Mozilla Employee Denied Entry To the United States (gizmodo.com)

Reader Artem Tashkinov writes: Daniel Stenberg, an employee at Mozilla and the author of the command-line tool curl, was not allowed to board his flight to the meeting from Sweden—despite the fact that he'd previously obtained a visa waiver allowing him to travel to the US. Stenberg was unable to check in for his flight, and was notified at the airport ticket counter that his entry to the US had been denied. Although Mozilla doesn't believe that the incident is related to Trump's travel ban, the incident stirred fears among international tech workers, who fear they'll miss out on work and research opportunities if they're not allowed to travel to the US. The situation even caught the eye of Microsoft's chief legal officer Brad Smith, who tweeted at Stenberg to offer legal assistance.

Comments

Protectionist state

[Anonymous Coward]

As the US moves towards isolation and protectionism with both its immigration and tariff plans, it may turn into another hermit kingdom clone of DPRK and you could see states like Russia or China move to preeminence in world affairs, with Trump presiding over a culturally homogeneous but irrelevant and poverty stricken country.

Re:Protectionist state

[MightyMartian]

I can't imagine Congress is going to let this go on forever. The potential damage to the US economy is enormous. The Republicans just have to figure out how to utterly fuck the Administration over while still looking like they're on the President's side.

Re:Protectionist state

[slack_justyb]

I can't imagine Congress is going to let this go on forever.

Well the cynic in me thinks that in order for it to stop, Congress would have to *act*. There's been a whole lot of *not acting* going on in Congress as of late, and I'm perplexed as to why an economic downturn would induce that to suddenly change. Considering the most recent AHCA version to come out of the Senate, it doesn't seem like they care if the citizens die, so economic hardship should be the least of their worries. Even if it's industry that's hurting, it's not GOP industry hurting.

Re:Protectionist state

[LubosD]

Regardless of the fact that I don't like Trump, I really don't think a travel ban on a few semi-working countries is going to do any real harm to the US.

Re:Protectionist state

[MightyMartian]

A lot of that "none-acting" has been tactical. Look at health care. It's clear that neither House or Senate Republicans are really all that keen to further health care reform, at least not until after the 2018 mid-terms. So they put together legislation that they can't even convince a majority of their peers to support (let alone the Democrats), and which clearly is deeply unpopular with voters (the House bill had an approval rating of just 27%, and I can't imagine the Senate bill is going to be any more popular).

What it looks like to me is that Republican lawmakers know they have an unsuitable man in the White House, but political realities mean they can't be obstructionist in the same way they were with Obama, or in the way they intended to be with Clinton. Instead of being angrily and righteously obstructionist, they're just going to create a series of situations in which nothing much happens at all. They'll shake the President's hand, they'll praise him in the media, they'll keep up the appearances of being one big happy party, and meanwhile do everything in their power to keep that idiot from completely fucking things up.

Re:Protectionist state

[MAXOMENOS]

I can't imagine Congress is going to let this go on forever.

What exactly do we expect for Congress to do? Let's be clear here: I despise Trump, but in all likelihood, this is INS bullshit unrelated to the Trump executive order. The EO only covers six countries; Sweden isn't one of them. Even if Sweden was one of them, Stenberg has a clear relationship with a US Company. So the real question is, does Stenberg have a valid work visa? Most of the people I hear being denied entry into the US are denied because they had a paying US gig and got the wrong kind of visa. The other possibility is that Stenberg made political remarks that the US government doesn't like, and, unfortunately, the US government has denied entry to persons for that reason for decades.

Re:Protectionist state

[quonset]

I can't imagine Congress is going to let this go on forever

You can't? Considering no one in the Republican-controlled Congress has a backbone and as a result, are failing in their Constitutional duties, it is quite easy to seem them cowering like the cowards they are and letting this go on.

The potential damage to the US economy is enormous.

Which is what I'm hoping for. Yes, you read that right. I want damage to the U.S. economy because of the con artist's incompetence. Then we get to hear more of his deflections about it not being another of his failures, how it's not his fault the economy tanked, how it's Obama's fault, how Hillary would have been worse, how everyone else is to blame except him. It will be a classic case of malignant narcissism on full display.

