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>On Feb. 16, customs officials detained her at Logan International Airport in Boston for failing to declare samples of frog embryos she had carried from France

>On Feb. 16, customs officials detained her at Logan International Airport in Boston for failing to declare samples of frog embryos she had carried from France at the request of her boss at Harvard. Big fuck up on her boss here. You don't send your immigrant workers on a visa (especially from countries currently involved in a war) to be mules for you, since their visas can always be cancelled for any reason, so why are you putting them in situations where they can give authorities a reason? How do they not know this? What were they thinking? Either go yourself or send someone else who's a citizen. The lack of thought in this just boggles my mind. Also, where's the self preservation on her part, especially given her via situation and the situation in her country? When I as an immigrant traveled for work with hardware prototypes , I always made sure my boss had them in his luggage since he's a citizen with a more powerful passport and I don't want to be flagged by border controls on what's a foreigner doing with strange hardware in his luggage. You don't just accept to be a mule for your employer when you're an immigrant on a visa since then you're just playing Russian roulette(pun not intended). If I were a Russian citizen on a visa abroad right now, I'd do everything in my power to lay low, fly under the radar and avoid all unnecessary travel, or travel with only pajamas and a toothbrush, not with animal embryos. I guess biology scientists are so used to travelling with weird shit all the time, they just forget to declare it. Edit: @downvoters, do you have any arguments to add?

slibhb 2y ago
You're probably right that it was a fuck-up. But given that she was carrying frog embryos and not something illegal I don't understand why the government would revoke her visa. Just give her a warning and move on.
- zamalek 2y ago
  > I don't understand why the government would revoke her visa The current make up of the executive, congress, the senate, and the judiciary.
  - genpop 2y ago
    All of which gen pop sits on their hands and enables. I don’t see them in the street protesting for universal healthcare until it happens. The public is nihilistic until their jobs are threatened, even then a single weekend warrior protest and back to the office. The sort of indifference for others until the issue hits home is endemic in America; see Republicans who hate gays until a niece or nephew comes out the closet. Sad, sad, people Politicians come from American communities, families, schools… it’s a shame so many live with the stress of the cognitive dissonance of their lack of effort and their projection of empty platitudes and memes about themselves
    - zamalek 2y ago
      > All of which gen pop sits on their hands and enables. I 100% agree with this, this is what the majority asked for (and probably still want, hatred seems to run deeper than self-interest).
- FirmwareBurner 2y ago
  >But given that she was carrying frog embryos and not something illegal It was illegal not declaring she was carrying embryos. Wasn't that clear from the article?
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    > At first, Ms. Petrova said, her re-entry felt normal. At passport control, an officer examined the J-1 visa that Harvard had sponsored, identifying her as a biomedical researcher. The officer stamped her passport, admitting her to the country. > Then, as she headed toward the baggage claim, a Border Patrol officer approached her and asked to search her suitcase. All she could think was that the embryo samples inside would be ruined; RNA degrades easily. She explained that she didn’t know the rules. The officer was polite, she recalled, and told her she would be allowed to leave. I can't speak for Boston, but every American airport I've traveled through internationally has had you pick up bags at the baggage claim, then take it to customs. (After all, a bag search may be involved; you can't really declare something in your bag if you don't have your bag.) This timeline of events seems odd.
    - wildzzz 2y ago
      At Dulles, you pickup your bags after customs. If they want to search your bags, they will regardless.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - ceejayoz 2y ago
        The maps at https://www.atacarnet.com/sites/default/files/documents/airport_maps/IAD_Airport_Map_-_US_Version.pdf https://www.atacarnet.com/sites/default/files/documents/airp... and https://www.ana.co.jp/en/jp/guide/prepare/airport-guide/international/iad.html https://www.ana.co.jp/en/jp/guide/prepare/airport-guide/inte... say otherwise. Immigration (can you enter) --> international baggage claim --> customs (can your stuff enter) --> transfer bag drop. edit: Same setup for Boston, it seems? https://www.jal.co.jp/jp/en/inter/airport/bos/info/ https://www.jal.co.jp/jp/en/inter/airport/bos/info/ Immigration: "Customs declaration form - not required" Then baggage claim, then... Customs: "Please show your passport and customs declaration form. (Your customs declaration form will be collected here.) If you have any items to declare, please declare them to an official."
lofatdairy 2y ago
I think this is placing the blame on the victims rather than the policies that are actually allowing these things to happen. Like the PI clearly made a mistake, but it's a minor one whose consequences have been made wholly disproportionate due to xenophobic policy. He's even quoted as admitting as much in the article: >No one at Harvard feels worse than Dr. Peshkin. Again and again, he has asked himself why he allowed Ms. Petrova to take the risk of carrying the samples. He rereads the text exchange he had with Ms. Petrova while she was sitting on the plane. Also Dr. Peshkin didn't send her, she was already there for vacation: >Dr. Peshkin worried she would burn out. He was relieved when she told him she was taking a vacation to France, where the pianist Andras Schiff was giving a concert. She bought theater tickets and planned trips to see friends from Moscow, now scattered across Europe. >“I said, ‘Well, you’re there,’” Dr. Peshkin said. “Why don’t you get this package?” So not only is this lack of empathy it's also mischaracterizing the situation.
- FirmwareBurner 2y ago
  >I think this is placing the blame on the victims rather than the policies that are actually allowing these things to happen. If you're a fisherman on a lake and a fish just jumps in your boat, is it your fault or the fish's fault? You were just doing your fisherman job. You(individually) can't change the bad policies of the country you emigrated to because you're not a citizen with voting rights, right? But you can adapt your behavior to not fall in the trap of those bad policies, right? All you have to do is lay low and not break any laws or do things that attract attention of the authorities, like you know, travelling with undeclared embryos, which is not something average travelers usually do. "Yeah but your country's laws are stupid, so give me a break" is not a defense that ever works for immigrants, which means they're at the mercy of trigger happy border enforcement agents who are just following the law, which says they can deport anyone for any reason they see fit. I think many western people with powerful passports don't realize, that when you're a guest in a country (especially with a weak passport) you really need to be a lot more paranoid than the locals on the rules and regulations of the host country since you'll have no local rights and no embassy to bail you out if you fuck up. The speed limit says 100? Well, you drive at 90 just to be sure. Yeah, it sucks, but that's life.
kashunstva 2y ago
> @downvoters, do you have any arguments to add? Not a downvoter, but the idea of proportionality is core to liberal democracies. It’s why only illiberal states would cut off the hands of a petty thief, or execute drug offenders, and so forth. Wrecking a person’s life over frog embryos, irrespective of her imprudence or her boss’s carelessness is a disproportionate response. That’s my argument. It smacks of the sort of arbitrary cruelty and pettiness that runs through the very core of this administration.
- FirmwareBurner 2y ago
  > is a disproportionate response Sure, but when border agents are legally allowed to act as judges, juries and executioners on the spot, why is it surprising this happens? They see hundreds or thousands of plane travelers pass by them per day maybe, they don't have time to assess each individual case by case. They're legally allowed to cut before measuring when they encounter someone who broke a law. They don't care that person didn't know the law. This has nothing to do with the orange man, but with the powers border agents have at their discursion which inevitably results in both false positives and false negatives on a daily basis.
trod1234 2y ago
You'll find the people downvoting are mostly not people. It seems to be a naive de-amplification when certain posts have above a threshold of activity, where negative and neutral sentiment is downvoted. While you need at least 500 karma points to see the downvote mechanism, apparently its been possible to downvote using curl or other software after attaching certain nonces without any kind of verification that the account meets that requirement. A guy interested in this was tinkering and found that out in another post. Not sure if the guy ended up reaching out to dang or not. I didn't go about verifying it, but the post he tinkered in definitely was downvoted by several points and the account used had only single digit karma (almost brand new). As for what happened, its pretty clear that the boss follows the academic and government stereotype of the corrupt magistrate. Leveraging someone who can't say no for fear of reprisal (and she immigrated from such an environment so its fresh). In any case, this is just an example of how totalitarian our society has become, and how it has followed the predictable indicators similar to that which lead up to Hitler's rise to power. There has been a running debate that when communism fails to subvert and seize power, totalitarianism rises in response. A lot of historian's have been working hard lately.

