conclude we're just seeing a string of repeated stupidity, but frankly I think it's incredibly naive to still given them the benefit of doubt.

Violating Hanlon’s razor like it’s some universal always true rule?

A razor is a default presumption, yes. It allows you to "shave off" unlikely explanations.

When you find yourself violating a philosophical razor, it's a strong indication that you should question your priors.

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