Homeland security deports British twenty-somethings based on "joke" tweets

Great Debates
221

I think this is an important point. We live in a world and in a country in which reasonably free international travel is critical not just to the overall economy, but also to the well-being, livelihoods, aspirations, and happiness of many, many individuals. This is something that we as a nation need to keep an eye on. We need to travel to keep our economy moving and our personal lives rewarding. And we also need people from other countries to be able to travel reasonably freely for the same situation.

One of the biggest negative consequences of 9/11 was that we made our country less welcoming to foreign students, particularly science, engineering, etc., students. A huge part of our technological and economic growth depends on the inflow of brain from around the world, particularly Western Europe, China, and India.

Above, there’s a discussion about whether the United States is a “tourist economy.” However, you define the term, tourism is important to our economy, but it probably is a stretch to call us a “tourist economy.”

What is not a stretch is to call our economy an “innovation economy.” A significant segment of our GDP, our growth, our income, our personal satisfaction comes from the work of inventors and creators of all kinds, not only home grown ones, but those who come here from around the world to take advantage of the social and economic advantages present here.

And you can bet that we, collectively, as Americans, are the ones who benefit most from this kind of thing. Whenever we make it harder or less attractive for such people to come here, we’re the ones who lose the most in the long term.

If we don’t have the whole story on this incident yet, then I might come to a different conclusion. But given what we know now, this appears to be a stupid mistake on the part of our customs agents. When such a mistake happens, we need to take steps to remedy it.

More than anything else, we need to maintain the image and reality of our country being the best place to go, not just to enjoy oneself, but to live, work, create, innovate, entrepreneur-iate, whatever. That has for a long time been one of the key things that make us who we are and make us, collectively, as successful as we are. The land of opportunity, of freedom, of welcoming, of rational, humane treatment.

222

Well, aside from the self-image thing (and I respect your right to any self-image you choose), I was trying to get at the fact that the US does tend to lead in example in such matters. And other countries DO either follow the example or react negatively to the example.

The examples have effects. Believing otherwise is naive.

We’ve seen things blow up and have big effects. The wrong phone gets tapped, and now Rupert Murdoch is struggling. A man sets himself on fire and the Arab Spring sweeps the Middle East. Crowds occupy Wall Street and it spreads.

Like it or not, these days things like this have effects. Is it so hard to believe that an idiotic immigration decision could have bad consequences for Americans abroad? That the proposed draconian “you must carefully monitor your tweets for possibly misinterpreted slang months in advance of travelling” policy is an intrinsically bad one? Not just for non-entities, but for real Americans also?

It’s a bad policy. It’s in nobody’s interests. And this sort of thing - even if not this time - can fundamentally change things these days.

America has a lot of influence. The downside of that power is that it’s examples affect what others do. And make no mistake, there are countries out there unafraid to mistreat American citizens.

223

None of this is ever, ever going to happen and I believe you know it. But you just keep pounding that drum.

Brits miffed and avoiding the states for a season isn’t going to make the tiniest dent it their economy, anyone with 2nd grade math skills can figure that out.

It wasn’t bad policy, for christssakes, it was an overreaching, officious, power drunk, border guard on a bad day.

And this; Rupert Murdock is struggling because the ‘wrong’ phone got tapped, is so silly I’m wondering what in hell you’re on about. Rupert Murdock is struggling because he breached the law, common decency and the morality of privacy. The ‘wrong’ phone didn’t bring him down, his damnable actions did.

Your thinking is getting fuzzier with every post, I suggest you quit while you’re ahead.

224

Call it “professional experience.”

Probably with an overstay or a drug possession. Remember, it’s not just drug dealers we want to keep out, but also drug consumers. If it’s reasonable to assume the person will make a drug purchase while in the country, then they’re inadmissible.

225

And yet freakier things happen all the time.

I think we discussed the maths above. If you scroll up, there’s some analysis of it.

I’ve no idea whether it’s policy or someone breaking policy. I’m glad we both agree it’s wrong.

The company was doing it for years. It took the right squealer to catch the public eye. Then it all went to hell. That’s how it usually works. That’s why Apple is suddenly interested in the welfare of its Chinese workers, for example.

Let’s try not to be dicks, and debate the arguments and not insult each other, eh? We can disagree politely.

226

C’mon, man! Be fair - now you’re just making stuff up! There’s no reference to drug dealers anywhere; invoking that as evidence is just disingenuous. :slight_smile:

227

I think most people would accept “likely overstay” or “druggie” as legit reasons as to why someone might be inadmissible to the US. So why, then, was “Posts on Tweeter” cited as the first reason they were denied admission at the POE?

228

Indeed. In fact “likely to overstay” and “drug dealer” are against the rules (or, as we like to call them, “laws”). Posting about partying on Twitter? Not so much.