slibhb 2y ago

You're probably right that it was a fuck-up. But given that she was carrying frog embryos and not something illegal I don't understand why the government would revoke her visa. Just give her a warning and move on.

zamalek 2y ago
> I don't understand why the government would revoke her visa The current make up of the executive, congress, the senate, and the judiciary.
- genpop 2y ago
  All of which gen pop sits on their hands and enables. I don’t see them in the street protesting for universal healthcare until it happens. The public is nihilistic until their jobs are threatened, even then a single weekend warrior protest and back to the office. The sort of indifference for others until the issue hits home is endemic in America; see Republicans who hate gays until a niece or nephew comes out the closet. Sad, sad, people Politicians come from American communities, families, schools… it’s a shame so many live with the stress of the cognitive dissonance of their lack of effort and their projection of empty platitudes and memes about themselves
  - zamalek 2y ago
    > All of which gen pop sits on their hands and enables. I 100% agree with this, this is what the majority asked for (and probably still want, hatred seems to run deeper than self-interest).
FirmwareBurner 2y ago
>But given that she was carrying frog embryos and not something illegal It was illegal not declaring she was carrying embryos. Wasn't that clear from the article?
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  > At first, Ms. Petrova said, her re-entry felt normal. At passport control, an officer examined the J-1 visa that Harvard had sponsored, identifying her as a biomedical researcher. The officer stamped her passport, admitting her to the country. > Then, as she headed toward the baggage claim, a Border Patrol officer approached her and asked to search her suitcase. All she could think was that the embryo samples inside would be ruined; RNA degrades easily. She explained that she didn’t know the rules. The officer was polite, she recalled, and told her she would be allowed to leave. I can't speak for Boston, but every American airport I've traveled through internationally has had you pick up bags at the baggage claim, then take it to customs. (After all, a bag search may be involved; you can't really declare something in your bag if you don't have your bag.) This timeline of events seems odd.
  - wildzzz 2y ago
    At Dulles, you pickup your bags after customs. If they want to search your bags, they will regardless.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - ceejayoz 2y ago
      The maps at https://www.atacarnet.com/sites/default/files/documents/airport_maps/IAD_Airport_Map_-_US_Version.pdf https://www.atacarnet.com/sites/default/files/documents/airp... and https://www.ana.co.jp/en/jp/guide/prepare/airport-guide/international/iad.html https://www.ana.co.jp/en/jp/guide/prepare/airport-guide/inte... say otherwise. Immigration (can you enter) --> international baggage claim --> customs (can your stuff enter) --> transfer bag drop. edit: Same setup for Boston, it seems? https://www.jal.co.jp/jp/en/inter/airport/bos/info/ https://www.jal.co.jp/jp/en/inter/airport/bos/info/ Immigration: "Customs declaration form - not required" Then baggage claim, then... Customs: "Please show your passport and customs declaration form. (Your customs declaration form will be collected here.) If you have any items to declare, please declare them to an official."

