One of the constant dichotomies that i(and maybe other immigrants) live with are these: The privilege of being a model minority [1] [2] yet being on the edge of having to lose it all if the immigration system shits itself. One might be a senior software engineer paying 100K + in taxes and probably drive EVs and own a home, your largest infraction are parking tickets, yet the risks are asymmetric; the whims of bureaucrats and a border guard who is having a bad day. The purchasing power parity of my $$ salary affords me secure a comfortable financial future, but these are golden handcuffs; You cannot always work for the companies you want because if the company goes bust and you chance to lose a lot.
These are the dichotomies I(and many immigrants) have had to live with. Time is a great healer of things and over time and with financial cushions the dichotomy might fade, I am still not sure it completely goes away. One can only think of the present and make the best of it.
I was born a US citizen. Last time I entered the country, officers faked that a dog had alerted "on my anus", forcibly strip searched me, and fabricated a story that plastic baggies that they suspected 'could be drugs' were coming out of my ass.
I was shackled and cuffed and dragged around the state of Arizona for 16 hours while publicly paraded in Hospitals, including the waiting rooms. Officers attempted repeatedly, across two different cities one hour apart, to get medical staff to perform unwarranted and consentless x-rays and/or probing of my body, which I repeatedly refused. Doctors, despite having zero medical evidence I had did anything wrong, wrote on their paperwork I was 'suspicious' because I denied the allegations.
After 16 hours of this harassments I was release, uncharged, with no apologies.
On yet another occasion, I was told by border officials they would not let me in my own country, despite providing full proof of citizenship (immaculate condition passport, plus identifying myself fully). After 4 hours of probing questions including going practically line by line on what's on the IRS 1040, most of which I didn't answer, I was released.
Now imagine this same happening, legally entering the country at the proper port of entry with full authorization -- except as not a citizen or looking like a boring middle-class corn-fed white guy like me. These sick fucks would treat you even worse. A woman (actually a citizen) who went through a few years before me brutally had her orifices probed in a 'search' for 'contraband.'[0]
I was super upset after visiting China and returning to the USA. Our immigration people were so much more authoritarian scary than the Chinese had been. And the Chinese had this cool smiley computer interface where you rated the chinese immigration official for their interaction on the spot. So China was not only friendlier and more welcoming, but also more accountable. We really need to check ourselves in America. Our Federal Government is out of control (I say this as someone who was failed by the Courts only to have them completely reverse themselves with respect to their rulings against me when COVID came because it would have been inconvenient to follow their precedent because people would die so they finally had actually follow the law, not the Bureau of Prison's Court supported 'interpretation' of the law, and as someone who was abused (I guess we no longer use the torture term) while incarcerated).
I can't imagine the horror of having the Feds have so much power over my life as an immigrant does. Or the fact that you can loose it all in a heartbeat (as happened to my friends in the bay areas in the 90s when they lost their jobs and their VISA sponsors).
Authoritarian countries are often good at maintaining a friendly facade. They understand that the legitimacy of the regime depends on keeping the middle class happy, or at least under control. When they consider someone beneficial to the regime, they will try to treat them well. They are not cartoon villains that treat people badly just because they can. They usually need a reason for that.
I've seen the same differences in the attitudes of Chinese and American immigration authorities. And if my memories of childhood visits to the USSR are correct, the same differences existed between Soviet and American authorities. I believe the main reason is that America is fundamentally suspicious of anything foreign. Authorities are more likely to see threats than benefits in international dealings.
Maybe the US is just good at maintaining a facade that they aren't authoritarian. The US border agents are acting in an objectively authoritarian manner while the Chinese border agents are not and yet somehow you conclude that the Chinese are the real authoritarians. It seems like you are a victim of propaganda.
I don't think the point is "China is not an authoritarian regime", but rather that America is more authoritarian than most Americans think, or are willing to admit.
> I was super upset after visiting China and returning to the USA. Our immigration people were so much more authoritarian scary than the Chinese had been. And the Chinese had this cool smiley computer interface where you rated the chinese immigration official for their interaction on the spot. So China was not only friendlier and more welcoming, but also more accountable.