Re:Protectionist state

[Dahan]

Even if Sweden was one of them, Stenberg has a clear relationship with a US Company. So the real question is, does Stenberg have a valid work visa? Most of the people I hear being denied entry into the US are denied because they had a paying US gig and got the wrong kind of visa

I think the summary and article make it clear that he doesn't have a work visa; he was trying to enter through the visa waiver program. And I agree that the lack of work visa is probably the issue--you can enter through the VWP or on a B-1 business visitor visa to attend a business meeting if you're employed by a foreign company and are not being paid by a US company. But Stenberg's a (presumably paid) employee of Mozilla. IANAIL and all that, but my understanding is that since he's being paid by a US company, coming to the US for a meeting with that company is considered work, and he's no eligible for VWP or a B-1 visa.

Re:Protectionist state

[LubosD]

Yes, I did notice and I understand the reasons.

I don't think it affects my ability to visit the US. There's a big difference between my (European) country and some middle eastern mess of a country.

I know TFA deals with another European being denied travel, but at the moment we know nothing about the reasons (it could as well be a system failure somewhere).

Re:Protectionist state

[Dorianny]

That's because what is being pushed thru is not "health care reform" but a partial rollback of the ACA reform. The math is difficult for the GOP in the Senate because there is around 30 senators from States that didn't expand Medicaid and would like funding cut to the program immediately and around 20 from states that did expand Medicaid and will see the vast majority of the expected 22 million looses insurance coverage. Of course Trump going from celebrating on the White House lawn, to calling it "mean" is not helping things much

Re:Protectionist state

[Captain Splendid]

You have basically assumed other people's income is yours to decide what to do with.

And liberals don't like sending half their taxes to the military, but you don't hear them whining about tyranny every goddamned second. Some of your taxes are gong to go to things you don't like, that's what civilization looks like. Man the fuck up already.

Re:Protectionist state

[MightyMartian]

It is until you have a water shortage, and then, at the point, you're going to run up against a greater good argument you can't win. Eminent domain still exists as an actual thing in the US, so your idea that you have some absolute right to whatever is on your property has never actually been true.

Re:Protectionist state

[Anonymous Coward]

And this isn't that big a deal. When I worked for ATI (Canadian company) as part of one of the US-based subsidiaries, we all had to get Canadian work visas. Well, initially no one did that and it was fine, just say the trip was for "business meetings". But then we had one guy that was going there a ton, as he now had direct reports in Canada, and I guess the Canadian immigration folks took notice. Pretty sure he was denied entry, after which we all had to get work visas.

Whatever one thinks about the travel ban, this is almost-certainly 100% unrelated. Someone just made a stink for political reasons. They've every right to do that, but we should not read more into this than some guy was denied entry.

Re:Protectionist state

[bluefoxlucid]

so they could convert obamacare to socialist single federal govt payer system.

Actually, the ACA as current puts a break in the market chain. Low-income individuals purchasing health insurance on the exchange are shielded from the cost by subsidy, and higher-income individuals ... tend to have jobs that provide insurance, due to the full-time employee insurance mandate.

If the government went to a single-payer system and mandated employers provide insurance for all employees, two things would happen.

First, there'd be less underemployment, simply because hiring two 20-hour workers gets you two insurance costs instead of one, whereas today it gets you zero instead of one.

Second, consumers want low prices, employers want to compete and make a profit, and insurers want to compete and make a profit. Because of this, employers would seek lower health insurance premiums to help keep their prices at or below competitors's prices; insurers would seek low-cost deals with healthcare providers so as to keep premiums low and outcompete other insurers; and healthcare providers would try to negotiate for the highest price they can get, but also try to capture the big markets of millions of insured by each provider so as to maximize profits, thus reaching the market equilibrium via upwards and downwards price pressures.

With that robust market to set prices, the government could require insurers and healthcare providers to disclose their deals, giving a market benchmark from which the government can demand fair standards for the Single Payer Healthcare Plan. Taxpayer money expenditure would follow the behavior of the private market, tied to market forces rather than divided from those forces as is the case with the current ACA.

