Administrative Purgatory

https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2018/07/28/administrative-purgatory/

by robin_reala • 8 years ago

221 84 8 years ago

daniel.haxx.se

hawkice• 8 years ago

Worth noting: there is a way to do this well. I've been through a visa screening involving domestic and international criminal and espionage background checks that completed in about ten minutes while I waited (that country was the Philippines). There are also a great deal of countries where they allow visas on arrival, where presumably the quite minimal screening happens at the airline.

vinceguidry• 8 years ago

While this is true for just about every single other country, the US remains an impossible-to-grok travesty of justice. When I read about what my country does to the people that seek to be a part of it, I can only think back to the 1700s where many many countries wouldn't just deny you entry, they'd imprison you for the horrible horrible crime of just being at their borders.

The father of the guy that wrote The Count of Monte Cristo was imprisoned for two years in the Kingdom of Naples for the horrific crime of needing provisions after a storm killed their self-reliance.

It's exactly the kind of barbarism I think of when I consider the US stance towards any kind of interested interlopers. You must be doing something wrong, wait until I go through the X days process to decide you're not a horrible person.

Disgusting.

PakG1• 8 years ago

Still happening today if you saw the news this year.

amingilani2• 8 years ago

Despite being someone from a country that end in -stan, I got my US travel visa approved immediately and processed in a week.

While I don't know why you were rejected the first time around, I think the 102 day wait time is because your application is at the bottom of someone's work pile, where it will stay until they realize something is wrong.

I'd personally ping them again and politely ask if it usually takes this long to process applications of this sort.

villedepommes2• 8 years ago

I think this is a very common misconception. DHS and USCIS aren't idiots; they can tell there's a world of difference between a former Soviet republic(e.g. KZ,KG,UZ,etc) and other -stan countries. Also, the US maintains the fairly extensive diplomatic staff in those states. Lastly, if you were to apply for a Green Card, while holding an H1-B, you would get it years before an Indian or Chinese national due to the quota system. I would imagine it should be also easier for people like you to get the Green Card through the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program.

Mediterraneo10• 8 years ago

DHS and USCIS aren't idiots; they can tell there's a world of difference between a former Soviet republic(e.g. KZ,KG,UZ,etc) and other -stan countries.

I am a white and Christian European, the sort of person who generally does not get much scrutiny when traveling internationally. Yet quite often when I fly into the USA, the mood of the Customs and Border Patrol officer changes markedly when he notices that I have a Kazakhstan tourist visa in my passport. Since the officer is not allowed to ask you right out “Are you Muslim?”, I once got the indirect question “Did you travel to this country because you sympathize with the belief system of its inhabitants?”

I would hope that DHS staff in offices vetting visas are more knowledgeable about the world, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they weren’t.

amingilani2• 8 years ago

Thank you for your advice, unfortunately, I'm from the one -stan country ineligible for the Diversity programme: Pakistan.

dsr_2• 8 years ago

Some Mozilla employees might make inquiries with their congressional representatives and senators; that's what they are there for, in theory.

rabidrat• 8 years ago

I think the SF/BA reps and senators are already pretty well-aware that our borders are terrible, but they lack the political situation and/or acumen to do anything about it.

dsr_2• 8 years ago

They can make specific requests. It's just like tweeting at CEOs: terrible for democracy, but often surprisingly effective.

xenadu02• 8 years ago

It’s not about that; Congress-people making an inquiry can often cause someone’s visa application to jump to the top of the work pile.

Mozilla could also reach out to the State Department, though under the current administration I wouldn’t expect much help.

bodas2• 8 years ago

www.haxx.se:

"Haxx is a bunch of friends who work as software developers and hackers in Sweden"

Yep, that'll do it.

mehrdadn• 8 years ago

Yeah, had the exact same thoughts here. Using names like that is just asking for trouble.

tempestn• 8 years ago

Probably true, but also ridiculous.

cyberferret• 8 years ago

I'm old enough to remember when "hacker" was a term of respect and awe for people with top notch technical skills.