I've seen those machines at Ikea in the US, though they did seem more common in China.
However, it's almost unbelievably superficial to rate "authoritarianess" by the anecdotal cheeriness of front like officials.
But that’s specifically what OP mentioned - their own experience with front line officers and their conduct. So what else can be there if not “anecdotal”? Every commenter citing a separate research paper including surveys from millions (or thousands?) of people?
Or is it just fashionable on hn to drop a “ha, anecdotal!” comment?
Out of all the immigration officials you deal with when entering the US (i.e. not in the back room, but those presenting a "face" for the country), such an incredibly large amount are such toolbags. They have no manners, show no respect, nothing. It's not all of them of course, but far more than is acceptable. I don't know how to put it any other way. They are simply power-tripping losers. It's frankly embarrassing for the country.
If you’re a foreigner in China, they have no problem tracking exactly where you go and who you talk to after you enter the country. They don’t have much to lose by putting a happy face on their customs process.
Yeah I don't know most of the TSA was just doing their job the best they could. I've come to respect their mandate a lot, reading the history of aviation and how it's all a crazy game to not go splat. It's not the fact of traveling, it's the fact of traveling ON AN AIRPLANE. Everything about it. The basic nature of aviation is it's closely tied to suicide. It's like interwoven with suicide. They are the two threads of one fabric, that give it a color in between, like cloth woven with gold. It's really goddamn dangerous to fly, you're relying on so many parts to work right, despite letting random guys on the street in their pijamas on board with their cellphones, and asking for fucking internet connectivity, no.
I'm completely with Louis CK on this one. We should all fly strapped down completely, upright, I guess with slightly bigger windows as a compromise, realizing the fact of flight and being like "I am flying through the air at nearly the speed of sound, crossing continents and oceans in a mere matter of hours". Just respect it a fuck of a lot more, if flying were easy we'd have flown much sooner. In fact rockets are much older and easier to make than flying machines, rockets got started a little after gunpowder, about the time of the Mongol invasion, and flying machines date to the turn of the century. People think rockets are harder because the space race came after the big improvement in plane speed, nah. Well they're studied together, aero-astrophysics. Basically not going splat.
So 9/11 was about going splat. That's literally what it was, Muhammad Ata and his conspiracy of Al-Qaeda Sunni Muslims decided, let's all go splat with a big plane, at the same building, at the same time. And they did! Because the whole difficulty of flying is not going splat, going splat on purpose is easy (although they were artistic about it, did a lot of difficult maneuvers). Suicide and aviation, interwoven.
So back to TSA, I don't know they actually respond well when you ask them about anything, or thank them for keeping the planes from falling out of the sky. It's not a transportation or border thing, it's an aviation thing.
And one time, when I was repatriating to the states, an agent asked me like what company did you work for, I never heard of that company. As though it mattered, resumes are irrelevant to citizenship once you have it. So yeah there are moments that are rougher. I think I've had good luck.
> Yeah I don't know most of the TSA was just doing their job the best they could. [...] The basic nature of aviation is it's closely tied to suicide. It's like interwoven with suicide.
I would swap "suicide" for "risk". And while I do concede that traveling on an airplane is inherently risky (and argueably one of our most remarkable achievements as a species), I think it's dangerous to deny that TSA - or any other security enforcement body for that matter - is not susceptible to power abuse by their representatives; we have years of evidence to prove it, especially nowadays with social media. Too much blank-cheque power is given them, with little accountability (again, on account of the risk). (Incidentally, airport security is a nice topic to play with error rates conceptually, e.g. precision, recall, etc.)
> It's really goddamn dangerous to fly, you're relying on so many parts to work right
Indeed, the latest systemic failure coming directly from the making and selling of planes. An activity where once safety was held as a sacrosant goal, it's now been placed second to profits and corporate interests (see Boeing).
