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Comment by jfb | Hacker News Reader

I like particularly the sneering attitude of superiority towards the initial immigration officer in this article. I'm no apologist for the US immigration system (Canada's, on the other hand, I have nothing but good words for), but Jesus creeping Christ, having to deal with that sort of entitled horseshit ten hours a day would turn the Buddha into Dick Cheney.

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I can see why you'd think that, but I was totally polite and respectful to the immigration officer at all times -- like I said, I'm a very nervous immigrant, so I would never do anything to jeopardize my processing. I don't fidget or roll my eyes, or indicate impatience. While I'm no fan of the staff of the USCIS, I would never say anything to them to indicate it. Apart from it being very impolite, it would be stupid, and I am TERRIFIED of these guys.

I understand the terror, particularly of the US ICE people, who are unnecessarily militarized at the best of times. But why the puerile jab at the officer's "educational attainment"? Needed to feel big? Story wasn't "punchy" enough?

Partly because I think it's a relevant detail -- I think he genuinely didn't understand that a web developer is a type of software developer. But partly because they scared the shit out of me, and the system is stupid and unnecessarily hostile, so, yes, I'm angry at them.

It's not only insulting and juvenile, it's irrelevant. I've met PhDs from the LSE who wouldn't know the difference between email and snail mail, but that's not material to a) how good they were at their jobs or b) whether or not they were good people.

The system is stupid, and hostile, and (in my opinion) totally self-defeating. And people -- normal, decent people -- will act like petty little tyrants in that sort of system. Isn't that sufficient to call them out? An asshole is an asshole, regardless of their eduction, no?

EDIT: Too, it may very well be material that you gave a different answer. There's only one word different between "landscape architect" and "naval architect", and those are significantly and materially different positions. How is J. Random Tyrant supposed to know that a is a member of the set b for all given a?

EDIT the second: Man, I was in love with the word "material", eh?

You're not wrong. On further consideration, I've edited the post to reflect that it was a rude and unnecessary observation.

Well, it's the person's job to be able to judge if someone's trying to falsely represent themselves in that area, so he should be familiar with what common job titles mean and which ones could be mistaken for others.

Thanks for the edit. I'm sorry if I came down on you too hard. Late nights, long weekend -- no excuses ("an asshole is an asshole, right"?)

The systems should be designed to guide the people to act like humans, I think we can both agree on that.

I find it funny because I worked part-time as a border guard with the Canada Border Services Agency doing exactly this job at YYZ while in university getting my engineering degree.

And just because you don't need a degree to be a border guard, cop or soldier doesn't mean that none of them have post-secondary education.

I'm not entirely sure, but he may have taken exception to the following from your piece:

>Of course, you and I know that the latter is just a general form of the former, but somebody whose educational attainments have qualified them to sit behind a desk stamping passports doesn’t.

Yup, making it tortuously elegant doesn't somehow un-make it a put-down. Just because you have more formal education than someone, doesn't entitle you to look down on them.

Just as you having less formal education but more authority in a given situation does not entitle you to behave like a dictator.

Easy to be righteous when you are not the one who was wronged.

I don't mock people's level of education, no matter how I have been wronged.

...he took exception to something I wrote about him 2 days later? As I've mentioned in another reply, I was scrupulously polite at the time.

Well it's a relief to know you only belittle people behind their backs.

... as opposed to how you are compassionately honest and direct with people who can ruin your life-as-you-know-it based on which brand of bigotry pill they ingested that morning? (Clearly, this applies to many other aspects of life, not just international travel!)

Sure, insulting people behind their back is unethical. So is the treatment OP was subjected to.

It's not hard to be honest with people when I don't look down on them because they're not as educated as I am...

If an officer is being disrespectful and you dislike him, that's fine. If he's being disrespectful and you immediately think "Look at this idiot, if only he knew what kind of degrees I had" you've likely got a problem.

Action begets reaction.

When someone is a jerk to you you tend to react to that. This may be irrational but that's the way most people work and it is perfectly natural.