Then again, I have come across many Americans who think "boffin" is a derogatory/negative term too...

windows_tips• 8 years ago

That's probably because it's often used to describe lawyers, which have a pretty notorious representation, as a whole.

colanderman7• 8 years ago

That's because the US has an insidious, persistent, and wide-spread strain of anti-intellectualism. I can think of no time prior to college outside my home when being smart was actually considered "cool". In the US, "cool" is bossing other people around, and smart people get in the way of that. It's why Presidents like GWB purposefully put on a "dopey" persona, and it works.

When I first heard "boffin" I too thought it was derogatory, because, why would someone use a slang term to describe someone as smart if it wasn't in a snarky or derogatory manner?

starmftronajoll• 8 years ago

Americans instinctively assume “boffin” is derogatory because it’s totally absent from American parlance (iOS autocorrects it to “bogging” in US), so without the cultural context it just sounds like a goofy word, like “doofus.” In an American context, it’s not a word that sounds as if it’s being spoken with admiration, so the true meaning is counterintuitive.

perl4ever• 8 years ago

I associate it with The Register. A lot of British slang sounds silly to Americans.[1] Construing it as derogatory is not an expression of American anti-intellectualism. It's the opposite - the term sounds to us like it's making fun of smart people especially due to certain writers overusing it.

[1] A parody of this: https://www.memecenter.com/fun/3500907/my-face-when-american...

Torgo• 8 years ago

How old are you? By 1983 "hacker" already had negative connotations.

vintage coder

woops, my apologies, carry on.

lawrencegs2• 8 years ago

And here we are discussing this on HACKER NEWS :))))

incompatible3• 8 years ago

Don't think I'll be adding this "social media" account information to any visa request.

nhebb• 8 years ago

To anyone who thinks this is ridiculous, try browsing the search results from the Google News tab:

https://www.google.com/search?q=hacker&tbm=nws

In the US, it would be unusual to find someone outside of tech circles who thinks the term "hacker" means something non-malicious.

lawrencegs2• 8 years ago

Contact immigration lawyer, maybe?

oneplane• 8 years ago

I wonder if there is a 'job creation system' at play here for those lawyers to have a job or exist in the first place. If a country has a good and functional administrative system in place, that would not be needed.

colanderman7• 8 years ago

This is after all partly why the US tax system is so complex... It's well-known that tax preparers lobby against tax simplification.

olivierlacan• 8 years ago

This makes me wonder how many thousands or hundreds of thousands of people are stuck in similar USCIS/USCBP purgatories regardless of the type of visa application they're waiting to receive a response about.

n1231231231234• 8 years ago

Belgium can be equally excruciating. a friend of mine moved from india to belgium. after living here for more than a year, his parents wanted to visit him. the parents have a house in india, family, the father is on a decent indian pension, etc.

it took the belgian embassy about four months to decide on the application. however, to be able to apply, you have to make all your travel arrangements. they didn't anticipate the process to take this long, had to first move, and then cancel their arrangements altogether. in the end, the application got rejected, but the official reasons were cryptic. my friend's interpretation was that the embassy was concerned that his parents might not return to india. they had the option to appeal, which can take 6 to 12 months. chances of appealing successfully are low and so are the chances of getting a visa in a renewed application. in the process, they lost about €3000, which is a lot of money in rupees.

instead of appealing, the parents booked a vacation in the netherlands. the visa application went through in less than a month. they got a schengen visa, meaning that they could also visit belgium. and this is how his parents visited him in the end.

his conclusion was that belgian bureaucracy is out of hand and that the EU has interesting loopholes.

kurthr• 8 years ago

I have a friend who's a musician, that's been coming to the US to tour a month a year for a decade. This last time his visa got stuck for a full year and even his immigration lawyer couldn't figure out who was holding it up. Instead they applied for the EB-'Eistein visa' which was issued in only 3 weeks so that he could tour. It did take a call from said lawyer reminding them that a US corporation would be losing money if it wasn't done on time.