That's an association we don't currently have with the ACA exchange: premiums are covered with taxpayer money, yet the people spending that money don't appear to have a direct stake in how much money is spent. They want insurance and somebody else is going to pay for it. There isn't a mechanism to make sure that the "somebody else" is paying only what any free market player would pay. Plans on the exchange are expected to compete, but who can afford those plans if they don't have a job that supplies healthcare already? Those below the income requiring filing don't even have to report if they have insurance, so any ineligibility for subsidies at that level just means people go without insurance.

A single-payer system as such would be a better free-market system.

Re:Protectionist state

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit.

The B-1 is only required if you cannot enter under the visa waiver program. Sweden is part of the visa waiver program.

Info about the B-1:

https://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-visitors-business/b-1-temporary-business-visitor

There is actually a wide-scope already in play for "business" and the US immigration department has a fair amount of information on what you can conduct as business under the visa waiver program.

Info about visa waiver:

https://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-visitors-business/wb-temporary-business-visitor-under-visa-waiver-program

If you want to know what activities are allowed under visa waiver, then let this immigration lawyer tell you:

"Traveling and working with the Visa Waiver Program generally means engaging in business activities other than the actual performance of labor. To work in the United States, you will need a visa specifically for that purpose.

The visa waiver program is appropriate for the following types of persons/activities: Selling, Voluntary Work, Service Engineer, Speaker/Lecturer, Conference, Researcher, Business Venture, Medical Elective, Telecommuters."

Re:Protectionist state

[fahrbot-bot]

That's because what is being pushed thru is not "health care reform" but a partial rollback of the ACA reform.

The current bills in the House and, more so, the Senate are more about cutting taxes, almost entirely benefiting the wealthy, than anything having to do with actual heath care, to allow conservative tax reform, also almost entirely benefiting the wealthy, to proceed using special procedural rules known as reconciliation to pass changes with a simple majority vote and avoid a Democratic filibuster. "Legislation cannot add to the deficit outside the customary 10-year budget window and be eligible for this procedural protection."

This is why Congress started with health-care "reform" before tax reform - to save money in the budget on the former so it can be squandered on the latter.

Re:Protectionist state

[fahrbot-bot]

I'm still trying to find where in the Constitution the US Federal government is charged with telling what I have to do where my health and health care is concerned.

I'm guessing somewhere in here:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Believe it or not, your health and health care (and health insurance) status may affect others and vice-versa. At some point, hopefully you will realize that we're all in this together.

Re:Protectionist state

[d34thm0nk3y]

Here's a thought, people, like yourselves, don't seem to care that people who once were able to afford insurance, now cannot.

If that's such a widespread problem then why did insurance coverage rates increase by millions?

Re:Protectionist state

[roca]

I'm almost certain that Daniel does not work directly for Mozilla Corporation (USA) but some European subsidiary.

I worked for Mozilla's NZ subsidiary and never had any trouble entering the USA on a visa waiver.

Re:Protectionist state

[bluefoxlucid]

What the feds could do...is let everyone open a liberally funded HSA, one that is NOT use it or lose it (like a FSA)....that each person could fund pre-tax...and use for their routine medical needs.

Agreed. At the current rates (about $3,750 individual, $7,000 family), an HSA is a reasonable vehicle for improving our healthcare system. Currently, HSA is an IRA that you can spend on medical, with no income restrictions and with no taxation on disbursement for medical (no penalty and no taxes taken); this means you can fund $18,000 into your 401(k) and $7,000 into your HSA regardless of income, or fund $5,000 into a traditional IRA (and $0 in a 401(k)) and $7,000 into HSA regardless of income. The IRA is useless except for retirement, while the HSA allows you to withdraw from it just like a traditional IRA at retirement and lets you invest just like a traditional IRA.

