People are quick to blame this on Trump, but reading through the comments on a previous article for this incident (<a href="http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-advice/travellers-stories/aussies-weird-immigration-interview-in-the-us/news-story/8222c65d2f12e6691ef27c9b1753e821" rel="nofollow">http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-advice/travellers-stori...</a>), it looks like it’s par for the course to test someone’s knowledge on their claimed profession. Here’s a comment from one of the users:<p>> Had the same experience 12 years ago: admitted I am developing linux device drivers, and had to explain differences between kernel 2.4 and 2.6 APIs. The guy actually understood it.<p>Testing occupational expertise is not a bad way to find people who are lying. To be able to explain the difference between kernel 2.4 and 2.6 APIs or how to balance a binary search tree are questions one could not possibly answer without actually being in that profession.<p>Let’s say you’re a hitman traveling to Malaysia to take out the estranged brother of a dictator. Before you go, you’re given a fake passport and character sheet telling you your profession, your family situation, etc. It’s pretty easy to answer questions like “how long have you been working as a photographer?” or “how did you meet your wife?” but a lot more difficult to prepare for questions like “What is the best lense for close ups?”
Hey y'all, I'm the person they mentioned in the article.<p>Because this is a fairly technical forum (and some people were asking about language specifics or runtime characteristics) I'll let you in on the question even though I left it out of the journalist interviews - hopefully this information will help you make sense of the article/interaction for yourself:<p>Write a Python program to take two numbers as input and if the sun is bigger than 100, output "this is a large number" but if it is less than 100 output the sum of the numbers.<p>Lol!
One cannot but wonder what happens if you answer the question in a different manner than that suggested by Wikipedia or whichever resource the CBP draws their questions from.<p>I think the basic idea - questioning people about things they ought to know, given who they claim to be - is a good one.<p>However, it only makes sense if the one doing the questioning is able to judge the quality of the answer - or, for that matter, determine whether your inability to answer satisfactorily is because you bluffed - or if you're just a bit outside your professional comfort zone.<p>(I would probably have to answer 'software engineer', as that is what my business card says - however, I am much more of a hardware/systems guy in practice, only our HR department is completely unable to change my title to something a bit more descriptive. If speaking to another engineer, I wouldn't have any problems convincing him of my bona fides - however, if a CBP officer just looks up question #13 in the 'SW engineer' quiz - I may be in trouble.
I think lots of people on this thread are missing the point. This won't necessarily detect a determined spy who's done their homework. It's not meant to. It's a quick and effective sanity check to make sure that a person hasn't fudged their visa credentials and they're well in their rights to ask and exercise their discretion. They've been doing it for years.<p>I doubt a perfect answer to their trivia question is required. If it's in your field you'll be able to say something halfway intelligent in response, if you've lied on your visa it will become obvious pretty quickly.<p>Outrage about confiscating phones and demanding passwords is justified. This, on the other hand, seems pretty reasonable.
It's actually fairly typical. When you enter on a H1B visa they ask you questions to see if your occupation (the one you got the visa for) is not made up.<p>I work in Finance, and when I was on a H1B visa (back in 2010), the immigration officer asked me some bond-related questions, just to see if I had any clue.<p>They also asked my wife what I was working on.<p>It's pretty annoying to feel that you're not being trusted, but yes, they don't trust you.<p>Also the fact that he's Australian is a reassuring proof they don't base these question on color of skin...
Original, with a little bit more detail: <a href="http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-advice/travellers-stories/aussies-weird-immigration-interview-in-the-us/news-story/8222c65d2f12e6691ef27c9b1753e821" rel="nofollow">http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-advice/travellers-stori...</a><p>> “The vibe I got was weird. He asked me a question, then asked me a follow-up question to prove I wasn’t lying.<p>> “Do they not allow bad software engineers into the United States?” Thornton joked.<p>See also, more recently: <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2017/03/02/technology/andela-engineer-customs/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://money.cnn.com/2017/03/02/technology/andela-engineer-c...</a>
<i>“‘I’ve got a problem, I’m trying to write a computer program, can you help me?’”</i><p>"My software consulting rate is normally $400/hr, plus an initial startup fee, but I'm not authorized to work in your country, so, no."