Still, he was shocked shocked by a quick EB as a weekend strummer with a few regular US gigs. Lawyer cost $6k.

gruez2• 8 years ago

Among other things it requires me to provide info about [...] and every email address I've used during the last 5 years.

the other requirements are quite easy to fulfill, but the last one... what if you used disposable mail sites (think mailinator), or a bunch of registered throwaway emails that you simply don't remember anymore?

colanderman7• 8 years ago

Who lobbies for our awful travel system? I mean, of course there's a large contingent of Americans who are xenophobic and nationalist, but such pseudo-fascist bureaucratic red tape doesn't come into being unless powerful entities who stand to benefit from the bureaucracy take advantage of the populist zeitgeist to bend political will to their favor. Who gains power by arbitrarily rejecting random Swedes' visas and ultimately chilling international intrapersonal relationships and flow of culture?

zavi• 8 years ago

Immigration laws have largely been unchanged for decades and are severely out of touch as a result. Nobody with actual power (i.e. Congress) wants to touch immigration as it's a politically charged subject. Politics is ugly in the US nowadays, everybody knows this but it's hard to break out of the deadlock.

Niten• 8 years ago

such pseudo-fascist bureaucratic red tape doesn't come into being unless powerful entities who stand to benefit from the bureaucracy take advantage of the populist zeitgeist to bend political will to their favor.

I assure you it can arise entirely out of negligence, ignorance, and the mindless application of poorly thought-out rules. The impulse to look for the hidden "powerful entities" behind the curtain is an understandable but unfortunate form of conspiracy thinking, and it's unlikely to guide you to the truth of situations like the author's.

colanderman7• 8 years ago

In principle I don't disagree with you; the US certainly had its share of purely bureaucratic boondoggles (e.g. Veterans' Affairs). And were it not for the TSA, our almost systematically acerbic customs officers, overbroad do-not-fly lists, the excessive systematic distrust placed on foreign visitors (e.g. by requiring visas even from close allies), and (most recently) travel bans designed to cut off families from each other, I would agree with you in this specific case. But these aren't just happenstance resulting from bureaucratic fumbling; these are conscious policy decisions.

We did after all just experience a national episode of confusion by a seemingly organic process (fake news) which turned out to be orchestrated by a foreign power for its own benefit. It's not unthinkable to me that (purely as an example) Russia also tilts public discourse in such a way as to make it politically untenable to dismantle, or even let stagnate, these self-destructive security apparatuses.

It's entirely possible the answer is very simply, "the xenophobic voter block really is so committed and influential." No conspiracy there, and that's a very useful answer. It tells us exactly where we need to focus our energy to fight these policies. I personally doubt that xenophobes are so educated about international travel as to pay sufficient attention to the workings of the visa system that it matters to them in the voting booth that Swedes need visas for nerd conferences, but I could very well just be biased.

olefoo• 8 years ago

It is a tactic common to abusers to cut victims ties to the outside world. Here we see the same psychological dynamic at work at the level of nations.

tedunangst2• 8 years ago

My first guess is that a lot of this happens somewhat behind the scenes. Senate committee asks what's been done to keep the bad people out, bureaucrat replies with new 20 item checklist. Next year it's 40 items... Insane senators certainly want lots of public showboating, but also probably believe in their mission and try to apply the screws even when voters won't know.

colanderman7• 8 years ago

That's my fear... It's scary when someone with a private, nationally destructive agenda ends up in a position of power, buoyed by voters who only care that they make a show of loyalty over some unrelated and pointless hot-button issue. Politicians have gotten really good at identifying and exploiting those lately...

NTDF94• 8 years ago

Who lobbies for our awful travel system?

American voters. American paranoia causes things like "Extreme vetting" to be totally acceptable. The consequence is global businesses need to move things out of the country.

CostanzaKing4• 8 years ago

Global businesses love hiring people from outside the US because they love paying them a far lower salary than a US citizen would command.