I have argued before that we should make HSA an option in all cases, mutually-exclusive of FSA. FSA allows you and your employer to mutually put money at-risk: the employer fully-funds your FSA at the beginning of the year, and so you get to spend that in full even if you leave in three months; as you get paid, your employer deducts from your paycheck to cover the FSA. That means your employer fronts the money and doesn't get paid back for some of it in the year you're terminated; and you pay back that money, but don't receive it if you carry a balance larger than the $500 roll-over. FSA works out well if you don't have current savings to hedge against a short-term medical expense.

FSA and HSA are both tax-exempt. For those of us who would rather take the risk upon ourselves, an HSA is clearly-better. It would make sense to abolish the Traditional IRA, instead unifying it to the Health Savings and Retirement Account. An HSA not used for medical expenses is a traditional IRA; and an HSA is not mutually-exclusive with a 401(k), whereas any employer retirement account reduces and eventually eliminates tax deferral for Traditional IRA deposits if your income is above a certain IRS-published maximum. Because you can put way more into 401(k) than IRA, depositing into IRA and HSA in the same year makes little sense; thus we should replace the Traditional IRA with the HSRA.

Then, they buy individually what used to be called "Major medical"...real insurance that was for catastrophic needs.

We have that now. The problem is the premiums are often some $200/month, and then you need to front 20% of the money after a $1,500 deductible per incident up to a $4,500/year out-of-pocket maximum (all out-of-pocket expenses included--regular medical plans exclude deductibles from out-of-pocket maximums). That means you need to keep at least $9,000 on-hand in case you have multiple major claims in December and January, plus you need to pay $2,400 (or more!) per year just to have coverage.

In other words: Full medical costs a minimum of $2,400/year (if you have zero medical expenses) and a maximum of $6,700/year. Covering for it reliably requires having about $9,000 on-hand at any one time. Without a prescription plan, my drugs would actually cost $8,400/year.

Regular insurance takes the gap between these (that $4,500) and spreads it across the insured. So maybe your premiums are $350/month and your medical costs $4,200/year. Maintenance drugs tend to impact this pretty heavily, although it's hit-or-miss: Eszopiclone (please no) costs $16/month out-of-pocket with no insurance, while my $700/month Atomoxetine HCl (Teva-Barr generic, baby! Nice and cheap!) costs $35 for 180 pill supply on a 3-month BID. Some drugs are hard to make, tactically-relevant to the military, or procedurally-complex due to regulation, and so cost a lot. There are $100/month generic non-controlled substances that have 37-step synthesis processes; there's a really easy-to-synthesize drug that's $224/3month (I've been on it) because the military

Re:Protectionist state

[MickyTheIdiot]

No where in the constitution are corporate rights mentioned. The current right press for corporate rights in a big way. Also Scalia, who was billed as a "strict constitutionalist" creamed his pants over corporate rights.

Until the idea that somehow corporations have rights that are equal to the rights of humans (which ARE in the constitution) then the idea that ANY of these people are strict constitutionalist is a joke.

Even though this has nothing to do with a policy

[SensitiveMale]

I don't like, I'm going to say "fuck it" and link them anyways.

Sweden

[JBMcB]

So he's traveling from Sweden, which has nothing to do with the travel ban. So why does the article keep mentioning the travel ban?

Re:Sweden

[d3bruts1d]

Because Gizmodo has become overly political since the fall of Gawker.

Re:Sweden

[Baloroth]

Because otherwise there'd be no story (actually, there is no story, but that doesn't stop journalists from writing one). The US, like every other country in the world, has immigration controls, which are handled by individual agents who have the ability to allow or deny just about anyone (aside from US citizens, who cannot be denied entry) for just about any reason, because non-citizens have no right to entry. Of course, they rarely do so as long as you have the right visa/waivers/come from a country with the right treaties, but they always *can*. It might not stick (i.e. you may be able to appeal the decision and enter later), and the agent will likely end up fired if they act arbitrarily against policy, but it can always happen.

I'm not going to give Gizmodo the click to read TFA, but my guess is he probably didn't actually have all his paperwork in order, but that's just a guess.

Re:Sweden

[bill_mcgonigle]

Seriously - he should publish some dirt on some banksters and then he'll get a free private flight from Sweden to the US on an unmarked white jet.

