[HN Gopher] You can't cURL a Border
___________________________________________________________________
You can't cURL a Border
Author : valzevul
Score : 432 points
Date : 2025-11-04 00:37 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (drobinin.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (drobinin.com)
| clacker-o-matic wrote:
| that was fascinating; I didn't realize border requirements were
| that complicated.
| rmunn wrote:
| It grows exponentially the more countries are involved. I am a
| citizen of country A but live and work in country B, and I have
| to satisfy country B's visa requirements, which involves quite
| a bit of paperwork. I also have to pay taxes to country A,
| which involves more paperwork. It gets complicated.
|
| But I'm only dealing with the requirements of _two_ countries.
| The author mentioned five or six countries; I 'm glad I'm only
| dealing with two.
| a012 wrote:
| I've never worked in 2 countries but there are many countries
| that have DTA (https://www.iras.gov.sg/taxes/international-
| tax/internationa...) so theoretically you only pay taxes to
| one country at a time, wouldn't it be simpler?
| buildfocus wrote:
| This typically means they agree you don't get double
| charged (so you can claim taxes paid in one back in the
| other) but they both still want you to complete the
| paperwork regardless. Saves money, not time.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Don't get double-taxed on income, specifically. You may
| still get double-taxed on investments, property, wealth,
| etc depending on which pair of countries
| rmunn wrote:
| When I moved from country A to country B, I shipped quite
| a lot of stuff (books, board games, etc) that was too
| heavy to take on the airplane and which I could live
| without for a month or two. Country B did not charge me
| customs duties on my books, but _did_ charge me customs
| duties on my board games; I think they must have looked
| at how many I had and thought "There's no way this is
| personal possessions, he's bringing this into the country
| to sell them." I decided not to argue with them about it,
| so I got double-taxed on some of my property (sales tax
| on it in country A when I bought those games, then
| customs duties in country B years later).
|
| P.S. My collection of board games is not particularly
| impressive for a board gamer: it's in the double digits,
| but not in the triple digits. I know some board gamers
| with far more games than I have.
| rmunn wrote:
| I still have to submit the paperwork that says which
| country my income was earned in, which is basically the
| standard tax paperwork from country A plus an extra form or
| two. (And in years when I went to country A on business
| trips, it's non-trivial. Simple enough, but not as trivial
| as years when I was in country B the whole time). It's not
| extremely burdensome, but it's still one more piece of
| paperwork to keep track of than the tax paperwork that
| people who have never left country A have to deal with.
| jwr wrote:
| If you are a US citizen, US taxes you on your worldwide
| income, so you have to file regardless of where you live.
| And filing in the US is the actual burden, not the taxes
| themselves -- inscrutable tax law and byzantine forms mean
| that you can't file yourself (you pay tax-filing companies
| to do that for you) and your tax returns easily reach
| hundreds of pages.
|
| US screws its expats in a big way.
|
| The club of countries that do this includes: United States,
| Eritrea and Myanmar.
| gear54rus wrote:
| The thing is, only the US can realistically know your
| worldwide income. And only due to its banking cronies it
| intimidates into submission worldwide.
| cesarb wrote:
| > I am a citizen of country A but live and work in country B
| [...] I also have to pay taxes to country A, which involves
| more paperwork.
|
| Isn't that the case only when country A is the USA? AFAIK,
| nearly all countries in the world tax only residents, not
| citizens, so in most cases you'd only have to fill tax
| paperwork (and pay taxes) for country B.
| tow21 wrote:
| Only if you're only talking about income from work. If you
| own property in country A which you rent out while you live
| & work in country B, then you probably still owe tax on
| that rental income in country A. (but it will depend on the
| exact wording of the relevant DTA if one exists)
|
| And since you are now filling in two tax returns for
| different countries, with different tax allowances across
| rental income and work income which interact in decidedly
| non-linear fashion, you probably need to make sure both
| country A and B have no confusion about where your work
| income was earned.
|
| Having spent the last 8 years obsessively counting days
| across the UK and Finland (and every other country I have
| visited) exactly to account for this scenario, I am very
| sympathetic to attempts to solve this problem space!
| cesarb wrote:
| > If you own property in country A [...]
|
| But then, that's because you own property in country A,
| not because you're a citizen of country A! The same would
| happen if you were a citizen of country B, lived and
| worked in country B, but bought a house to rent out in
| country A.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Now try international taxation rules (particularly if you come
| from one of the handful of countries with world-wide taxation,
| like the USA!)
| philipallstar wrote:
| The more you travel (or immigrate) the more you realise the
| government probably needs less money than it gets, just better
| spent.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Which government?
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| every government.
|
| Waste is inevitable.
| Muromec wrote:
| Look, I actually like that my municipality pays a salary
| to city ecoligist that makes sure, the sparrows living in
| a bushes dont get disrupted too much when new train
| tracks are laid down
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| Yeah I mean this is why regulations are hard. Someone's
| "this is an important environmental concern" is another
| person's "anti-growth NIMBYism"
| Muromec wrote:
| You have a point -- if nimbysts had their way, the whole
| place would not even exist, as the referendum rejected
| it. On the other hand, when there is such a person making
| sure that environmental concerns are addressed, it turns
| nimbysm from a roadblock to a stakeholder.
|
| In the end the sparrows got their bushes and we got our
| train and the bridge has a place for bats to nest and all
| that.
| poncho_romero wrote:
| Then you agree that whatever replaces it will be wasteful
| too
| matsemann wrote:
| Working at a company in Norway hiring lots of internationals,
| I've heard so many stories. I'm myself born here, but to
| foreign (EU) parents. Getting a citizenship for me was quite
| "easy" (in the sense that I didn't have to do anything or be at
| someone's mercy, just had to apply), but still lots of
| bureaucracy. For instance, I had to order a transcript from the
| police saying that I hadn't committed certain crimes. This
| document I would have to bring to my appointment for
| citizenship _at the police station_. But the document had a
| short expiration date, and didn 't know how long it would take
| to obtain or not when my appointment would be. So it's a gamble
| if you hit the timing, shrugs. I think however they now just
| pull up the records themselves instead of doing this weird
| dance.
|
| One coworker had lived her for many years on a string of
| temporary working visas. He was then eligible for a permanent
| one, and applied. However, while that was processing, he kinda
| was in limbo. Still legal to live and work here, but somehow
| wasn't guaranteed entry if he were to leave for a vacation /
| visit his home country/family. I don't know the exact details,
| but so weird how he suddenly was stuck here for months, with
| many delays. In the end he needed to travel for work, and our
| company sent a letter and his application got fast tracked.
| ncruces wrote:
| My country just had a minister appointed who's sole mission
| is to spearhead a system that no government agency can demand
| from you a document that belongs to any other government
| agency, so long as you authorize both agencies to talk to
| each other for the purpose.
| oarsinsync wrote:
| Huge respect to the author for the details that have gone into
| this. I'd spent a week hammering at a Claude max 20x plan to try
| and build schengen 90/180 rolling window + tax residency in a
| couple of countries tracker... and that was hard work. I can only
| imagine how much effort has gone into this, to get all the
| details right.