CostanzaKing4• 8 years ago

Lots of ugly and false assumptions you're making in this comment, but I'll bite.

Billions of people want to come to the US. Many more than want to go to, say, Argentina. So our immigration laws need to be a bit more strict to restrict what could be a flood of immigrants to a more manageable flow. This is necessary for cultural and economic reasons, to promote unity and stability, which make America great.

Second, we are understandably paranoid about security, which also leads us to more restrictive immigration laws.

That said, nearly a million people immigrate into the US each year. Most Americans like legal immigrants contrary to what propoganda you may read or hear, considering we are a nation of immigrants.

techsupporter• 8 years ago

Many more than want to go to, say, Argentina. So our immigration laws need to be a bit more strict to restrict what could be a flood of immigrants

I disagree with this statement. The immigration laws of the United States need not be more strict; if anything, they should simply be more fair. The biggest problem with our laws is that they leave far too much up to discretion. If you turn in this stack of paperwork and if the person reviewing the application finds that you have met the requirements and if the person reviewing the application doesn't simply say "denied," then you may receive a visa.

Decisions of immigration, visa, and consular officers are not reviewable by any court or administrative body. You are not even entitled to know why you were denied. The reviewing individual may simply deny you for no reason at all.

That's not fair.

Second, we are understandably paranoid about security

I also disagree that our paranoia about security is "understandable." I don't believe that it is. Virtually every action we have taken since That One Big Attack By Terrorists That Everyone Cites has shown that we're less paranoid about security and more paranoid about looking secure. Those are two almost totally different things. This means that our government takes wild actions that make us look secure--like simply banning all nationals of several countries, even people who happen to be dual-nationals of those countries--while accomplishing little.

That's unwise.

colanderman7• 8 years ago

I can go to Sweden (and thus the entire Schengen zone, i.e. most of Western Europe) with just a passport, no visa. Why is the reverse not true? Europe is just as popular a destination as the States. Is there a flood of Swedes trying to illegaly immigrate?

"Unity" and "culture" don't "make America great". (Nor does the US even have a single culture. There are dozens within a mile radius of where I sit.) Greatness is only bestowed by others, and, non-Americans have really started looking down on America thanks to its antagonistic travel policies that strain friendships, families, and business ties.

j0057• 8 years ago

The truth is much worse: nobody is in control, nobody knows what they're doing, everybody is just kind of doing something.

microcolonel3• 8 years ago

Wasn't aware that Swedes needed visas to visit the U.S, wonder why that is.

ajdlinux• 8 years ago

If you're not arriving by land from Canada or Mexico, you need to at least have an ESTA, even if you're from a US-friendly Western country. If you're denied an ESTA (as in this case) you have to go through the regular visa process. This applies to Swedes, Brits, Australians...

microcolonel3• 8 years ago

Seems to me that the visa-free program should be expanded to include more VWP countries. Not sure how much risk we'd incur from accepting Icelanders sans ESTA.

cozzyd• 8 years ago

Hmm is that why Canada is likely to deny him entrance as well?

0xFFFE• 8 years ago

US-friendly Western country.

Wouldn't that be Eastern countries, technically speaking? unless you used it as a synonym for "First" world countries.

ezequiel-garzon• 8 years ago

They do only when their ESTA applications are denied, as in his case. ESTA applications in turn were not required a few years ago.

moogly• 8 years ago

If you by "a few" mean "9".

roywiggins• 8 years ago

I am honestly not sure why Americans get to travel to Schengen without filing any paperwork while the reverse isn't true. I can show up in Paris CDG with a passport and get let into... all of Europe, hardly any questions asked. You would think the Europeans would get fed up with the arrangement and start imposing similar requirements reciprocally.

Ed: ah, they are a bit fed up at least https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/us-nationals-to-be-f...

microcolonel3• 8 years ago

For what it's worth, visa-free travel is not really a privilege extended by a country, but an expression of their degree of trust.