Re:Sweden

[david_thornley]

No, there is a story. Person in Sweden going to the US on routine business, having presumably done the appropriate paperwork, is denied entry. This is bad.

The only reason international meetings happen is to get people from other countries. For this to happen, potential attendees have to have a high degree of conference that they can get to them. If this becomes dubious for meetings in the US, such meetings will not happen in the US, which hurts assorted people in the US, including the business community and the scientific community.

Re:Sweden

[arth1]

It has already had an impact.
For those who won't bother to follow the link, Mark Nottingham said of QUIC meetings:

2) We won't hold any further interim meetings in the US, until there's a change in this situation. This means that we'll either need to find suitable hosts in Canada or Mexico, or our meeting rotation will need to change to be exclusively Europe and Asia.

Re:Sweden

[Obfuscant]

There are going to be countries willing to accept the income and PR from holding meetings with international visitors.

You somehow think this has something to do with what the meeting was? Sorry, but the US is quite willing to accept the "income" from meetings with international visitors, even if they include Porto Ricans. And the amount of "PR" that comes from Mozilla holding an employee meeting in the US is scant, if any. Yawn, who cares where Mozilla holds its employee meetings?

It's a different matter when it comes to accepting people who want to enter the US on a VISITOR visa waiver so they can do work here, or for some other reason we don't know about. The VISITOR visa waiver is for visitors. There are waivers and visas for people coming to work. It's most likely he applied for the wrong one -- his fault, not the US -- and he got caught this time.

Would you have any problem if I, a US citizen, was refused entry to Brasil, say, when I had gotten a visitor visa but told the border agent that I was there to work for two weeks?

Re:Sweden

[Obfuscant]

Um, no? Why do you get that impression?

From this statement, which I quoted in my reply:

There are going to be countries willing to accept the income and PR from holding meetings with international visitors.

That's a pretty explicit reference to the "meeting with international visitors". The US didn't "reject" the income from a "meeting", it rejected the ESTA from a non-citizen who was seeking to enter the country on a visitor visa waiver to conduct work in the US. Other than the fact that it was a meeting with his employer, the meeting itself had nothing to do with the matter. But that points out that this was not "a meeting with international visitors", it was an "all hands employee meeting". He's not a visitor to Mozilla or the meeting, he's an employee.

All I am saying is that if it becomes difficult to hold meetings one place,

It isn't difficult to hold meetings "one place". The US did nothing to prevent the meeting. Most probably, had the guy applied for the right waiver, or the right visa, he would not have been denied. The fact that he'd come to the US for his employer on an ESTA before made him overconfident, and he got caught this time.

someone will provide a welcoming venue.

I think you will find that every country will reject entry to someone who claims to be coming for a "visit" when the true purpose is for work. Or for whatever reason this guy was denied -- we don't know for sure, we can just guess. The fact he was trying to use a visitor visa waiver for work is a clue. And I know for a fact that every time I enter another country, I am asked explicitly the purpose of my visit, and if that purpose doesn't match the entry requirements, I don't get in. That would be my fault for trying to get around the immigration laws.

One bad customs agent

[FeelGood314]

The wireless alliance I belong to had a meeting 6 years ago in Canada. A Mexican worker who lived in the USA, who repeatedly asked before hand if there would be any issue, was denied entry. We haven't had a meeting in Canada since.

When you consider the major cost to events like these is the time of the engineers, hassles like missing key people or having to scramble to get a 3rd implementer of feature X suddenly cost more than flying to a nice country where the immigration isn't a bunch of assholes. Cuba would be nice if they had better internet.

Re:No visa

[LubosD]

He does not, but he needs an ESTA registration (visa waiver) and his application seems to have been retrospectively rejected.

Re:No visa

[TheRaven64]

He doesn't have a visa, he has a visa waiver (ESTA). Anyone who doesn't need a visa to visit the US needs to pay $14 to fill in a web form that contains the same information that you'll give to the airlines and which the airlines are required by law to provide to the US government. In return, this data is entered into a database. It specifically does not grant you permission to enter the US (though you can't enter the US without paying the $14). This replaces the old green visa waiver form that you used to have to fill in on the plane prior to landing.