|
| It's unclear whether the author wrote all of this themselves, or
| if they outsourced a bunch of it to Claude. My experience with
| Claude was that it was terrible at writing code to do the math,
| even when I explained what the calculation needed to be, what the
| input was, and what the expected result was. It ultimately took
| starting a whole new project just to do the rolling window
| calculation, and then have that fed back in.
|
| My biggest question for the author, if they happen to see this,
| is: how much manual testing validation did you do of the outputs
| the app produces? IE: Did you do the inputs + transformations =
| output calculations yourself as well, counting days on calendars,
| etc, to validate that the app is actually accurate? (That was the
| only way I developed any faith in solution I made for myself,
| which is way less impressive than your app). Regardless of
| whether you wrote the code yourself or not, a thorough test
| harness feels vitally important for an app like this.
| davedx wrote:
| When I've worked on complex scheduling problems like that I use
| copious unit tests, they're perfect for this kind of
| input->algo->output problem where algo has tons of edge cases.
|
| Indeed, not using unit tests and instead trying to manually
| test all the cases sounds crazy to me!
| gommm wrote:
| I tend to find that for things like this that are really math
| heavy, it's usually better to create a DSL (or create easily
| readable function calls, etc) that you can easily write
| yourself instead of relying on AI to understand math heavy
| rules. Bonus points, if the rules are in an easily editable
| format, you can change them easily when they need to. It seems
| that was the path the author took...
|
| And yes this kind of use-case is exactly where unit tests
| shine...
| embedding-shape wrote:
| I do the opposite, set up everything myself in terms of
| architecture/design of the software, so the AI can do the
| boring boilerplate like "math heavy rules". Always
| interesting to see how differently we all use LLMs.
| zahlman wrote:
| > create a DSL (or create easily readable function calls,
| etc)
|
| These aren't really that different. Consider the history of
| the earliest (non-assembly) programming languages,
| particularly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speedcoding , as
| well as the _ideas_ expressed by Lisp.
| lionkor wrote:
| > that was hard work
|
| I'm sorry. I don't want to fight here, but you have literally
| just said you paid Claude to do the thinking for you (except
| for some math), yet you're talking about this like you're some
| kind of scientist; or that you've done this extensive, in-depth
| work.
|
| You made an AI vibe-code an app in a week and now you're
| impressed someone else was able to do it better?
|
| Am I missing something? Is it maybe just your writing style
| that makes it come across so "from your high horse"?
| flumpcakes wrote:
| This task seems like something a competent Excel user could
| create. I think the hard part is knowing the rules and the
| corner cases than any of the "math" (just addition and
| subtraction, surely) required.
| andai wrote:
| How do you encode Gregg's sausage roll in .xls? ;)
| jon-wood wrote:
| You joke, but because it is actually possible - you have
| a regularly updated sheet which contains all your bank
| transactions (my bank will continually update a Google
| Sheet for me if I ask), and then you do a lookup for a
| Gregg's transaction on the relevant day.
| woodson wrote:
| But that's the thing, there are no guarantees that the
| corner cases were actually handled correctly. Especially if
| it was AI coded without review by a subject matter expert.
| zahlman wrote:
| I understand the sentiment, but I come to HN largely to
| _avoid_ that tone in Internet commentary.
| skrebbel wrote:
| I'm not sure I'm reading this right but are you saying that an
| AI made you dumber and then you complain that the AI is too
| dumb? That sounds like a lose-lose deal tbh.
| evadne wrote:
| This is an impressive article, & is incidentally why every sane
| set of rules has administrative discretion in its enforcement
| exidy wrote:
| It's a cool app, and makes me wish that Australian tax residency
| rules were actually computable.
| bambax wrote:
| There's some similarity between nationality and copyright:
| arcane, obscure, complex and mean rules that only benefit
| incumbents and punish everyone else.
|
| I hope we will eventually get rid of both.
| teiferer wrote:
| At the rate things are going, even EU and Schengen, areas in
| which their citizens are blissfully unaware how nice they have
| it compared to outsiders, are going to come to an end. Far-
| right nationalists are on the rise over Europe.
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| They just lost ground in the Netherlands, losing about 1/3 of
| their voters from last time (down from 24% to 17%)
| teiferer wrote:
| I like your optimism, but this is likely an outlier. Any
| little mistake the sitting governments are making will push
| the far-right to new highs, and there is no reason to
| believe there won't be mistakes. There will be plenty. So,
| that's the fuel that keeps coming.
|
| Now you need a lighter to set this all on fire, and we can
| see it grow in front of our eyes. The bigger the AI bubble
| grows, the more it will all come crashing down, and the
| next economic crisis will find all the EU countries (and
| not just those) ready for a far-right takeover. It's just a
| matter of time.
| wongarsu wrote:
| The European far right are not exactly fans of the EU, but on
| the whole they are much more concerned about immigrants from
| low-trust Muslim societies than from EU countries (high-trust
| "Christian" societies)
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| It doesn't even take the far right winning to unravel the EU.
| Both France and Germany, the economic pillars of the EU are
| facing _massive_ budget challenges due to aging populations,
| high energy costs and trade
| teiferer wrote:
| Though Germany and France are essentially the pillars of
| the EU. That's where it started and as long as the far
| right doesn't make it to the steering wheel, they will keep
| it that way.
| lionkor wrote:
| Do you dislike copyright also when it protects your
| intellectual property, and makes things like software licenses
| possible?
| immibis wrote:
| If I couldn't use the AGPL to force Amazon to release
| Elasticsearch, but they couldn't use normal copyright to
| force me not to reverse engineer Alexa and Widevine, would it
| be that bad?
| ronsor wrote:
| It wouldn't be bad. We have more than enough resources to
| reverse engineer most software, yet we're restricted by
| arcane EULAs and DRM.
| immibis wrote:
| And so much "FOSS" is MIT anyway. Abolishing copyright
| would make literally no difference to MIT-licensed
| software.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| There's hundreds of millions of starving people ready to move
| to the first country that does it.
| raverbashing wrote:
| The problem with those rules is that they "all make sense"
| somewhat (and where details might have been influenced by local
| idiosyncrasies) locally but if you mix and match them then it
| gets weird
|
| But the trick here is: if you're relying on the details for your
| benefit then make 100% sure it's provable (though tbh legal proof
| is less - and different - than what your HN commenter might
| understand). Or just make it easy on yourself and don't rely on
| them
| caminanteblanco wrote:
| I just realized this was the same author who made the apple watch
| integration for their gym entry system, I loved their writing
| then, and I loved it here!
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44910865
| netsharc wrote:
| Regarding the writing, I'm the opposite.. but I can't point out
| why I don't like it.
|
| Maybe because the author is trying to sound sleek and sexy,
| "look at me, jetset international traveller", although the
| topic is so nerdy and dull, and the bragging feels off-putting
| to me.
|
| (My opinion. Did I need to share it? probably not. Flag away if
| you think so)
| davedx wrote:
| No I agree, tone and context matters for technical writing
| too.
|
| Digital nomads gonna digital nomad...
| netsharc wrote:
| You've illuminated the issue for me. He's asking "What, you
| don't have the problem of needing to stay sweet of tax and
| visa regulations when you need to make a split-second
| decision whether you can spontaneously travel to Iceland?".
|
| And it's not even a "sexy" problem.. it's bureaucracy!