lofatdairy 2y ago

I think this is placing the blame on the victims rather than the policies that are actually allowing these things to happen. Like the PI clearly made a mistake, but it's a minor one whose consequences have been made wholly disproportionate due to xenophobic policy. He's even quoted as admitting as much in the article: >No one at Harvard feels worse than Dr. Peshkin. Again and again, he has asked himself why he allowed Ms. Petrova to take the risk of carrying the samples. He rereads the text exchange he had with Ms. Petrova while she was sitting on the plane. Also Dr. Peshkin didn't send her, she was already there for vacation: >Dr. Peshkin worried she would burn out. He was relieved when she told him she was taking a vacation to France, where the pianist Andras Schiff was giving a concert. She bought theater tickets and planned trips to see friends from Moscow, now scattered across Europe. >“I said, ‘Well, you’re there,’” Dr. Peshkin said. “Why don’t you get this package?” So not only is this lack of empathy it's also mischaracterizing the situation.

FirmwareBurner 2y ago
>I think this is placing the blame on the victims rather than the policies that are actually allowing these things to happen. If you're a fisherman on a lake and a fish just jumps in your boat, is it your fault or the fish's fault? You were just doing your fisherman job. You(individually) can't change the bad policies of the country you emigrated to because you're not a citizen with voting rights, right? But you can adapt your behavior to not fall in the trap of those bad policies, right? All you have to do is lay low and not break any laws or do things that attract attention of the authorities, like you know, travelling with undeclared embryos, which is not something average travelers usually do. "Yeah but your country's laws are stupid, so give me a break" is not a defense that ever works for immigrants, which means they're at the mercy of trigger happy border enforcement agents who are just following the law, which says they can deport anyone for any reason they see fit. I think many western people with powerful passports don't realize, that when you're a guest in a country (especially with a weak passport) you really need to be a lot more paranoid than the locals on the rules and regulations of the host country since you'll have no local rights and no embassy to bail you out if you fuck up. The speed limit says 100? Well, you drive at 90 just to be sure. Yeah, it sucks, but that's life.

kashunstva 2y ago

> @downvoters, do you have any arguments to add? Not a downvoter, but the idea of proportionality is core to liberal democracies. It’s why only illiberal states would cut off the hands of a petty thief, or execute drug offenders, and so forth. Wrecking a person’s life over frog embryos, irrespective of her imprudence or her boss’s carelessness is a disproportionate response. That’s my argument. It smacks of the sort of arbitrary cruelty and pettiness that runs through the very core of this administration.

FirmwareBurner 2y ago
> is a disproportionate response Sure, but when border agents are legally allowed to act as judges, juries and executioners on the spot, why is it surprising this happens? They see hundreds or thousands of plane travelers pass by them per day maybe, they don't have time to assess each individual case by case. They're legally allowed to cut before measuring when they encounter someone who broke a law. They don't care that person didn't know the law. This has nothing to do with the orange man, but with the powers border agents have at their discursion which inevitably results in both false positives and false negatives on a daily basis.

trod1234 2y ago

You'll find the people downvoting are mostly not people. It seems to be a naive de-amplification when certain posts have above a threshold of activity, where negative and neutral sentiment is downvoted. While you need at least 500 karma points to see the downvote mechanism, apparently its been possible to downvote using curl or other software after attaching certain nonces without any kind of verification that the account meets that requirement. A guy interested in this was tinkering and found that out in another post. Not sure if the guy ended up reaching out to dang or not. I didn't go about verifying it, but the post he tinkered in definitely was downvoted by several points and the account used had only single digit karma (almost brand new). As for what happened, its pretty clear that the boss follows the academic and government stereotype of the corrupt magistrate. Leveraging someone who can't say no for fear of reprisal (and she immigrated from such an environment so its fresh). In any case, this is just an example of how totalitarian our society has become, and how it has followed the predictable indicators similar to that which lead up to Hitler's rise to power. There has been a running debate that when communism fails to subvert and seize power, totalitarianism rises in response. A lot of historian's have been working hard lately.