Re:No visa

[nicolaiplum]

Even if you are eligible for a visa waiver, you have to get an electronic authorisation to travel from the Electronic System for Travel Authorisation.

I.e. you have to pass a check to have your visa waived, before you can try to have your visa waived, and your approval can be withdrawn at any time. Neither ESTA nor even a visa is reliable, you are still at risk of being refused (and losing your money on hotels, flight tickets, your business, travel, or study opportunity, etc). The USA (and some other countries) cannot be trusted to be reliable in this, the USA in particular.

visa free travel

[ooloorie]

Only Canada is a visa-free country with respect to the US. Visitors from Europe need a visa, but it can be "waived" in many cases when it is obvious that the person would have been granted a visa. A waiver can be denied for many benign reasons. In that case, he just needs to apply for a visa.

My guess is that this is either employment related (i.e., they are concerned that he is carrying out paid work in the US on a visitor visa), or that it is some legal issue on the Swedish side.

Re:Someone checked the wrong box

[nicolaiplum]

Note that his ESTA was approved, then rescinded. Someone specifically went to withdraw his approval after it was issued. That is not lazy non approval, that is malicious retroactive denial.

Re:No visa

[whoever57]

Why does he need a visa to visit the US for a business meeting?

He doesn't. He had previously travelled to the US using the visa waiver program and this time had completed his ESTA.

It sounds like Mozilla and Stenberg messed up.

No, it sounds like some USCIS employee screwed up.

It has nothing to do with Trump

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

Unless that guy has the most Jewish and Western European sounding name ever for a citizen of Iran, Iraq and the other countries on the ban, it's not related. Citizens of about 40 countries, including the vast majority of European countries, are allowed visa free travel to the USA. Apparently we now make citizens of those countries apply for an ESTA which basically is advance approval that they'll be allowed into the US. This system should avoid the problem of having people fly into the US and being denied entry at the airport. Nobody wants that. Stenberg's ESTA was denied but for privacy reasons nobody can comment on why. It could be a mistake. It could be that he did something that raised the ire of the US government (maybe he has a lot of friends in a country the USA doesn't like). Maybe he's very anti-US on social media. Don't know. I wish his lawyers luck. Yeah. Having a lawyer fight this is totally going to be successful (sarcasm there). Eventually it will come out what his problem is. Don't be surprised if, for example, he's been a complete jerk on social media towards the USA or somebody in the government and it came back to haunt him.

Re:No visa

[Frederic54]

Except Canadians, we do not pay anything to enter the USA.

We are going to Make America Great Again

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't need fruity euro techies here. We are going to all have jobs in clean coal!

Re: We are going to Make America Great Again

[Anonymous Coward]

Although Mozilla does not believe this incident is related to the Trump travel ban, they could not resist stirring up some shit anyway.

Just Read Last Sentence

[TheCowSaysMoo]

Get past all the political mumbo jumbo that has nothing to do with the situation and read the last sentence, which comes from a Customs and Border Protection spokesperson: "“Please know that we process 1.2 million people every day—around 700 are denied entry for various reasons. Having an approved ESTA does [not] guarantee a foreign national free entry into the US All travelers including those coming from visa waiver countries must clear all 60 grounds of inadmissibility.”

So, this guy is one of 700 people who are daily denied entry for NOTHING related to Trump's travel ban, but because he has a Twitter account and is a Mozilla employee, "AHHHH!!! TRUMP TRAVEL BAN!!! AHHHH!!! IT'S GOING TO GET EVERYBODY!!! AHHHH!"

In other news, water is wet.

Re:I hear Canada is Free

[x0ra]

Canada requires the same kind of electronic travel authorization as the US.

Re:Someone checked the wrong box

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe he talked shit on social media. They actually watch that stuff now.

Re:Go outside the USA

[david_thornley]

Easy solution: move your main operations outside the US.

Re:I sure hope

[B33rNinj4]

That's a weak argument. NO Green Party member would have voted for Clinton, ever. The DNC should have fielded a better candidate. As for the article, as much as people want to complain. traveling to the US is not a right. You can be denied entry for pretty much any reason.