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| > whether you can spontaneously travel to Iceland
|
| _on a budget._
|
| At least this is what it triggered for me.
| jen729w wrote:
| > Digital nomads gonna digital nomad...
|
| People who enjoy travelling gonna travel...
| sd9 wrote:
| I'm a PureGym member. I just memorised the 8 digit number that
| never changes and I input it manually. It takes seconds. I
| agree that the official app is garbage. I just don't want or
| need to get my phone out at all.
| FearNotDaniel wrote:
| > buy a sausage roll at Greggs
|
| If that's the first thing he thinks of while transiting through a
| UK airport, he deserves a citizenship, no questions.
| BerislavLopac wrote:
| The Life in the UK test certainly needs updating.
| evertedsphere wrote:
| claude is nothing if not sensitive to cultural differences
| fragmede wrote:
| What a great ad for a great product!
|
| Shame we hate all advertising here though, except for the ones it
| turns out we do like. Humans are fickle that way, I guess.
|
| If only there were some sort of organization that wanted to unite
| the nations together, that would have been the best place for an
| app such as this to happen from. Ah well, I guess late stage
| capitalism is the only way to get anything done.
|
| I just came back from a passport using vacation too! Thankfully
| mine wasn't anywhere approaching complicated that would have
| needed this app, but I have done that before.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Are you always this cynical? The article is interesting on its
| own merits, that the author is also selling the app (outright,
| I might add, not subscription-based!) is neither here nor there
| fragmede wrote:
| You'd think so, but there's always people complainers that
| something is an ad. It just happened to be my turn. Mostly
| because the type of person who would complain that something
| is an ad and raise a fuss wouldn't complain about this one,
| and was feeling like pointing out that hypocrisy.
| Unfortunately I didn't strike the exact right tone for the
| peanut gallery. Maybe I'll have better luck next time!
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "Unfortunately I didn't strike the exact right tone for the
| peanut gallery"
|
| Right tone depends on site. "Smug + cynical" could be a
| great fit on X or Reddit, but HN isn't really built around
| this sort of discourse.
| ikamm wrote:
| I can't tell if this comment is actually serious. This
| place is often smugger and more cynical than Reddit,
| which says a lot.
| throw-the-towel wrote:
| What late stage capitalism? This is literally some guy hacking
| some stuff together.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Yeah... this site is 1000 more late-stage capitalism than
| that guy.
| fragmede wrote:
| Having to rely on "some guy hacking some stuff together", in
| _2025_ to avoid accidentally violating visa or tax or some
| other bureaucratic minutia when there 's many governmental
| bodies/organizations that should have be doing that work
| since before the Internet even existed seems just totally
| fine to you? How is this not a free app from some department
| of the UN? Probably more complicated than "because free apps
| don't make money", but that is something that late stage
| capitalism abhors.
|
| I'm not trying to tear down this guy's work, it's a great bit
| of writing, both English and code, and I'm okay with that
| pricing model.
|
| What happens when he gets something wrong, simply gets tired
| of it, or retires, or there's a bus incident?
| motiejus wrote:
| It's fascinating that cURL is becoming a genericized term:
|
| - search it on a search engine -> google it
|
| - fetch it from an API -> cURL it
| strix_varius wrote:
| "curl it" has been a common (tech) term for at least 15 years:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=5&prefix=true&que...
| caminanteblanco wrote:
| It wasn't super obvious reading the article, but the app the
| author made is available for anyone to download.
|
| https://drobinin.com/apps/residency/
|
| If I wasn't on android and decidedly sedentary at the moment, I'd
| love to see how it works.
| kitd wrote:
| I wonder if this is something that could be built on top of
| Google location tracking. Presumably there's not enough info
| there by itself, but basic time/position data should be
| sufficient.
| FinnKuhn wrote:
| This made me appriciate the amount of visa-free travel my
| passport allows me on a whole new level. Figuiring these things
| out seems possible, but so inefficient and time consuming.
| apexalpha wrote:
| I had no idea travel was this difficult for people who aren't EU
| citizens.
|
| Wow, I'm almost annoyed on the authors behalf of how much hoops
| there are to jump through.
|
| >To apply for British citizenship, you need to prove you were
| physically in the UK on your application date but five years ago.
| Not approximately five years, not that week--that exact day when
| you press "submit" on the form minus five years. Miss it by 24
| hours and your application is reject after months of waiting, and
| you have to pay a hefty fee to re-apply.
|
| That's a hilarious requirement. I wonder how that ended up in
| there.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Guessing it stems from "we need something dead-simple to
| evaluate that yields a definite yes-or-no answer, with no
| annoying variables."
|
| I'm trying to think of some other reason they might want a
| specific moment rather than "pick your own instant within this
| span", but I can't think of anything. Even if it was to "make
| sure you aren't claiming the same time on two applications to
| different places", the person could have simply staggered the
| applications.
| SecondHandTofu wrote:
| The other reason is more mundane. There's been a lot of
| political incentive to reduce immigration for a long time,
| which means adding arbitrary friction to increase the effort
| of applying and decrease the number of successful applicants.
|
| Whether this is _effective_ is a different question, but
| certainly it's gotten a lot harder in recent decades, even
| pre-Brexit.
| poncho_romero wrote:
| That explanation doesn't seem to jive with the fact that
| post-COVID the UK has accepted millions of immigrants
| airstrike wrote:
| it does, if the alternative would have been "more
| millions"
| hrimfaxi wrote:
| That millions were accepted says nothing about the
| process having changed for the worse.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Do you think applying on February 29 is allowed?
|
| Note also that this isn't a travel requirement.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| It depends on where you're going and what you're doing.
|
| A lot of this faff isn't relevant if you're not applying for
| any visas or citizenship. Which is most people, most of the
| time.
|
| The obvious solution to most of these problems for most people
| is "don't cut it close to any of the limits". If you enjoy
| traveling a lot, that's definitely a problem, but most people
| don't cross borders often enough to run into this many corner
| cases.
|
| This is only a small peek into the awful bureaucracy that will
| hit Europe if extreme right wing parties keep gaining
| popularity across the EU. The extra calculations Brexit
| imposes, but not for every country you travel through!
| miyuru wrote:
| > A lot of this faff isn't relevant if you're not applying
| for any visas or citizenship. Which is most people, most of
| the time.
|
| That's true for many, but my passport isn't very strong, so I
| still have to deal with a lot of paperwork for most transits.
| rjmunro wrote:
| If your job is travel, like you are an international truck
| driver or maybe aircrew, these kinds of things might affect
| you a lot sometimes.
|
| There's probably special rules for those people in some
| places, which makes the situation even more complicated.
