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Afghan Girls Robotics Team Allowed To Enter U.S. For Competition (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A team of Afghan girls are on their way to compete in an academic robotics competition in the United States after American officials agreed to allow them to enter the country despite initially denying them visas. The reversal reportedly came at the request of U.S. President Donald Trump, Reuters reported.
Anyone know why they got rejected in the first place?
No, but I think it is possible to make a reasonable guess: When a populist leader has been making these kinds of radical statements - in Trump's case promising to ban all Muslims from entering the US - then there will be a large number of his followers who are more than willing to implement his words, even if the actual travel ban doesn't cover it. The fact of the matter is that nobody has a right to enter any country - it is up to the discretion of the staff at the embassies, the border agents etc., and they know that in most cases, ordinary people won't challenge a decision they've made. In my experience, the American visa staff are in general extremely arrogant - I remember helping my Chinese wife apply for visa to the US; they were more than willing to take the money, but then they dragged the feet for 6 months (by which time it was no longer relevant), and in the meantime, we got treated like suspects for daring to ask how things were advancing. I think we paid something like £300 for even applying, and would probably have had to go to court in order to make a complaint that wouldn't simply have been ignored. In such a setting, it isn't hard to imagine how and why these girls were denied visas.