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Software Engineer Detained At JFK, Given Test To Prove He's An Engineer (mashable.com)
New submitter mendred quotes a report from Mashable: Celestine Omin, a software engineer at Andela -- a tech startup that connects developers in Africa with U.S employers -- had a particularly unwelcoming reception when he deplaned at John F. Kennedy Airport and was given a test to prove he was actually a software engineer. A LinkedIn post detailing Omin's challenging experience explained that upon landing in New York after spending 24 miserable hours on a Qatar Airways flight, he was given some trouble about the short-term visa he obtained for his trip. According to the post, an unprepared and exhausted Omin waited in the airport for approximately 20 minutes before being questioned by a Customs and Border Protection officer about his occupation. After several questions were asked, he was reportedly brought to a small room and told to sit down, where he was left for another hour before another customs officer entered and resumed grilling him. Omin was instructed to answer the following questions: "Write a function to check if a Binary Search Tree is balanced," and "What is an abstract class, and why do you need it."
And then the officer who fired the tazer went to prison for 30 months. Nice of you to leave that out.
"Old man yells at systemd"
I had something similar although less exciting happen to me in early 2004. On claiming to be an electrical engineer, the immigration agent or whatever the US calls him scrawled a physics equation on a piece of paper and asked me what it meant to me. He was satisfied with whatever explanation I gave and let me through. I don't know if they've always done this, or if it's a post-9/11 thing, but it's been happening for more than a decade.
French historian detained for 10 hours
http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/28/...
Australian Children's author detained
http://www.smh.com.au/entertai...
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No commercial airline flight is 24 hours. There used to be a 19 hour one for a Singapore to New York flight but that's no longer in service.
The Mashable report quoted in the Slashdot summary uses a slightly different phrasing from the original LinkedIn report. The LinkedIn article actually says "after having spent 24 hours cramped in an economy seat on Qatar Airways".
Poking around a bit on Kayak, I see a bunch of Qatar Airways itineraries from Lagos, Nigeria (LOS) to JFK that involve three segments, with stops in Doha, Qatar (DOH) and western Europe (CDG, FCO, MAN, etc.). Total travel time is 27 or 28 hours, with nominal times in flight adding up to about 23 hours. Add an hour in a holding pattern somewhere (or queued up for takeoff on a taxiway, or waiting for a gate to open up), and the poor guy could easily have spent 24 hours in an economy-class seat on his way to JFK. Yeah, the phrasing's a bit sneaky since he would have had a couple of short "intermissions" to stretch his legs...but still, if we figure he arrived at LOS two hours before his flight, he would have been stuck in the international air transport system for better (worse?) than thirty hours all told.
~Idarubicin
Lol no sane immigration policy has border patrol agents administering visas at the border.
Traveling on a U.S. passport, I've been to several countries where yes, they do indeed issue you a visa at the border.
Breakfast served all day!