Re:No visa

[slew]

Why does he need a visa to visit the US for a business meeting?

He doesn't. He had previously travelled to the US using the visa waiver program and this time had completed his ESTA.

It sounds like Mozilla and Stenberg messed up.

No, it sounds like some USCIS employee screwed up.

Maybe it's USCIS's fault, but statistically, most common ESTA denials are sadly a result of typos and missing answers to one of the mandatory questions.

Re:Not related to Trump's ban...

[ls671]

whoosh yourself. Here is what "the curl" means:

In vector calculus, the curl is a vector operator that describes the infinitesimal rotation of a 3-dimensional vector field. At every point in the field, the curl of that point is represented by a vector. The attributes of this vector (length and direction) characterize the rotation at that point.

I never heard "the curl" when talking about curl training.

Re:Someone checked the wrong box

[arth1]

My guess is that it's because a Google for him leads to https://daniel.haxx.se/

In the minds (or what passes for it) of US immigration and border control, that domain name means he must be a dangerous haxxor...

Re:Not related to Trump's ban...

[Oswald McWeany]

Would that be the barbell curl or the dumbbell curl?

Beats me. I use a machine at the gym.

Your gym has a snack machine too?

Re:No visa

[jittles]

Except Canadians, we do not pay anything to enter the USA.

Except your soul! (evil laugh)

Re:I sure hope

[ShanghaiBill]

as much as people want to complain. traveling to the US is not a right.

I don't think many people are arguing that these travel restrictions are illegal, just that they are stupid and counterproductive. My company has offices in San Jose and Shanghai. Since our employees in China have difficulty getting visas to come to America for meetings and conferences, the Americans go to Shanghai instead, putting money into the Chinese economy, eating at Chinese restaurants, and staying at Chinese hotels.

Since American employees incur these additional travel expenses, we are more biased toward hiring in China instead.

No country has ever thrived by shutting itself off from the world.

Anyway, I am going to Shanghai in July for 3 months, and my family is going with me. We plan to spend plenty of American dollars trying every new restaurant on Nanjing Road, all at company expense (tax deductible). Thank you Donald Trump!

Why is this flamebait? Stein was complicit.

[Glasswire]

Not relevant if you think he was denied some reason other than Trump's travel ban, but if Trump was the cause, Stein's involvement is documented. She was actively recruited by Flynn and Russians. Check the lovely photo

Re:No visa

[squiggleslash]

It's not an ESTA denial. The summary says he had a valid visa waiver at the time.

Re:He's not brown, what's the problem?

[Bing Tsher E]

When a story completely contradicts your theory about institutional racism, cite racism anyway.

Do you have a one-track mind??

Re:I sure hope

[interkin3tic]

The DNC should have fielded a better candidate.

1. The "DNC" chose their candidate about as much as Russia chose our president. Democratic voters "fielded" their candidate. By a big majority.

2. You're obviously not talking "better" as in qualifications, you're talking about someone who gave voters the warm fuzzy feelings. Sure, Hillary did not. Speaking as a democrat who voted for Hillary in the primary, I'm very sorry I overestimated the average voter. No sarcasm, I can't fathom what I was thinking at the time. I guess I thought if the country willingly voted for a black dude twice they'd be capable of voting for a competent woman instead of a reality TV show host who has declared bankruptcy many times? My kids and I are going to be paying the price for that blunder. Next time I'll be sure to vote in the primary for whatever white dude I think will be the least offensive to the hick states and hope he picks competent people to actually do shit.

Re:Nutty Reublican Base

[cayenne8]

The nutty Republican base loves Trump's travel bans.

Err...I"m guessing the "ban" had nothing to do with this.

I mean, I'm taking a wild ass guess, but with a last name of "Stenberg", I'm guessing he's not from one of the few 'banned' majority muslim countries.

And for that matter, I"m willing to go out on a limb and guess, that we in the US aren't exactly getting a lot of our high tech or other types or work from those few middle eastern countries listed on the temporary "ban".

I don't think the US is going to miss that much from those countries....and I seriously doubt this gentleman is caught up in the 'ban'.