| 317070 wrote:
| First, the author is actually wrong. The date is not 5 years
| before you submit, but is 5 years before the form is received
| by the home office! So there are a few days of uncertainty,
| depending on how fast Royal Mail was with the physical
| documents.
|
| Additionally, I did a request for my information from the home
| office prior to filling in my form. After all, you have the
| right to request the information they have on you that will be
| used to verify your form. Kafka would be proud.
|
| Let me tell you, Home Office doesn't have a clue where you were
| 5 years ago. It had approximately 50% of my trips, and
| frequently only had only one leg of the journey. Plane, ferry,
| train, sailboat, ... it didn't matter. It seems like they have
| not been keeping the information very well.
| jakub_g wrote:
| > It had approximately 50% of my trips, and frequently only
| had only one leg of the journey
|
| Relevant current news: Home Office denying child benefits to
| 1000s of people because they had incomplete data of people
| vacation trips, so people were thought to have emigrated and
| never returned [0]. Some people who never even left (due to
| cancelled flights, denied boardings etc.) were also affected.
|
| [0] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/nov/01/hmrc-
| likely...
| zarzavat wrote:
| This is because the UK doesn't have exit checks. They rely
| on airlines to submit the information to them.
|
| I guess this makes sense when you consider that there's an
| open border with Ireland. Though you'd think that the UK
| and Ireland could get together to track exits...
| jen729w wrote:
| The UK's borders used to be hilariously lax. In 2000 I
| travelled a lot. To leave, as you note, you just left.
|
| To return, you'd walk past a man at Heathrow who was
| invariably reading the paper. He had his feet up on the
| desk. You were walking at a clip, passport held aloft,
| photo page ostensibly open towards him.
|
| That was it. Immigrated.
| aprdm wrote:
| In 2014 I landed on either Heathrow or another London
| airport I don't remember coming from Spain after a
| vacation
|
| I read on a sign "travellers from Europe this way" and I
| thought ok my flight came from Spain I'm going that way
| ... when I saw I was out of the airport with no
| immigration whatsoever
|
| In hindsight it obviously meant if you're European (which
| I'm not), I was in shock how easy someone could get in
| the UK !
| bluGill wrote:
| I don't know about UK, but my experience is the signs for
| EU and non-EU point different directions, but either way
| you just go through a door that leads to the exact same
| place. I've been told that when they are looking for
| "something" they will put extra checks at the non-EU
| door, but if you have a US passport (I presume other
| countries like Canada) in hand they will send you through
| the EU door.
| sksksk wrote:
| Are you sure your passport wasn't checked?
|
| What you're describing sounds like it was the customs
| check. Pre-brexit, if you were arriving from the EU, then
| there was no customs check since we were all part of the
| same customs union.
|
| The usual flow is
|
| immigration check -> baggage collection -> customs check
| aprdm wrote:
| Yeah wasn't checked. I'm pretty sure it was a smaller
| airport than Heathrow. I definitely went through the
| wrong path out
| strbean wrote:
| Even if they did check his passport, he didn't have an EU
| passport so probably shouldn't have been allowed to skip
| customs.
| somanyphotons wrote:
| 2 years ago I landed at London City (from Zurich), got
| off the plane and then we all walked all the way to the
| exit without being stopped by a single human to check
| passports or customs. I couldn't believe it.
|
| I am not a British or EU citizen
| walthamstow wrote:
| 20+ years of lighting our hair on fire over immigration
| and we still have no idea who is in the country.
| Telemakhos wrote:
| Starmer addressed this a while back, accusing the Tories
| of campaigning on reducing immigration while actually
| running an experiment in open borders. Having made this
| statement, he then proceeded to do nothing about
| immigration himself.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2024/nov/28/ke
| ir-...
|
| It seems to be a bipartisan thing in the UK to recognize
| that the electorate really doesn't want immigration, and
| then not to fulfill the will of the electorate. Instead,
| the politicians use that will to accomplish unrelated
| goals like imposing a national digital ID.
| bluGill wrote:
| > the electorate really doesn't want immigration
|
| Is that the case or is there just a significant minority
| that cares and the rest are happy enough as things are
| and would get mad if there was change - thus making their
| approach rational: get the votes of those who care but
| don't do anything because then you will be voted out next
| term.
|
| I don't know myself, but this is something that I've
| wondered about a lot of issues that I care about where
| nothing happens. (I've long been on the side of more
| immigration)
| roelschroeven wrote:
| Politicians like campaign on reducing immigration because
| it's an easy thing to campaign on. They don't like to
| actually do anything about it because (1) it's hard,
| especially when you want to comply with laws and treaties
| and (2) effectively reducing immigration could hamper the
| ability to campaign on reducing immigration.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > It seems to be a bipartisan thing in the UK to
| recognize that the electorate really doesn't want
| immigration
|
| Usually, it's not an "inner wish" of the electorate, but
| the electorate gets manipulated to feel that way by mass
| media, especially tabloids. Outrage sells, after all,
| especially when it can be laced to make it more
| effective.
|
| The problem at the core is that immigration is vital for
| societies, especially the low-pay-hard-labor segment. Has
| the UK found a replacement for Ukrainian and Polish farm
| workers yet [1]?
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/15/p
| ounds-6...
| shrikant wrote:
| He's done plenty (https://ukandeu.ac.uk/the-coming-
| collapse-in-immigration/), following on from the changes
| Sunak made, which are already showing up in the early
| numbers this year.
|
| But of course it's never going to be enough for the
| noisily anti-immigration lot.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| GCHQ has metadata on all digital communications - even
| among homeless and immigrant populations have near 100%
| mobile daily usage.
|
| "We" surely have pretty good information about number of
| adults in the UK, and if the security services are worth
| their salt we know their names and associations.
|
| Heck, the main supermarkets can probably tell you within
| a percent or two what the live demographics of the
| country are.
| anon98356 wrote:
| In the context of the issue that doesn't really make
| sense. The issue is that the home office think you left
| and didn't come back. How would an exit check tell the
| home office you have come back into the country?
| zarzavat wrote:
| In a country that has exit checks, in order to go
| airside, a border agent will stamp you out and record
| your exit. If you were to get stamped out and then decide
| that you don't want to catch your flight after all, you'd
| have to get stamped back in again (often not a real stamp
| these days).
|
| In the UK there's no exit checks. The only information
| they have is that you booked a flight. This is "Advance
| Passenger Information" which all airlines are legally
| required to submit. They don't know if you've actually
| boarded the flight, they just _assume_ that if you booked
| a flight that it means you left the country.
|
| The exit check doesn't tell them that you've come back,
| they know that already unless you cross the land border.
| But it does tell them that you truly left and stop the
| guesswork.
| shrikant wrote:
| As someone who's been through that dance twice, it's 5 years
| from the time (well, day) you press "Submit" if you're
| applying online, or $RANDOM days of Royal Mail nonsense if
| you choose to apply by post.
|
| I agree though, the Home Office doesn't have a way of knowing
| where you were fore sure 5 years ago unless they got someone
| to go through your "days in and out of the UK" list and
| vetted/cross-referenced it. And even then it'd likely be
| incomplete and they'd have to guess.