No, don't swap "suicide" for "risk." It's no secret among pilots. And it's enshrined in the law. America loves the Wright Brothers, two states fought over the right to claim them on their state currency (Ohio and North Carolina). History loves the Wright Brothers. The world loves the Wright Brothers. They were the most famous people on earth (together with their sister) in 1911. And that's why you don't get put in a psych ward for flying, because America loves aviation, no other reason.
And they practically never flew together. Then, at most one of them would die at a time, and the other could live to continue defying death. They were the first great aviators to fly and not die. They crashed sometimes and it was brutal, identical to falling out of a building. There were endless deaths in early aviation, all the time, all the time. In the early 30's the Army was charged with paper mail by airplane, and the weather was terrible, and everyone equated aviation with suicide. Young soldiers dying most days of the week.
I think even Roosevelt said it was suicidal, that what these pilots were tasked with meant leading them to slaughter.
Like heroism, which I carry out all the time, also intrinsically suicidal, for instance all the times I've fought alone, outnumbered. Everyone says that's suicidal. So it turns out it's not actually that dangerous, any more than aviation, you just need to act perfectly, meaning no mistakes.
Also born a US citizen. My experience was fortunately not as bad as yours, but it still gives me a bit of anxiety every time I return to the US. I can't imagine what it'd be like as non-white foreigner.
I was flying back from Peru through LAX and held by security for about two hours with no explanation. Eventually, a pair of officers came and after a bit of questioning, dumped the entirety of my 65L bag onto the floor. I had a few pill bottles—all labeled—just Advil, Ibuprofen, some other OTC thing for altitude sickness. They emptied them all out onto the table in front of me.
They took a few tablets of Advil with them for testing. About 20 minutes later, they returned and told me I was free to go (with everything still on the floor, the pills all over the table, no apology, etc).
The icing on the cake—as I re-entered the LAX domestic terminal, my hiking poles that I had just flown with were confiscated.
I know an intellectual, talking about Harvard inviting him to go talk there, and he was like nah, traveling to the States is too hard. Too much security, too painful, flying hurts. It's not the same America it was back then, either, the Rolling Stones in New York type of thing. A lot of anymosity.
dunno whether your comment is sarcastic or not... But it is definitely not safe to visit china. After the case of the two canadians, it is always a risk and there were some incidents before that also.
In all fairness, I have no doubt the very same thing - getting detained and/or imprisoned under dubious pretences - can happen to you in the US. In fact, given US policing culture, I expect hundreds of such cases happening in the US right now and no-one caring because 'that's just what the yankees do'.
Me either. That's why I live in the Commonwealth of Virginia where I enjoy strong mental health patients' rights. Of course, this also means living without 4th or 5th Amendment protections.
It is because of things like this and more that I decided not to live in the US and moved home after grad school. Of course many of my friends and (then) countrymen/countrywomen decided to live in the US and chase the dream.
For me it was clear that I would never be accepted as a citizen regardless of how many years I live there or what passport I hold. People would continue to mock my religious beliefs and culture pretending all the time that it is a joke.
ProPublica did a story on this type of stuff. There have been many instances of ICE agents doing "mass deports" where they round up groups of people and deport them all. It's hard to keep track of this sort of thing but likely hundreds of people with full citizenship and mental disabilities have ended up deported to a country they know nobody at. Not that the fact that they're us citizens makes this any more fucked up, but it highlights how much power they really have
The ICE director has repeatedly made statements under the Trump presidency that they believe the organization is above federal law (like the army) and only beholden to the president's orders
Honestly, I'm not so sure about that, given the commenter. IIRC, in a couple of previous threads they've taken pretty strong positions that they'll do what they want regardless if the law says it's illegal and they're risking jail. Given that, I wouldn't be surprised if there was some suspicious or belligerent behavior on their part that they left out of the story.
You know it all don't you, even though you weren't there? Care to use your 'belligerence behavior' to embellish more tales?
>they'll do what they want regardless if the law says it's illegal and they're risking jail
So go ahead and quote that, assuming it was said, and go on and explain where it creates articulable probable cause for an x-ray.
