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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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

[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: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.

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.

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!

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: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!

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: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

[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.