Many European countries accept U.S. travellers without any additional filings because they trust U.S. passport holders, generally speaking (except the ones they have files on, in which case they'll already be following that up when you get there). The U.S. does not necessarily trust Swedish passport holders in the same way that Sweden trusts U.S. passport holders.

psergeant• 8 years ago

They don’t. They use a visa waiver program. The author was unable to make use of the visa waiver program having been flagged. As a result, now the author does need a visa.

KKKKkkkk1• 8 years ago

Administrative processing (a euphemism for a security background check) often takes multiple months. This happens regularly to engineers and students from places like China or Iran. It can easily take half a year. I'm sure it feels Kafkaesque, but it's not unusual or exceptional.

nhf• 8 years ago

I wonder what would come out of Daniel filing a FOIA request about himself to CBP. FOIA is a nice law in that "any person" (as written in the statute) has standing to file a request, regardless of relationship to the U.S.

lowbloodsugar• 8 years ago

IANAL but ESTA is not a work permit [1], and if you were going to San Francisco for an all-hands meeting at your employer, then that sounds like work?

[1] https://de.usembassy.gov/unpaid-work-is-work-make-sure-you-h...

smelendez• 8 years ago

You are allowed to travel for business meetings under ESTA/the visa waiver program, same as a B1 visa. https://nl.usembassy.gov/visas/visa-waiver-program/

I think attending meetings of a US parent company is a pretty common use case. It is an elitist rule but what isn't.

tluyben24• 8 years ago

Makes a lot of sense; companies need to do business with other companies, often abroad. If you have to get work permits for visits and meetings, that would hamper the economy on both sides. Not sure about the elitist part there.

tgsovlerkhgsel• 8 years ago

An all-hands meeting seems to be a classic example of "business" assuming they're employed by a non-US entity (even if you work for a US-based company/org, they may have a non-US entity employing you).

NTDF94• 8 years ago

US immigration is on par (or worse than) third world countries. Having been in it for 10 years now, I highly recommend people to consider doing business in some other country.

At the end, there is only so much time left in life. Do you want to spend months and years pandering to third world bureaucracy or do you want to be quick, efficient and productive in this one single life you have?

dmh2000• 8 years ago

In the first couple of paragraphs I immediately thought 'haxx' is it. In the past at work when I downloaded from haxx.se I was always worried that IT security would swat me.

codeisawesome• 8 years ago

I am risking down votes and flagging on this, and it's so worth it.

I can't help but feel a nasty, uncalled-for sense of schadenfreude at this - White European gets denied entry to the US and it's MAJOR NEWS!! Plenty of equally talented, educated, trained, motivated, law-abiding people face this treatment everyday (or otherwise avoid risking this treatment by just not going) - just because they happen to be from "shitholes" (US Presidential Terminology of course) that happen to be shitholes in no small part because of the greedy raping and looting in quite recent history by regimes (or antecedents) that are today closing their gates (Daniel's own country included).

Nothing against Daniel - deep respect for the guy!! I hope this problem resolves for him.

But man, can't help the smile on my face. Not in the least bit because of the complaining in Daniel's post of the DS-160 - something I had to fill too, and hated it just as much, and wouldn't have made the news if I was the author of cURL because I'm Indian.

jnurmine• 8 years ago

I don't exactly know which countries are nowadays classified by president Trump as a "shithole", but I wonder what is a country that classifies as such and had been "raped and looted" by Sweden in the past?

Thinking back to the history lessons about where the historical Sweden waged wars at all in the past, I still couldn't figure it out... Ukraine, Poland, Russia, Lithuania, Estonia, Germany, Norway, Finland? Nope, none of these.

projektir• 8 years ago

This is part of the problem with there not being clear rights for people traveling to countries. You end up with a weird case where most people can get in, but some people end up in administrative balderdash with no recourse.

It would look very different if the country just wouldn't let anyone in at all, but because it lets some people in, we get this "well, you can't complain" situation.

Administrative Purgatory

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