I honestly can't believe I'm even responding to this victim-blaming garbage. Try reading Ms. Cervantes complaint, who's circumstances were incredibly similar to mine but she was treated even worse, and think again about your opinion here.
Here you are claiming that you would continue to trade cryptocurrency from a prison ass-phone, in a hypothetical world were it was illegal: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29922956
> and go on and explain where it creates articulable probable cause for an x-ray.
1) A felon can in fact legally manufacture certain firearms, such as working replica black powder rifles and pistols. These are not covered under federal law.
2) I stand by my belief that felons ought to be able to protect themselves with firearms of any type.
3) My belief that felons have 2nd amendment rights is not probable cause of having drugs.
4) There's no nexus by which officers inventing an alert or falsifying evidence is justified by my exercising of my first amendment right regarding belief in second amendment right of felons.
Your whole argument is a red herring. None of this is probable cause for possessing drugs.
>Why? I never claimed that at all.
So how is this even relevent? None of this first amendment protected activity and opinions provide any legitimacy to falsely accusing someone of having drugs up their ass.
> 1) A felon can in fact legally manufacture certain firearms, such as working replica black powder rifles and pistols. These are not covered under federal law.
That thread was not discussing "replica black powder rifles." It was discussing stuff like the FGC-9 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FGC-9), under the assumption that guns like that were illegal for felons to possess.
> Your whole argument is a red herring. None of this is probable cause for possessing drugs.
I never said nor thought it was "probable cause for possessing drugs." It's evidence of an attitude, and attitude affects the probability of certain behaviors that you may not have reported in your account.
1) I never directed a felon to manufacture a FGC-9, although I would be pleased to find out they had. At various times I have praised the idea of felons and prohibited possessors carrying, which by the way can be done completely legally for example by carrying a black powder six shooter that will work as good as any other revolver.
2) Felons can in fact legally own and manufacture modern firearms after having their rights reinstated.
3) Felons can in fact own firearms legally by leaving the jurisdiction of the united states.
4) None of this first amendment protected opinions provide any justification at all for CBP officers faking a dog alert or manufacturing evidence during a strip search.
>It's evidence of an attitude, and attitude affects the probability of certain behaviors that you may have not reported in your account.
Ergo illegal detention and causeless strip searches (which even at border require PC) are justified? I take it Ms. Cervantes was also an HN poster? Did you even stop to think about whether you would like to live in a world where some low level podunk border patrol officers can fabricate evidence merely on the extremely unlikely chance they happen to read my HN and decide to target me because of my absolute stance on 2A and 1A?
That's your opinion. I invite you to read this excerpt [0] affidavit and decide for yourself whether that reads like anything other than made up garbage designed to fabricate probable cause. Then ponder why I would be released uncharged, and why if the allegations were true I would even be publicly discussing it online.
There are a few other paragraphs in the affidavit that are entirely uninteresting to read and offer no evidence whatsoever. I can tell you '10' and '11' here are the entirety of their argument 110%. Maybe I'll get around to redacting the other paragraphs but they offer nothing. If you want to know the 'other side' -- there it is.
I also have a pile of medical paperwork with doctors documenting there was zero evidence whatsoever other than being 'defensive' of being accused of this crime and being 'anxious' to be dragged up and down 60 miles from city to city in cuffs.
You shouldn't have to defend yourself to some presumptuous asshole on the internet. I'm sorry for what happened to you. I'm also sorry you even have to defend what happened to you on this thread.
I remember after 9/11 getting detained on a flight out of the country than for no other reason than my family was the wrong kind of brown. I remember how unfair it felt watching my mom and my sister cry under the stress of what we all knew was security theater. I remember seeing my dad pull out some diplomatic reserves from somewhere I didn't know in order to de-escalate the situation and get us on to our flight.
We were lucky that day. Many people were not. These situations shouldn't have to be about luck. They should be about fairness, safety, practicality, and most of all respect.