229

It’s pretty obvious that the report was being written chronologically. We only got the first two paragraphs, and it was the tweet that raised the red flag. When you list things chronologically, the first thing listed isn’t necessarily the most important item. It just happened to occur first.

230

But the argument is that you’re bringing into evidence things that simply aren’t available. The entire discussion hinges around those tweets; and you went from “it’s OK to ban then because of those tweets” to “well, there’s other stuff we’re not seeing”.

If there’s other stuff, like drug use or what-have-you, then I’m completely on your side. But we don’t have any evidence at all of that. All we’re discussing is a tweet which refers to someone’s intention to party in America; a practice, cash-flow heavy as it is, one would assume is beneficial to the US economy.

So, given the evidence we have, and the arguments you’ve read in this thread thus far, would you be prepared to agree that - on the basis of the evidence we have - it was a bad decision? With an acknowledgement that that may be influenced by factors we don’t know?

231

You can call it what you like, but it’s clearly not supportable with facts. And that makes it just something you only ‘think’ must be occurring regularly. Thanks for clearing that up.

232

Of course it’s possible that there was some other reason for this denial of entry. There’s no evidence to suggest any other reason, but sure.

Suppose the “Posts on Tweeter” are the only problem. You said earlier in the thread that they, alone, justify this decision. Do you still believe that?

233

I don’t see the point of making a judgement on a situation where we know we are missing part of the story. It’s not like maybe there’s more and maybe there isn’t. There is more.

234

Am I the only one who thinks the homeland security agents in question should be up on criminal charges for kidnapping?

235

Probably. Care to flesh out how that charge would be made? That is, how is this different from anytime someone is arrested? Bonus question: How long can a citizen (and these guys are not citizens) be detained without charges?

236

But… but… you did make a judgement! A pretty draconian and stentorian one at that! It’s almost like you’re pretending your earlier posts don’t exist!

I keep asking you this in different ways, but you just ignore it. I’ll ask again, though - do you still stand by your judgemental “fuck 'em” post, or has your position changed?

237

I do. They don’t get automatic entry into the US (note where I said entry was a privilege and not a right). That does not mean they get automatic expulsion, which didn’t happen. They get put into the system to determine if it’s worth it to let them enter. If it turns out the system rejects them, then boo-fucking-hoo.

When you’re trying to enter the US, you don’t get an “innocent until proven guilty” status. You get a “guilty until proven innocent”. I think people in this thread are confusing how a criminal arrest is handled in the US as opposed to an entry case like this. The standards of evidence are completely different.

238

Because funnily enough, newspapers routinely print only the germane parts of documents as proof.

So, my hypothesis goes like this:

“The evidence displayed in this document is consistent with their story, and the standard behaviour of newspapers.”

and yours goes like this:

“The newspaper has withheld material evidence of an issue more serious than the tweets in question. There is an unknown offence that is a valid reason for rejection, but not so serious that the NHS would have wanted to hold onto these people for proper investigation. The newspapers, for whatever reason, decided to print the story even knowing that the TSA could defend themselves at whatever time just by releasing the full story”

Occam’s razor:

“from among competing hypotheses, selecting the one that makes the fewest new assumptions usually provides the correct one, and that the simplest explanation will be the most plausible until evidence is presented to prove it false.”

Which of the two hypotheses do you think is the simplest, and makes the fewest assumptions?

239

Flying to LA via Canada from London could not possibly be considered suspicious, as that’s one of the main routes airlines take when not flying direct. It’s a far more common route than flying via somewhere else in the US and it’s much cheaper than flying direct. If flying via Canada raises a flag, then the DHS will have to investigate HUGE numbers of people flying in from London.

As for overstaying… I don’t know why you think America is so great that British people would really want to overstay. Unemployment here’s roughly the same, we have a much better social security net and free healthcare, and their family’s here (I don’t know about their job/study/home status). They’re not refugees from a famine-stricken warzone.

And if that were the reason then why would the DHS even bother to mention the tweets? It doesn’t appear to be written in chronological order, btw.

Good point - making a genuine threat to destroy a country is a huge deal, not one that should be punished by stopping them going on holiday.

John Mace, if your position now is that we simply don’t know enough so can’t say anything about this decision, then that’s fine. In which case your earlier posts supporting the DHS and saying the tourists were definitely wrong and stupid are going against your new position.

240

I’m sorry to tell you that in my impression (no cite, sorry, just a general impression), you are well on your way to losing that image. Especially the image of “the land of welcoming and of rational, humane treatment”. Perhaps you still uphold the image in some of the poorer parts of the world, but among people in the more wealthy and industrialized parts of the world you’ve lost quite a bit of it already.