|
| My surmise is that they look at the level of effort you've
| put in to filling out that detail, and if the total days
| in/out isn't particularly a borderline case, then they just
| wave that bit through.
| throawayonthe wrote:
| i think they meant online, which could be different?
| zahlman wrote:
| I would have thought that the point is that you're supposed
| to be there continuously for some considerable duration (and
| having worked through other processes of legal immigration)
| before applying for citizenship.
|
| So the idea of trying to figure out exactly which day five
| years in the past you have to mention seems odd to me. If
| there's really no care being paid to the intervening time...
| well if you're trying to exploit a loophole like that I think
| I'd prefer that it's difficult... ?
| cm2187 wrote:
| My guess is that if you need to have been there for 5y, you
| need to have a way to tell when that 5y starts. I presume it
| only matters if you apply the day after 5y. When I applied I
| had been in the UK for over 10y, provided 10y worth of proof of
| address, and the issue never came up.
| Muromec wrote:
| It's not even hard really, I did it lastyear. I book a visit to
| the city hall, they look into the address db and see when I
| registered the first time. I see exactlt the same thing myself
| when I login into the thing.
|
| The official agrees with me on the appointment date to actually
| submit the application, that is after cutoff date.
|
| I put a signature on one sheet of paper, pay a thousand and go
| my way. The thing takes 15 min tops.
|
| But it's continental Europe, not UK
| neximo64 wrote:
| This is actually standard for other countries too
| atoav wrote:
| But it is a ridculous requirement. Like having a millsecond-
| hand one a pendulum clock it appears to be to precise for the
| timeframe involved
|
| Why not just make it a before-date if you care for someone
| having been here for a time? So just proof that you have been
| here X years ago or longer. Totally sufficient and much
| easier to have at hand.
|
| But this is of course the point. It isn't policy where the
| state requires a certain thing and all people who fulfill the
| requirement have a shot. Instead the state makes the process
| of demonstrating the requirement hard on purpose as a means
| of reducing the people who get the benefit.
|
| And this idea isn't just unique to the described process. It
| is everywhere. A bit of friction in certain places is placed
| there on purpose and it can also be a net positive for that
| friction to exist. But beyond a certain level it can turn
| people with rights into beggars.
| eagleal wrote:
| Immigration laws and memos (aka office procedures) are
| usually opaque and ambigous by design. Be it for
| exploitable loopholes that benefit internal production, or
| whatever.
|
| Speaking of the EU, in Italy specifically for example the
| naturalization is really opaque and there's no clear
| process deadlines. While you can submit after 10 years of
| residence in Italy, with additional documentation from your
| country of origin, the process of actually getting a reply
| (denied or approved) may take usualy 5+ years, for some
| people even a decade because the people that should work on
| the papers forget them above a desk under a pile of dust
| for years.
|
| Immagine having only third-world-like country citizenship.
| It's a travel nightmare.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| The point is not to produce a system where a software engineer
| can loophole the system. The point is to try to prevent people
| who aren't committed to the UK apply for citizenship.
| dspillett wrote:
| Yes, but...
|
| Convoluted rules like that smack of the ridiculous literacy
| tests for voting in the US during the Jim Crow era (if you
| don't know why the terms "grandfathering" and "grandfather
| clause" have fallen out of fashion in recent years, go have a
| poke around that bit of history which is where those terms
| originate).
|
| Either that or it looks like a dysfunctional overly-
| complicated system like the mechanisms draw by Heath
| Robinson, which while better still isn't good. How many good
| (morally) and useful (i.e. to the economy) people are being
| rejected because of unnecessary complications like this?
| daveoc64 wrote:
| >I had no idea travel was this difficult for people who aren't
| EU citizens.
|
| Most people can't afford to travel to the Schengen Area for
| more than the visa-free limit of 90 days within a 180 day
| period.
|
| Those that can are "digital nomads" and are almost certainly
| working illegally while travelling.
| bluesign wrote:
| Illegally = like smoking weed in Amsterdam
|
| Except few countries, all EU countries tolerate this
| lelandfe wrote:
| Although the EES biometric system that _just_ got added is
| intended to crack down on this
|
| Despite being required to, most crossings I did recently
| did not use it, though
| bluesign wrote:
| I think it is more for overstays. Years ago when I asked
| about my stayed days ( I was traveling a lot ) , border
| guard took passport and tried to count then gave up
| lmm wrote:
| > Most people can't afford to travel to the Schengen Area for
| more than the visa-free limit of 90 days within a 180 day
| period.
|
| > Those that can are "digital nomads" and are almost
| certainly working illegally while travelling.
|
| WTF are you talking about? The Schengen Area is right here
| and you don't need a visa to work anywhere else in it. That's
| the whole point.
| bluGill wrote:
| If you don't live in the EU the rules are different. They
| often don't care but the rules are there. (I've been sent
| through the EU citizen line with my US passport which is
| normally fine but my coworkers on a multi year work in the
| EU visa have to be more careful about the right stamps -
| though I'm not sure exactly what this means)
| daveoc64 wrote:
| If you are an EU citizen (or a citizen of one of the other
| Schengen Area countries) then yes, you have freedom of
| movement and can live and work anywhere in the area without
| a visa.
|
| But the article isn't talking about being an EU Citizen.
| It's talking about having to count how many days have been
| spent in the Schengen Area by a third-country national.
|
| Citizens of certain other countries (e.g. the USA or UK)
| can enter the Schengen Area visa-free for tourism or
| limited work-related activities (for up to 90 days in a 180
| day period), but are not allowed to just do whatever work
| they want to.
|
| Note that the comment I replied to was talking about non-EU
| Citizens.
| alternatex wrote:
| They're talking about people from outside the EU
| presumably.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Most of those work restrictions are put in place to protect
| local labor. They just don't want tourists taking jobs from
| locals in tourist places without a permit, and without paying
| taxes. They really don't care much you're doing remote work
| for a corporation in California or writing a book.
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| Then they should change the laws to match. I've heard this
| time and time again. All the digital nomads I know are
| dodging taxes.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| The number of people affected (in principal that is, even
| fewer in practice) is likely so small that the political
| time involved would not be justified.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| Immigration permission to work legally and tax compliance
| for the earnings are two completely different topics in
| probably all countries.
|
| Even mostly law-abiding citizens with full work
| permission often dodge taxes in certain sectors of the
| economy - a common US example is restaurant workers
| underreporting cash tips on their tax returns. Plus, in
| addition to digital nomads, many freelancers (certainly
| not all) play as fast and loose with the tax rules even
| in their home countries as they think they can get away
| with. And much cross-border employment is disguised as
| independent contracting in ways that dodge employers' tax
| burdens even when the employee has full work permission.
|
| Conversely, there are already cases where even income
| earned illegally by visiting foreigners can legally be
| exempt from a country's taxes. Example: Income earned in
| Canada by a US resident can qualify for Canada-US tax
| treaty's exemption from Canadian taxation if the criteria
| listed in the treaty are met, regardless of whether the
| work was legal for immigration purposes. (Canada is
| actually one of the few countries from which foreign
| tourists can often legally work remotely for employers or
| clients abroad, but that depends on a lot of factors, and
| it can also be illegal like in most countries.)