Authorities regularly stop people who's flight itinerary include certain nations. When I flew to Iraq, I split my ticket.
I flew to Sweden, and then on an entirely different ticket paid for via Swedish company from Sweden to Iraq.
This isn't advice or saying to do that. But when I did it, the computer in the US didn't know to flag my flight -- I looked like a normal person just going to Sweden. It's all horse shit of course, going somewhere the government doesn't approve of isn't evidence of a crime.
>> No. I'll repeat the situation: I don't trust your account of what happened. That is all.
> That's your opinion.
You are quite correct: that is my opinion.
> I invite you to read this excerpt [0] affidavit and decide for yourself whether that reads like anything other than made up garbage designed to fabricate probable cause.
Honestly: it could be made up or it could be true. There's nothing there to tell either way.
One thing I don't doubt is that you weren't, in fact, smuggling drugs.
Good thing case law in the US doesn't revolve around attitude right? I'm aghast at even having read this thread. What victim-blaming nonsense. Attitudes like this are exactly why the US incarcerates more per-capita than any other G20 country.
What "situation" -- the one where you constantly doubt the story of someone you have never met, based on their "evidence of attitude" which is really just your opinion?
> What "situation" -- the one where you constantly doubt the story of someone you have never met, based on their "evidence of attitude" which is really just your opinion?
The situation in this thread.
Am I supposed to believe everything I read on the internet, or always believe I'm getting the whole story?
"Why wouldn't you just consent to an intimate unwarranted and unjustified search of your body that is completely medically unnecessary, with the expectation that the hospital will probably send you the bill afterwards?"
Every single 'search' along the way was used to fabricate evidence against me. Remember these people are professional psychopathic liers so every inch you give them, they just use it to justify something even worse.
1) The dog -- never alerted -- they lied and said it alerted on my anus (WTF!?!). Used to justify a scan of my body with some x-ray looking machine at the border.
2) The "machine" (IDK what it was, but looked like a body scanner type thing) -- there was nothing, but then someone claims they "Saw something" which turned out to almost assuredly to have been my belt buckle.
3) The machine was used to justify strip searching me.
4) Fabricated evidence from the strip search was used to justify dragging me to hospitals for an x-ray.
Now what was to be expected next? It just doesn't end. I did nothing wrong.
Don't forget the 'good faith' deference that the Courts give to these people. They can lie, you can have actual evidence to show they are lying, but the court will extend 'good faith' to their testimony and hold it above the facts you demonstrate. Reality can literally be trumped by their lies. The USA has gone crazy in its support of the authorities. Oh, what, your evidence wasn't kept secure, and no one filled out any of the required logs of who took it out? Well, we'll throw out all of the rules and still accept it, because we extend 'good faith' to the officers. Why even have rules then if the officers aren't required to follow them and they know they will be given an excepts because of 'good faith'
I believe it, and that's a heinous series of events. Perhaps someone got confused, or there was an identity mismatch, or something. They're no excuse, but clearly something happened.
It's understandable (and not necessarily wrong) to vent here, and I'm not going to ask whether you have done this already, because it's not useful to draw out an answer, but: if you can, find the relevant anti-corruption agency and report the events to them.
There's a chance that doing so might increase the likelihood of harassment again in future -- I have no idea how these things show up on border entry systems -- so it's your choice, but the key idea is to get a paper trail in place that will show up if (and hopefully when) investigations are later taking place.
I haven't worked in law enforcement, but I imagine that the same way that good policework involves collecting statements and records of events to put together a case, internal (or independent) investigations into misconduct require similar records. The ability for individuals to get away with bad conduct is, I'd guess, based on people believing that it's not worthwhile to file reports against them. They do get caught when they are.
>There's a chance that doing so might increase the likelihood of harassment again in future
I'm probably already at max likelihood already. I am detained 4+ hours everytime I enter the country. In 2015 I fought alongside the Kurdish militia YPG in northern Syria against ISIS, and ever since the CBP has targeted me. There is a flag on my passport that basically says 'harass him' as best as I can tell.