Halting travel from these few countries seems quite reasonable.

Re:Martian's stale talking points, part 2

[MightyMartian]

Where did I say that? What I'm saying is that the other branches of government are doing the job they were intended to do; which is act as a check on the Executive. Your problem isn't with me, it's with Madison, Jefferson et al who were the ones that knew there would be Presidents good and bad, and created a system with the specific intent to limit them.

Re:I sure hope

[Rob Y.]

But the other 40% may well have changed the outcome. And those 60% spent months spreading the idea that the other 40% shouldn't vote for 'the lesser of 2 evils' and denying the obvious facts that that 'lesser evil' was essentially for most of the Sanders/Stein platform - and could've won and enacted at least some of it.

Look, a binary choice may not be the best form of Democracy, but in our system, that's essentially what we have. However it happened, 'the greater of 2 evils' got elected, a hard-right ideologue got onto the Supreme Court, and we may well lose a once in a lifetime chance to eliminate anti-democratic nonsense like gerrymandered districts. And Citizens United is now locked in for the next generation.

Stein voters had their reasons. Stupid, self-defeating ones, but hey...

Re:No visa

[Obfuscant]

It's not an ESTA denial. The summary says he had a valid visa waiver at the time.

No, it says he had previously obtained a visa waiver, but it doesn't say when or how long ago. What visa waivers he had for previous trips don't matter.

The story explicitly says that the ESTA he filed THIS TIME was denied. Thus, he did not have a valid visa waiver at the time he was traveling. The summary is, as usual, intentionally misleading.

Re:Why is this flamebait? Stein was complicit.

[Obfuscant]

Not relevant if you think he was denied some reason other than Trump's travel ban, but if Trump was the cause,

And if LRH was the cause, it was because Stenberg's body Thetans were disruptive and blocking his state of clear. This was all documented in the Green Book. It's a miracle the guy got out of the airport before the Sea Org agents scooped him up as a suppressive person and took him to The Camp.

Re:I sure hope

[ShanghaiBill]

You do realize that setting up a video conference would greatly reduce your travel costs

You do realize that using video conferencing instead of face-to-face collaboration doesn't work near as well in practice as it does in theory?

If Skype was a perfect substitute for commuting, the highways of Silicon Valley would be empty every morning.

Re:I sure hope

[thegarbz]

You do realize that setting up a video conference would greatly reduce your travel costs and still allow you to meet with you counterparts in China?

That depends entirely on the meeting. Video conferences are good for some very basic meetings. Yet there's a world of things that technology just won't change. Strong inter-company relationships aren't made over a video screen. They aren't even made in a meeting room. They're made at the coffee machine, they are made at the dinner table, in the bar, while walking to the car.

My company not only has a policy that specific things need to be face to face, but also a policy of a group outing somewhere when they happen. There's a good reason for it too. Knowing someone on a personal level helps a lot on the work level too.

Not every company counts pennies, some invest in themselves.

Re:I sure hope

[ChunderDownunder]

In my country we number boxes according to preference. There is no penalty for voting for a third candidate.
Scenario:
Don gets 42 votes, Jill gets 25, hill gets 33. Who wins?
Well a quarter didn't vote for either. But if 80% of Jill voters prefer Hill over Don then Hill wins 53 to 47.

Serves him right

[Tablizer]

That's what he gets for helping to screw up FireFox.

Re:I sure hope

[vel-ex-tech]

Ah yeah. I'm a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to those things, so I didn't mean to give the impression I thought the electoral college was a bad idea. Besides being in a demographic that's supposed to make me beholden to the D team, Hillary was the first time I voted for either an R or a D for POTUS. I usually go Libertarian.

What I'd meant to express was that all this whinging about the electoral college is bullcrap. I don't think Hillary even showed up once to campaign in my state, which went to Sanders in the primary.

Re:I sure hope

[14erCleaner]

You do realize that using video conferencing instead of face-to-face collaboration doesn't work near as well in practice as it does in theory?

It's like phone sex vs in-person sex. Of course, most programmers wouldn't know that.