I always found the cold, hard manner of border agents in the US quite off putting in general.<p>Last year I was fortunate enough to attend AWS Re:Invent, standing in the queue at McCarran airport, I saw the guard laughing and joking with the people in front of me so I thought ah, maybe they're all not like this!<p>As soon as it came to me the guy completely changed, he went cold, he spent the most amount of time asking why I'd ticked "business" on my customs form, as I didn't know what to tick, then proceeded to ask me what conference I was going to and what it was about and why I was attending. I know that's his job and he's just making sure everything lines up, but it just felt unwelcoming.
I am not surprised by this. When I was at Newark the conversation with immigration guy was something like this:<p>Him: What do you do?
Me: I am an entepreneur.<p>Him: Haha, ... we are all entepreneurs, now really, what do you do?
Me: Websites<p>Him: I've heard there is a Sillicone Valley in Russia and they want to take over that ours.
Me: Um, okay. (I am from Czech Republic)
A few days ago a Nigerian software engineer was asked to balance a BST at JFK airport: <a href="https://twitter.com/cyberomin/status/835888786462625792" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/cyberomin/status/835888786462625792</a>
Don't blame this on Trump; it goes on all over the world.<p>If the border police officer for any reason decides that you are suspicious then they will toy with you as they please. That includes asking arbitrary questions under the threat they can send you back to home country for any or no reason. Plus they can fingerprint you and go thru all your travel goods including phone and laptop.<p>As foreigner you have no rights standing at the border of the country you are entering.<p>And the border police operates without the checks that a normal police force operates under.<p>If you are a frequent traveller you better get used to being interrogated; answer short and precise without using any trigger words.
One of my math professor (Canadian) once told us a story (~10 years ago) that the US border control asked him to "state and prove Rolle's theorem" after he had told them he was traveling to a math conference. Apparently he answered "it's something to do with the mean value theorem, right?" and that was good enough.
I don't like the nervous atmosphere they make at the US border. It's the only country apart from Cuba where you get the feeling they might deny me entry for no reason. And it's the only country that I personally know people have been denied entry for no reason.<p>It's the way the questions come out, like a movie. The words come out slowly while the guy looks for something in my eyes.<p>I haven't been grilled on professional questions, but I wonder what I should say I do. Programmer or Trader are both legit. If I say programmer, I might get a technical question. If I say trader, maybe I just have give him a random stock tip.
This reminds me of a George Gamow's story (which can be an urban legend attributed to him) in Soviet Russia, I think when he was trying to flee. Allegedly, he was detained by some local warrior group in Caucasus(?). The local chieftain didn't believe he was a theoretical physicist, so he asked him to derive the n-th error term of the Taylor expansion. Fortunately, he was able to do that and save his life!<p>I take it as one of those lessons of usefulness of mathematics in daily life. :-)
I've also been asked for my occupation, and then my business card, and then my website – which they actually started browsing as I was standing there in the passport control. This was back in 2009.
I'm in the US right now. Upon arriving in SFO (from Sydney) on a holiday (ESTA), I was asked the following non-standard questions:<p>"So you're a software engineer? What is your most proficient language?"<p>Response: "Javascript"<p>"What does the atob function do?"<p>I was quite taken back and asked to repeat, and the CBP agent spelled out "a t o b". I answered something to do with base64 decoding and was let through
The fact that this has started happenning in parallel with H-1B crackdown is not a coincedence. Someone somewhere issued a note that too many fake programmers are slipping in, so that's the result.
A investment banker I know ( private equity, with a well know firm that has a AUM of $340 billion ) was asked :<p>"Why do you you hate the USA ?"<p>when he last flew to the US.
I just don't believe this. It's fake news. This line made it clear to me:<p>"He said the officer appeared to be mid to senior level, and there’s no chance the conversation would have been overheard by anyone else in line."<p>So basically there is no one who can corroborate with his story. This trash should not be allowed into any publication which calls itself 'news'.<p>I'm surprised that people actually believe that stuff by default. In this new world, the default should be to distrust the media and that line I quoted above gives a very good reason to distrust it.