Not everyone reacts that way, which suggests to me it's not "natural".

Which airport?

IMHO, SFO is probably the best airport to arrive at immigration wise. LAX is a little bit worse, but that's more of a 50/50 on whether someone's having a good day or not.

JFK, on the other hand... Ouch.

SJU (Puerto Rico) is probably the most lax of any I've seen.

This was MIA. And yes, SFO is by far the friendliest airport I've ever arrived at (the others being Dallas/Fort Worth and JFK).

Dear god. MIA sucks even as a US citizen. Avoid it if you possibly can. (I used to live in Anguilla so I'd fly that route a lot, and always did a hop via SJU or to anywhere but MIA.)

Holy God, is MIA ever a donkey circus. That is the single worst place I've ever been (there's a peek into my knapsack of white male privilege for you all). That place would sour the sweetest vintage.

I would never do anything to jeopardize my processing

They can google your name and find the blog post next time you enter.

It would be awesome if they were allowed to Google me from their stations, since the Internet is very clear that there is only one male human being called Laurie Voss in the entire world, and Twitter provides daily records of my movements for anyone who cared to find out. Unfortunately, they are only allowed to look at the screen in front of them, and the few details in the USCIS database.

Actually one time, I was able to prove to one border officer that I really was the CEO of our startup by Googling our website and showing him the "about us" page. He even let me log into my Gmail account and show him proof of my company's existence (PDFs of lease agreement, incorporation documents).

Maybe it's just me but I have always had really good experiences with border officers and those guys have always been friendly to me. In the particular case described above I ended up chatting with the guy about random stuff for like a few minutes after which he wished me a great day.

Don't forget those people are human too, and unless you act like a terrified robot, they will more likely treat you in the same way.

Yes, this is something I can relate to. The worst I've had is being ignored when I try to make conversation ("Good Morning", "How's it going so far?" etcetc), but usually they seem happy to help.

What you described was unremarkable. It should not have been stressful, and it is certainly not worth complaining about.

Different people respond differently to the same situation. What's a walk in the park for one can be heart attack inducing stress for another.

The author considered it worth complaining about, I disagree but again, we're different people.

The fact that you think that it is unremarkable is remarkable, and is part of the reason why this nonsense continues.

Yeah, being an immigration worker would actually be kind of interesting and fun in a way, if you liked people. You get to meet a bunch of new visitors to the US, be the first contact they have on arrival, etc. I know in other countries (middle east, asia), it's a highly sought after job, and has relatively high status and decent benefits, if not high pay.

Customs, however, would be hell -- essentially on the front lines of the war on drugs and maybe terrorism in some cases (although I guess immigration is relevant to terrorism in limited cases too). Customs people tend to also be more corrupt in many countries.

> Customs people tend to also be more corrupt in many countries.

Ha! I was flying from a East European country. At the Customs at the airport someone was stopped over something they couldn't bring in. I overheard him tell the customs officer "hey let's step over to the side and 'figure this out'". 'Figure this out' is euphemism for "I'll pay you some money or drop some names and you'll let me in".

I remember hearing from someone I know intimately of an awesome deal worked out where someone could hypothetically "steal" his own packages from the airside of an airport, for $20, to bypass months of customs impound (no duty was payable, including the 5% reconstruction levy, since the actual items were going to exempt parties such as the national government).

on the other hand, if someone hassles you like that isn't it kind of inevitable that you'd end up feeling superior to them? from a sheer psychological perspective you can't help but feel "well, i know that there's no real reason to hassle me; if s/he doesn't know that, they must be incredibly stupid/uneducated/malicious/some other negative quality", because from your point of view there is absolutely no positive reason you can attach to their actions.

I'm not seeing this? Maybe I missed something.

Ah. Okay, yeah, what's up with that dude? :)

"Of course, you and I know that the latter is just a general form of the former, but somebody whose educational attainments have qualified them to sit behind a desk stamping passports doesn’t."

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