Detained

The fact that someone with a PhD from a top university in the world (Stanford) is almost deported for no reason for trying to enter UK shows how foolish & ridiculous the immigration rules in many developed countries have become. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorge_Cham)

Any country will benefit from having someone intelligent and dedicated enough to earn such a PhD living in the country--whatever profession he happens to choose* . Many countries (China, Singapore, etc) are actively trying to lure these people in.

Such an event would never happen in, say, Singapore or South Korea, where academic excellence is valued highly (sometimes even more so than wealth).

In East Asia, if you are bookish and excel at school work, you're never looked down upon or become unpopular (as in http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html). Adults will always praise you; friends, awe and sometimes jealousy. But most people will feel alright and enjoy being your friend. In fact, there is a fairly strong positive correlation between intelligence and popularity at school (as long as you're not too introverted).

The culture of highly valuing academic excellence is one of the reasons that East Asia (esp those under Confucius influence) will likely dominate more and more areas of hi-tech industries over the next few decades (esp. the less creative areas--a likely drawback from working too hard at traditional academic excellence from too young an age is tunnel vision and perhaps getting your creative organs stifled.)

* Of course, there are exceptions like the Unabomber, but that's a very rare case. And if you want to filter out someone as intelligent as that when he intentionally wants to break the system, you might need to filter out 90+% of entering travelers anyway.

See also:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=905127

My comment from there:

So he earns a living as a cartoonist. Because of that he's invited to give talks. He gets money for these talks. How is this not working?

I can just imagine doing the same in the USA. Not.

Not so long ago when my wife (British) and I (Australian) went to Melbourne she was invited to give a lecture related to her work. The advice we were given was - accept no money at all, even for expenses.

If he didn't bother to check on these things then I have very little sympathy. The other countries almost certainly have similar conditions, and mostly things are fine if you check in advance.

One day people might get sick of it. But not before American Idol is over.