| Aurornis wrote:
| > They really don't care much you're doing remote work for
| a corporation in California or writing a book.
|
| They do, actually.
|
| It's for collecting taxes, which supports local
| infrastructure.
|
| Going to another country, living within their
| infrastructure and consuming their services, but pretending
| that you're not working (and therefore not paying local
| taxes) is something they don't want.
|
| Digital nomads who abuse the situation like it because they
| get the benefits of a country (and city, region, etc)
| without having to contribute to their taxes. Getting
| California level pay, not paying taxes, and living in
| what's basically a vacation destination is the digital
| nomad dream.
| trollbridge wrote:
| They don't care too much as long as you don't qualify for
| / consume social benefits like medical.
| bluebarbet wrote:
| This is not the full picture, as you surely know.
|
| Remote workers from rich countries _do_ pay tax locally,
| in the form of VAT and sales taxes. And they typically
| spend far more than locals, on food to accommodation and
| everything in between, all while requiring nothing of the
| local welfare state. It 's a direct wealth transfer of
| thousands per month, earned in one economy and spent in
| another. In purely economic terms, it's hard to see how
| this is anything but a good deal for the host country, in
| the large majority of cases. Hence digital nomad visas.
|
| This is not to say that countries - and societies - don't
| have the right to allow or deny access to foreigners as
| they see fit.
| hitarpetar wrote:
| spending more than locals on rent is actually one huge
| problem with digital nomads
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Countries usually like tourism, don't they? But tourists
| are also living there and consuming services with no
| income tax. What's the difference?
|
| One thing to note is that even if you're not paying
| income tax there, you're bringing tons of money into the
| country from outside. So that's worth something.
| zahlman wrote:
| Indeed, the author describes a lifestyle I can hardly
| imagine, and then markets a product motivated by the
| resulting use cases.
| strbean wrote:
| Last time I looked was a few years ago, but I was surprised
| how hard it was going to be to legally live in France while
| keeping my US tech job. My employer was happy to do what they
| had to to make it happen, but there just didn't seem to be a
| route in the French immigration system.
|
| The options seemed to be:
|
| - Get a job in France and get a work visa. This is very
| difficult due to economic protectionism.
|
| - Come on a tourist visa and not work.
|
| - Be provably independently wealthy and get some variety of
| golden visa. This meant proving that you had enough assets to
| live (lavishly I might add) long term without working.
|
| No easy option for "I want to come to your country, get paid
| USD by a US company, but pay taxes to you!"
|
| I think there have been some new developments regarding
| digital nomad visas since then. Still, seemed crazy given
| what a good arrangement it would have been for France.
| carstenhag wrote:
| It doesn't exist, because it's complex to set up and up
| until 5 years ago almost no one wanted to do this. Now some
| people want to do it, and they can use an Employer of
| Record via facilitating companies. But the visa situation
| will probably still be difficult, it's pretty much a gap
| pjmlp wrote:
| As someone that is about 50, we also had it this way in Europe.
|
| Newer generations don't get how lucky they are to have been
| born into EU, appreciate it while it lasts.
| jvdvegt wrote:
| I'm almost 50 and from Europe, never had to think about this
| stuff for a second.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Well I remember the fun days of crossing borders before EU,
| ordering stuff from computer magazines from other
| countries, having to deal how to pay them across countries,
| and so forth.
|
| I also happened to work in Switzerland, before they made
| cross-region agreements with EU, and it was lot of
| burecratic fun, explaining the situation regarding a
| Portuguese, living in France and working in Switzerland.
| baq wrote:
| The sane side of the iron curtain. We've envied you for the
| longest time.
| devjab wrote:
| I'm mid fourties and I remember bordercrossings were
| annoying back in the 90ies. I'm Danish so we didn't enter
| Schengen until around 2000. I guess it didn't help that I
| was young enough that we traveled by bus. Once when we were
| on a school trip to Prauge we had the Slovakia borderpatrol
| go through our entire bus while waving machineguns around.
| petre wrote:
| > we had the Slovakia borderpatrol go through our entire
| bus while waving machineguns around
|
| Quite common in Eastern Europe before Schengen. That's
| why we hate border patrols, police and all sorts of
| uniformed men in general. They used to cut young people's
| blue jeans or long hair back in the '80s and bribing them
| was common before 2005. We also had quite a lot of
| policemen jokes (they were called militia men before
| 1990). One goes like "Why do militia men work in couples?
| Because one knows how to read and the other knows how to
| write.". I used to wish that we join Schengen so we no
| longer have to deal with border police any longer and
| they'd lose their jobs or get moved to a different
| border. If finally happened. Now Germany Poland, Austria
| and also other EU states introduce "temporary" border
| checks. Which they keep extending. Great.
| tmtvl wrote:
| I thought they worked in groups of 3: one knows how to
| write, the second knows how to read, and the third is
| there to keep an eye on the dangerous intellectuals.
| afiori wrote:
| Germany still does this, to a good fraction of incoming
| long distance busses (but not trains IIUC)
| bluebarbet wrote:
| Correct, and not just Germany. I have travelled all over
| Europe by bus and train. In recent years borders have
| been making a comeback, despite Schengen. Buses are
| target number 1 for border police.
|
| Last year my bus took nearly an hour to get across the
| Serbia-Croatia border, which is technically a Schengen
| border, but Serbia is surrounded by Europe so security is
| usually lax. We all had to get off and go through
| passport control while the police combed the bus.
| Meanwhile, car traffic was being waved through without
| the slightest formality. Infuriating.
| EdNutting wrote:
| As a 29 year old that experienced EU citizenship then had it
| cruelly taken away by some stupidly thin margin of voters...
| feckin Brexit.
|
| I get how lucky I was for 25% of my life expectancy.
| Longhanks wrote:
| Schengen is NOT a EU achievement.
|
| Nations can sign Schengen, but are never forced to join the
| EU, nations can be EU members but are allowed to refuse the
| Schengen treaties.
| fergie wrote:
| > I called the app Residency and you can get it here. No
| subscriptions, costs less than an airport martini, and you'll
| likely regret it less a few hours later.
|
| The article is content marketing, so I wouldn't be surprised if
| the pain points are being talked up somewhat (but who knows?)
| pashky wrote:
| Anecdotal evidence: timezone-aware precision might be only
| necessary for those pushing it to very edge of the
| allowances, but travel log spreadsheet was very very real for
| me, and everyone else in my own immigrant bubble. I still
| have it somewhere.
|
| UK officials seem to operate on vibes though, not obsessive
| precision - I witnessed missed presence days being
| successfully propped up with a good sob story, but I can
| imagine it still being useful if you need to appeal a case
| where vibe turned against you.
|
| Then was a short rest between making oath and Brexit, and
| here we are at that shit again - spreadsheet is back, and
| there's a script for Schengen rolling days.
| trollbridge wrote:
| "Vibes" sometimes work against you. This is a great app for
| documenting that you met the rules _if_ you need to.
