6 ms·

Without knowing the details and just going by what was said in the article, it's impossible to make a decision whether it was right or wrong to bar him from ent

Without knowing the details and just going by what was said in the article, it's impossible to make a decision whether it was right or wrong to bar him from entering the USA. If this student was keeping company with people who openly supported ISIS or wanted to hurt Americans, would it still be ok to let him attend Harvard even though he never made any Social Media posts about politics?

inflatableDodo 7y ago
I have some friends who have severe mental health problems. The shit they can come out with on their social media can be pretty, well, mental. If this is the standard that everybody is put to, then I could easily find it very hard to get a visa, purely for not abandoning the unwell.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
occitan 7y ago
Actually, there's plenty of information to inform such a decision: While the other students were allowed to leave, Ajjawi alleges an immigration officer continued to question him about his religion and religious practices in Lebanon. So it looks like they deported him because, first, he was a raghead... “After the 5 hours ended, she called me into a room , and she started screaming at me. She said that she found people posting political points of view that oppose the US on my friend[s] list.” and second because he has friends (or random associates) who disagree with U.S. foreign policy.
- TMWNN 7y ago
  @hourislate's point is that this is a "he said, she said" story in which only he has said anything. USCIS, as the article said, can't say anything.
  - huy-nguyen 7y ago
    USCIS should not be involved at all. It should be just CBP.
    - mjamil 7y ago
      Please read the Crimson article. Only CBP was involved, both in the interaction and in the public relations around this.
  - damnyou 7y ago
    "he said, she said" is only useful when both he and she have relatively equal power. When one entity can hold a metaphorical gun to the other person's head, it no longer works.
johnchristopher 7y ago
Facebook friends have nothing to do with people one keeps company with.
hrktb 7y ago
It should have been dealt at a different level. His student visa should have been accepted anyway, and open an investigation on him as a US resident if you think he could be a terrorist threat. He passed several layers of heavy screening already, it shouldn’t all be canceled on a single agent’s presumption based on social media posts.
- mjamil 7y ago
  It’s worse than you think. 1. One’s standing on a temporary visa (whether a B-visa as a tourist or an F/J-visa as a student) is always subject to such arbitrary fates by both DHS and DoS personnel. This includes the arbitrary and - more painfully, non-appealable and non-reviewable control a single CBP (part of DHS) officer on whether you get to enter the US each time you attempt to do so. That’s the problem this kid ran into. But it starts even earlier: visas are denied in a similarly non-reviewable and non-appealable way by a single FS (part of DoS) consular officer. A staggering percentage of those [1] are denied in the above-mentioned categories. There’s plenty of folks here on HN that can tell you this has happened to them or to someone they know and could vouch for personally. [1] https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/Non-Immigrant-Statistics/NIVWorkload/FY2018NIVWorkloadbyVisaCategory.pdf https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/Non-Im... 2. A US permanent resident (informally known as a green card holder) is subject to the same scrutiny by CBP at each entry as someone on a temporary visa. So you can still get deported on your 100th return to the US after 30 years of living here. But you do have legal recourse to have such a decision of inadmissibility reviewed by an immigration court. Great, you might think. But your chances of winning anything in immigration court are largely determined by who you draw as an ICE (part of DHS) prosecutor and an immigration (judges are under EOIR, part of DoJ) judge. The prosecutor has the (limited) ability to decide to fight such an appeal. (This is how Dreamers, for example, aren’t all being deported: they are low-priority ICE prosecution targets, even now under Trump. DACA, under Obama, was a liberal presidential whim: it was an executive order telling ICE prosecutors to indefinitely postpone Dreamer prosecutions.) And how liberally an immigration judge interprets ruling law is very geographically correlated [2]. [2] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-immigration-asylum/ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-immi... https://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/court_backlog/deport_outcome_charge.php https://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/court_backlog/depo... 3. The judge isn’t the only arbitrary actor under DoJ. EOIR has no independence from the executive branch, so immigration court judges are subject to a president’s policy whims. Judges’ decisions are reviewed by an appellate body (BIA) but that’s also part of EOIR and thus DoJ. And the AG (head of DoJ) can arbitrarily take any pending immigration decision out of the hands of an immigration judge or BIA panel and then decide it on their own. (Former Trump AG Sessions accelerated the usage of this.) Current Trump AG Barr has recently delegated this power down to the head of EOIR, thus adding yet another individual with the power to make arbitrary decisions [3]. [3] https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/aug/23/william-barr-ag-announces-changes-immigration-cour/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.washingtontimes.com/news/20... 4. Both AILA (the association of immigration attorneys) and NAIJ (the judges union) wants to end the arbitrariness and establish a pattern of decision making based on legal jurisprudence and precedent. They want to accomplish this by moving EOIR under the judicial branch instead of the executive. AG Barr’s response has been to attempt to decertify the union [4]. [4] https://www.npr.org/2019/08/12/750656176/trump-administration-seeks-decertification-of-immigration-judges-union https://www.npr.org/2019/08/12/750656176/trump-administratio...
inimino 7y ago
> If this student was keeping company with people who openly supported ISIS or wanted to hurt Americans, would it still be ok to let him attend Harvard? Yes. If no student at Harvard has been allowed to meet anyone that tangentially knows anyone that supports ISIS, that keeps America blind, not safe. Higher learning institutions exist to bring differing viewpoints together, not to insulate the elite from anything that makes some people feel uncomfortable.