>if you can, find the relevant anti-corruption agency and report the events to them.
Still in the process of filing the complaints against the relevant medical professionals who violated patient consent. I am currently working in order of operations from where I expect justice to be most likely (complicit medical workers) to where I expect justice to be impossible (CBP officers).
You're welcome. That's a tough situation; I don't know if there's much I can say.
Sounds like you've got a good, considered approach, so keep up the work to improve the environment and keep in mind other ways you can develop (and enjoy) your time is probably the best platitude I can offer (and one you probably already understand).
Maybe 20 years ago the system worked, but it does not work currently. While I was incarcerated all of the decent COs quit or descended into drug/alcohol abuse if they had to keep the job. One was like 2 years from retirement and he just couldn't work in such a messed up system anymore. We had one counselor who actually helped people. They demoted here to a horrible work situation because she was helping people with COVID release paperwork because we had no access to the law library due to COVIDE. It was actually part of her job description to provide that help with copies (and optionally charge us per copy depending on if we were indigent), but that didn't matter. She was too helpful so she had to go.
It's also worth noting that the COs you refer to are part of a jobs pipeline that feeds into immigration related officers. Immigrants will be treated by the same COs you met while incarcerated, and this time there is not even the pretense there has been a 'justified' conviction.
Criminal 'justice' in US is in dire need of overhaul, and an actual plan on how to get our imprisonment rate down to other first world nations.
I just thought it would maybe help you and not be a lot of medical problem. I wasn't saying that they were right, you just needed to get out of the situation.
I understand you're thinking from the lense that CBP are neutral fair observers. This is far from the case.
Persons such as Mr. Eckert who went through the x-ray, found that after that there were even worse things to come such as a colonoscopy [0]. Thes entities just want to dig deeper and deeper, and there will basically be no stopping until they even knock you out and insert a camera into your colon. The only winning move is not to play.
I'm not sure how being a "model minority" is relevant beyond you just internalizing one potential viewpoint that floats around certain US political discussions.
I'm not a minority in the US, have worked in other countries, and I'm still at the same whim of a country's immigration system as you are.
In fact, a white colleague I work with will be returning home from Asia because the government has decided "we don't need so many foreigners" and has declined to renew their work permit. This is someone making a top 5% salary, with a special skill set that the company needs, that can't be filled with locals. The government could care less that she has kids in school, that they just signed a lease on a place or that their spouse still has a job they want to keep.
It has zero to do with being am minority, it's just the consequence of not being a citizen. If you decided to move to another country as a temporary worker, that's the risk you take - that the rules change, often unfairly so.
You might think driving an EV or making a lot of means you should get some special pass, but I'd argue that's not a reasonable assumption at all.
It's a political viewpoint yes but a relevant one to explain what the attempted creation of model minority does to actual people and their minds, my mind, due to odd ball immigration policies. I don't think we are "model/special" in any way, skilled immigrants aren't superior to any other racial group iMO.
The same dichotomy I talk about might be created in other countries as well but what is different weird is that in the US they intentionally chose[1] to make this community to show to the world, in part, how they liberal and progressive America can be (which has its own contradictions). The intention was and is very clear and the policy really screws with the mind.
To me(and maybe others) being in the reference is very relevant because we, I, in many ways live a privileged, sheltered life and I wanted to highlight how odd that is for my mind to comprehend that that privilege is at the whims of people and circumstances barely in my control and in ways that if I were in my country of citizenship such privilege would be be interpreted by me as laissez faire.
The other thing is that being a part of choosing the reference is that I have done nothing special to get here. I am lucky. And then there are other people that some apparatchik did not choose who were exactly as good as me but are living in tough circumstances back in my home country. This makes the dichotomy of living here even more crazy for me
These are the dichotomies I(and many immigrants) have had to live with. Time is a great healer of things and over time and with financial cushions the dichotomy might fade, I am still not sure it completely goes away. One can only think of the present and make the best of it.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/01/the-mak... [2] https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Karma_of_Brown_Folk...