|
| Back in 2000, entry to Canada was based on vibes. I had no
| idea what I was doing but looking back I don't think they'd
| let someone in who forgets their DL, passport, and is on a
| "management consultant visa".
| poulpy123 wrote:
| > I had no idea travel was this difficult for people who aren't
| EU citizens.
|
| I traveled before and I traveled after Schengen and the only
| thing that changed was not having to wait a bit at border
| control. What the article describe concerns a very small number
| of people, and exist only because of cheap air travel and
| internet
| rkwasny wrote:
| I'll tell you a secret, UK gov has no clue where you were 5
| years ago :-)
| wat10000 wrote:
| It's just as difficult for EU citizens when traveling to most
| of the world.
| aivisol wrote:
| > To apply for British citizenship, you need to prove you were
| physically in the UK on your application date but five years
| ago.
|
| I am confused whats British citizenship application to do with
| his, or any travel at all? That's not what you do regularly, I
| mean most people do not apply for citizenship in other
| countries ever in their lives? Or am I missing something?
| pjc50 wrote:
| He needs to plan travel very carefully in order to not
| accidentally undermine his citizenship application.
| Scapeghost wrote:
| Right now the biggest problem in life is the country of my
| passport.
|
| I have enough in savings and enough passive income to be able
| to live comfortably almost anywhere, but whenever I talk to
| travel agents, or people who can help set up companies etc in
| the countries I want to go to, first they're like "Sure, we can
| do it, when do you want it" etc and then they ask where I'm
| from, and when I tell them, they either stop replying or say
| sorry, they can't help me.
|
| sigh...Racism is a funny thing. They haven't even seen me, or
| seen my history of travel, or anything, they just stop
| cooperating when they see that one word, the name of my
| country.
|
| And I can't blame them either, I know many people from here go
| and overstay there visas and generally make problems in other
| countries.
|
| I just wish I could put down a deposit of a few thousand
| dollars as a guarantee that I'll behave and get a visa.
| bjackman wrote:
| > ten years of travel history, down to the day
|
| FWIW I have been asked for this a couple of times and I always
| just included the transits that were stamped in my current
| passport. Maybe I got lucky but I got away with it...
| klausa wrote:
| You've been lucky in that the countries you've travelled to all
| stamped your passport.
|
| This gets much murkier in the EU, or being a non-citizen with
| Global Entry traveling to the US, etc.
|
| To get a driving license in Japan without having to retake the
| exam, I had to prove that I lived in the country that issued my
| license for at least 90 days after I got it (presumably because
| they had some issues with people getting licenses in
| jurisdictions that are... easier to get the licenses in.).
|
| This was a _very_ non-trivial thing to do for a document I
| first got over ten years ago, in a country that is part of the
| Schengen zone.
| bjackman wrote:
| No that's what I meant - I just didn't report the countries
| that didn't stamp my passport. To report dates of entry and
| exit of every country I've visited would be impossible, I
| don't think I have that information at all. Quite likely in
| many cases nobody does.
|
| But yeah I think the place where I got lucky is that nobody
| ever checked.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > I couldn't find any legit reasons for keeping the "six-month
| rule" around but it seems like it's still occasionally checked,
| sometimes even during boarding.
|
| Airlines sometimes check for things during boarding. Those things
| are never rules outside the context of the airline.
|
| I had an airline require once that I complete a form before
| boarding that, by the terms printed on the form, expired before
| the plane landed. That didn't matter to them.
|
| Airlines are clueless. I don't know why they do their imaginary
| checks.
| lmm wrote:
| > Airlines sometimes check for things during boarding. Those
| things are never rules outside the context of the airline.
|
| Nope. Plenty of countries still require 6 months' passport
| validity to enter.
|
| > I had an airline require once that I complete a form before
| boarding that, by the terms printed on the form, expired before
| the plane landed. That didn't matter to them.
|
| > Airlines are clueless. I don't know why they do their
| imaginary checks.
|
| The airline doesn't give a shit about whether you can legally
| or practically enter the country they're flying you to. They
| care about whether they're going to be held liable to
| repatriate you at their own expense, and their processes are
| set up to ensure they avoid that. If the requirement on them is
| that they check your document before you board, they'll check
| your document before you board.
| wartywhoa23 wrote:
| That's no travel, that's transfers between cells on a prison
| planet.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| Europe in a nutshell
| symbogra wrote:
| Once you've lived in a few countries you start to see how silly
| their little rules are. Once you are asking cross jurisdictional
| questions there is nobody who can give you a correct answer, its
| all guesswork.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| I cant afford having this problem
| geokon wrote:
| ive had to deal with a fair share of this messy time logic, and
| ive found this library really useful
|
| https://juxt.github.io/tick/
|
| if you cant express it with the tools it gives you, it generally
| means youre making unsafe assumptions
| qwertox wrote:
| It seems that it has become quite popular that images don't
| expand anymore, when clicking on them. One needs to use the
| context menu "open in new tab" to get a properly readable image.
| Why?
| wodenokoto wrote:
| I'd say that's pretty good behavior. It used to be common that
| images would expand in ways that would not allow you to zoom in
| mobile devices but also not allow you to open the image
| directly
| reisse wrote:
| Ah, the classic programmer's mistake of treating complicated
| human interaction systems as a computer programs.
|
| There is no State Almighty judging you to the last dot of
| absurdly complicated rules (well, in 99.99% cases when you don't
| actively look for trouble). Like, if you overstayed Schengen visa
| for one day because you messed up with counting entry and exit
| days, but used it otherwise for its intended purpose, the border
| officer likely won't even notice. Or for tax residence, a lot of
| countries I know just take what you say about your trips at face
| value - especially when there is no way to check it.
|
| Just relax. If you don't know how to count your days in Morocco
| because they changed the time zone in an inconvenient moment, the
| officer evaluating your documents doesn't know that too. It's
| truth and best effort that counts.
| nly wrote:
| It's absolutely not best effort that counts.
|
| I've heard many stories of people overstaying their visa in the
| US by e.g. one day, by way of a mishap or honest mistake, and
| subsequentially being denied visas or turned away at border
| control. The effects of this can go on for years and years...
| it's basically zero tolerance
| raverbashing wrote:
| Overstaying _in the US_
|
| Anywhere else, less strict. Still can be problematic yes. And
| of course depends on the circumstances
| bjord wrote:
| hate to break it to you, but this isn't accurate
| DownGoat wrote:
| Its tru for Schengen visas too. Overstaying a day because
| of a cancelled flight is enough to deny future visas, they
| are very strict. It depends on the country you are applying
| to, and from. There are also exit requirements, like having
| to leave Schengen from the same country you arrived in.
| Danieru wrote:
| Overstaying a visa is a big deal. You should not be counting
| days or nights because you should not let yourself be in the
| country anywhere near the expiry of a visa.
| nmeofthestate wrote:
| Yes, this feels like calculating to the second when you need
| to arrive at the airport so you'll spend zero time at the
| airport.
