To attempt to be somewhat balanced in reacting to this, the article is, as it states in the title, about "fear of being detained", it's not about actually being detained.
As some people point out, what makes the news is the exceptions, not the norms.
I'd like to know some statistics around the frequency of being questioned, detained, deported from the last few years, to the last month, two months, three months. What characteristics can be sliced up in different ways to determine what, if any, emerging patterns are?
However, perception is reality, so even if nothing has actually changed in behaviour of border security, the media messaging has definitely changed which already seems to be causing a slowing down of international travellers coming to the US - there was a good article about that on the front page of HN not long ago.
> As some people point out, what makes the news is the exceptions, not the norms.
There are also the cases that never make the news.
For example: last Friday I went to a friend's PhD defense in Stockholm, during the party/dinner after one of his supervisors was telling us the story where she got detained by CBP in her last visit in March. She is a Finnish professor, with a J1 visa, with a part-time position in an American university, she was detained and deported because the CBP agent didn't like she said she was coming into the US for work-related matters.
This never made the news or anything, she was quietly disposed of after being in "custody" for a few hours.
Her takeaway was simply she would give up this part-time work helping some American PhD students, she didn't need the money and the stress and time wasted was too much.
How many more of these cases exist? We will never know.
Border Patrol Checking US Visitors' Phones, Social Media are a thing and it is quite large escalation over what was happening before. The claim that nothing changed is just not true.
> We don’t believe it is safe for everyone to travel to the US, particularly our trans and diverse colleagues
From the article. So, there are groups that are at more risk and those as less risk. And these people worry about at risk groups.
> The focus on that is really troubling. That, if you legitimately have a different passport than you were given at a young age, you could be detained.
So, despite you not believing it is an issue, per their claims, it is the fear.
In addition to America not being safe anymore, actually, the risk can be small for people to act on it. Americans are constantly scared of low probability events - think child kidnapping. Why would it be different for someone else?
> Border Patrol Checking US Visitors' Phones, Social Media
Many countries have been doing this for years though. And several of those countries even have key disclosure laws unlike the US, where you are literally forced to unlock your devices and give out your password no matter what.
Canadian authorities, like U.S. authorities, say they will seize a phone if a traveler refuses to unlock it. New Zealand imposes a $5,000 fine for failing to unlock a phone, and Britain considers refusing to unlock a phone for police to be a counterterrorism offense.
I doubt you can get statistics on that… You may have heard stories about visa applications taking so long that the trip became pointless, e.g. granting visa for travel to a conference on the last day of the conference? That's a "yes" in the statistics, a granted application.
And often there isn't any data at all. I've been questioned by immigration for ten minutes a couple of times. No record was made as far as I could tell. I suspect that if a country wants to, people can be kept for quite a while without any record being made.
So if you want to know whether the US is moving from a top-25% position to something rather worse, I fear you might not be able to get enough reliable data for a comparison.
> Thank you for that very logical and level-headed response.
Is it? The regulations are literally changing every day, and he's asking for data on their effects? It sounds like a very unrealistic response to me.
Here is another response: news reports indicate USA borders crossing are going through rapid change, some sort of inflection point if you like. We don't know what the other side of that inflection point will look like as yet. There have been recent reports of unexplained wasted air fares, passport reject stamps and detention. The implications range from minor to very serious. A prudent person without an urgent reason to go to the USA should wait until the situation settles down, so a clear picture of the risks can emerge.
The downside of that is the situation is not settling down. Every day I wake up to unexpected political happenings in the USA, and it's been going on for near 100 days now with no end in sight. It might be a long wait.
I would surmise it's more fear of wasting money and time on a plane (approx 13 - 16 hours at min cost of $2000 aud for a specific flight time,) only to be turned back at the US border.
I mostly agree with your sentiments, that not much has changed, there's been plenty of horror stories pre 2015 in regard to being pulled aside and sent back, misunderstandings perhaps but ...
Last couple of months I'd say there's a stark difference, there seems to be numerous media stores with a definite focus that it doesn't take much to be knocked back, and a few came down to simply having a record of being critical of Trump. eg. Alvin Gibbs (UK Subs) account of it which IMO sounds pretty straight up.[1]
Of course there's probably more than a few media beat ups where one would guess there's probably a bit more to the story but if so it's pretty quiet and perhaps perceived as an unwillingness for US authorities to comment.
If you have two rejection stamps in your passport, that's a real problem for any future visa application. If you have one rejection stamp, you're only one stamp away from a Problem.
First-order effects are bad, but second and third order are going to be amazing.
If people don't want to cross borders to come together, there'll be more hybrid conferences. More hybrid conferences will spur development of more remote-presence technology. And more remote-presence technology will allow inclusion of people who can't travel for financial, mobility, or even family reasons.
In other words, this will lead to more participation in human progress by more people from more countries with socioeconomic status as less of a barrier.
The effects here are chilling for America. Fewer academics, fewer internaional students, a decline in the quality of education, less revenue from those students and tourists... There is just no upside here.
Tourism into the US is also down in general. You can disparage this particular academic all you want, but unfortunately when you start deporting foreign nationals with valid visas you don't get to pick and choose the second and third-order effects. It's not just academics—and not just the academics you personally find silly—that are choosing to not visit the US.
There's someone at my employer's travel agent who keeps her ear close to the ground and hears a lot of things. The companies who act as secretariats for conferences hear about things and spread the news, too. Neither of them ignore or disparage particular groups of travellers.
> Where would we be without a thorough understanding of diverse trans psychiatric history?
You write about this as if there was something wrong with study of psychiatric care for trans people or for non-whites. Trans have above average suicide rates, they have own specific issues. It 100% makes sense to study it.
That large parts of population actively want them to suffer does not mean psychiatry should not study those.
This reaction is why my friends stopped going to the US[0]. I mean, French do have their smug people too (we even have a saying: 'il pète plus haut que son cul'), but very rarely those as derogatory as USians.
As some people point out, what makes the news is the exceptions, not the norms.
I'd like to know some statistics around the frequency of being questioned, detained, deported from the last few years, to the last month, two months, three months. What characteristics can be sliced up in different ways to determine what, if any, emerging patterns are?
However, perception is reality, so even if nothing has actually changed in behaviour of border security, the media messaging has definitely changed which already seems to be causing a slowing down of international travellers coming to the US - there was a good article about that on the front page of HN not long ago.