inflatableDodo 7y ago

I have some friends who have severe mental health problems. The shit they can come out with on their social media can be pretty, well, mental. If this is the standard that everybody is put to, then I could easily find it very hard to get a visa, purely for not abandoning the unwell.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

occitan 7y ago

Actually, there's plenty of information to inform such a decision: While the other students were allowed to leave, Ajjawi alleges an immigration officer continued to question him about his religion and religious practices in Lebanon. So it looks like they deported him because, first, he was a raghead... “After the 5 hours ended, she called me into a room , and she started screaming at me. She said that she found people posting political points of view that oppose the US on my friend[s] list.” and second because he has friends (or random associates) who disagree with U.S. foreign policy.

TMWNN 7y ago
@hourislate's point is that this is a "he said, she said" story in which only he has said anything. USCIS, as the article said, can't say anything.
- huy-nguyen 7y ago
  USCIS should not be involved at all. It should be just CBP.
  - mjamil 7y ago
    Please read the Crimson article. Only CBP was involved, both in the interaction and in the public relations around this.
- damnyou 7y ago
  "he said, she said" is only useful when both he and she have relatively equal power. When one entity can hold a metaphorical gun to the other person's head, it no longer works.

johnchristopher 7y ago

Facebook friends have nothing to do with people one keeps company with.

hrktb 7y ago

It should have been dealt at a different level. His student visa should have been accepted anyway, and open an investigation on him as a US resident if you think he could be a terrorist threat. He passed several layers of heavy screening already, it shouldn’t all be canceled on a single agent’s presumption based on social media posts.

mjamil 7y ago
It’s worse than you think. 1. One’s standing on a temporary visa (whether a B-visa as a tourist or an F/J-visa as a student) is always subject to such arbitrary fates by both DHS and DoS personnel. This includes the arbitrary and - more painfully, non-appealable and non-reviewable control a single CBP (part of DHS) officer on whether you get to enter the US each time you attempt to do so. That’s the problem this kid ran into. But it starts even earlier: visas are denied in a similarly non-reviewable and non-appealable way by a single FS (part of DoS) consular officer. A staggering percentage of those [1] are denied in the above-mentioned categories. There’s plenty of folks here on HN that can tell you this has happened to them or to someone they know and could vouch for personally. [1] https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/Non-Immigrant-Statistics/NIVWorkload/FY2018NIVWorkloadbyVisaCategory.pdf https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/Non-Im... 2. A US permanent resident (informally known as a green card holder) is subject to the same scrutiny by CBP at each entry as someone on a temporary visa. So you can still get deported on your 100th return to the US after 30 years of living here. But you do have legal recourse to have such a decision of inadmissibility reviewed by an immigration court. Great, you might think. But your chances of winning anything in immigration court are largely determined by who you draw as an ICE (part of DHS) prosecutor and an immigration (judges are under EOIR, part of DoJ) judge. The prosecutor has the (limited) ability to decide to fight such an appeal. (This is how Dreamers, for example, aren’t all being deported: they are low-priority ICE prosecution targets, even now under Trump. DACA, under Obama, was a liberal presidential whim: it was an executive order telling ICE prosecutors to indefinitely postpone Dreamer prosecutions.) And how liberally an immigration judge interprets ruling law is very geographically correlated [2]. [2] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-immigration-asylum/ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-immi... https://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/court_backlog/deport_outcome_charge.php https://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/court_backlog/depo... 3. The judge isn’t the only arbitrary actor under DoJ. EOIR has no independence from the executive branch, so immigration court judges are subject to a president’s policy whims. Judges’ decisions are reviewed by an appellate body (BIA) but that’s also part of EOIR and thus DoJ. And the AG (head of DoJ) can arbitrarily take any pending immigration decision out of the hands of an immigration judge or BIA panel and then decide it on their own. (Former Trump AG Sessions accelerated the usage of this.) Current Trump AG Barr has recently delegated this power down to the head of EOIR, thus adding yet another individual with the power to make arbitrary decisions [3]. [3] https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/aug/23/william-barr-ag-announces-changes-immigration-cour/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.washingtontimes.com/news/20... 4. Both AILA (the association of immigration attorneys) and NAIJ (the judges union) wants to end the arbitrariness and establish a pattern of decision making based on legal jurisprudence and precedent. They want to accomplish this by moving EOIR under the judicial branch instead of the executive. AG Barr’s response has been to attempt to decertify the union [4]. [4] https://www.npr.org/2019/08/12/750656176/trump-administration-seeks-decertification-of-immigration-judges-union https://www.npr.org/2019/08/12/750656176/trump-administratio...

inimino 7y ago

> If this student was keeping company with people who openly supported ISIS or wanted to hurt Americans, would it still be ok to let him attend Harvard? Yes. If no student at Harvard has been allowed to meet anyone that tangentially knows anyone that supports ISIS, that keeps America blind, not safe. Higher learning institutions exist to bring differing viewpoints together, not to insulate the elite from anything that makes some people feel uncomfortable.