|
| Instead, arrive a bit early to the airport, and analogously,
| don't run visas down to the last hour based on the minutiae
| of Moroccan timezones etc.
| fhub wrote:
| For USA, A Visa is a right to request entry into the country.
| The I-94 defines the duration you are authorized to stay. You
| can have an expired Visa and time left on you I-94 and remain
| in the country.
| reisse wrote:
| > You should not be counting days or nights because you
| should not let yourself be in the country anywhere near the
| expiry of a visa.
|
| You're privileged if you're able to do so. In many occasions
| people have single-entry visas with one day leeway from
| tickets submitted to the consulate.
| jdasdf wrote:
| >Like, if you overstayed Schengen visa for one day because you
| messed up with counting entry and exit days, but used it
| otherwise for its intended purpose, the border officer likely
| won't even notice.
|
| When that wasn't automated that might have been the case (not
| that its a good thing).
|
| It's certainly not the case now that there is literally an API
| that tracks that.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| That's all true until there's a dispute. Being relaxed about
| these things is a very bad idea if the consequences are
| potentially severe.
| immibis wrote:
| Enforcement is arbitrary and vibes based, but only if you broke
| a rule. If you didn't break a rule they find it much harder to
| punish you, no matter what the vibes are. But also if you have
| good vibes you might not get punished no matter what rules you
| broke.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| If you're trying to engineer loopholes out of citizenship laws,
| you're going to get yourself pulled aside.
|
| The whole point of these arbitrary rules is entirely to make this
| sort of shenanigans impossible but to let in people who are using
| the system for the purpose it was designed.
|
| That's why the rule about 'relevant to your travel' is vague. So
| that you can't weasel your way through it.
|
| People who write this sort of app think border entry is two
| doors, allowed and denied. But there's also the guard who stabs
| people who ask awkward questions and their name is 'National
| Security'.
| SamBam wrote:
| No, it sounds like the author is well aware of that, and is
| instead just trying to get a read on what the gov's various
| systems are saying about him, so he can stay well within
| buffers of that.
|
| He explicitly says that none of his data on the app would
| convince an official.
| fridek wrote:
| The point is - while all of these systems are fuzzy at the
| edges, that is not a bug. Letting people reside in a few
| countries at the same time, and to pick a tax residency like
| a new winter jacket is a non-objective for the border, tax
| and residency systems.
|
| It's actually relatively simple to follow the rules that lead
| you down the well estabilished residency paths if you do the
| opposite of what the article suggests and leave enough of a
| buffer for every required number, so you don't need to think
| about it and the precise count can be handwaved by the
| officials.
|
| Conversly, if you try to minmax the rules, you might find
| that most important systems still have an arbitrary human
| decision maker, who simply decides whether to apply a complex
| ruleset to the letter, or to be lenient.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| > No, it sounds like the author is well aware of that, and is
| instead just trying to get a read on what the gov's various
| systems are saying about him, so he can stay well within
| buffers of that.
|
| You don't need an app for that. You just behave like a normal
| person.
| Hackbraten wrote:
| Hard disagree. You accidentally break an immigration rule,
| you face the consequences (if you get caught and the
| officer is not letting it slide).
|
| No amount of "behaving like a normal person" (whatever that
| means) is going to save you in that situation.
| immibis wrote:
| Unless you're rich, of course.
| advisedwang wrote:
| He's not trying to engineer loopholes. He's trying to comply
| precisely. You are right that there are some genuinely squishy
| things, but not all of them are. Tax residency is not a
| judgement call. Overstaying visas or visa waivers is not a
| judgement call. Residency requirements for immigration
| applications. etc
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| > He's trying to comply precisely.
|
| Which is entirely what the laws are trying to stop you doing.
|
| Governments don't want you to be 'just inside', they want you
| to be well inside.
|
| The number is, for example 159 days in a tax year not because
| they are happy if you're there 160 days but because they had
| to draw a line somewhere because text is necessarily precise.
| andai wrote:
| Who's gonna tell him?
| Muromec wrote:
| Dont spoil the fun pls
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Few of my relatives just went to Europe as tourists, threw away
| their back home tickets and went illegal. After few years they
| legalised and now citizens. And I'm still here, because I don't
| want to break the law and I don't have valid legal grounds to get
| the working visa. It sucks to obey the law.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| What do you mean by valid legal grounds? For many countries all
| you need is to get a local job paying above a threshold, that's
| enough to get a work permit.
| monsieurbanana wrote:
| You need a work permit to get a job, not the other way
| around. If you meant a "job offer", yes you can get a work
| permit with a job offer, but not everybody is that lucky.
|
| If you are on a tourist visa you can't legally get a job then
| worm your way to a valid work/residency visa. I mean you can,
| just not legally.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| What might be some of the ways GP poster's family managed
| it?
|
| Pretty much nobody does that in the USA (maybe by getting
| married? Prob not even that in Trump II), where I am. Come
| in an a tourist visa, stay over, manage to legalize your
| stay in a few years and then become a citizen. Nope.
| JuniperMesos wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Guevara_(journalist)
| this guy spent about 20 years attempting to do exactly
| that, and was only actually caught and deported last
| month. In this case, the way he was attempting to get
| legal citizenship was by virtue of his now-adult children
| who he and his wife had on US soil, which makes the
| children legally natural-born US citizens.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| It varies per country, for example in the Netherlands as a
| software engineer and other "highly skilled" [1] roles you
| can get an HSM visa / work permit. I believe Germany,
| Denmark and others have similar programs.
|
| This is how it works: you interview[2], get a job offer,
| sign it, then your employer applies for a work permit on
| your behalf. The only complicated part is collecting your
| own paperwork. You wait a few weeks/months for approval and
| move in. It's a lot easier than most people think. The
| permit is tied to your employment, though it can be
| transferred, but you cannot get a 'free employment' permit
| until after five years in the country.
|
| For the EU as a whole, the Blue Card serves a similar
| purpose but is significantly more difficult to obtain.
|
| [1] There is no skill/merit assessment like the USA, it's
| solely based on the salary threshold - basically delegates
| the skill assessment to the employer. Not every company has
| access to this program, the job must be advertised as
| including visa sponsorship.
|
| [2] online. Flying over for a final round was common before
| COVID, I miss those days
| 47282847 wrote:
| +1
|
| We hired someone from Syria as a small and newly formed
| company in Germany, and all we had to claim is that yes
| it is a high skill job above a certain salary threshold
| and no we cannot find a person available with the
| required skills in Europe. The visa application process
| from our side was simple and straightforward, no forms,
| no fees, just a short letter where they told us
| beforehand via phone what to write to get it accepted,
| and it was processed very quickly, a few weeks maybe. We
| didn't even advertise the job before, it was a
| position/role created specifically for that person (so
| from that perspective there was truth behind the
| statement that we cannot find anyone else suitable for
| it.)
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > You need a work permit to get a job, not the other way
| around
|
| To legally get a job yes, but that tends to not be super
| effective at stopping people, and even if the job itself is
| illegal, it can count as something that links you to the
| society where you want to regularize your situation.
|
| Heavy "it depends on the country" since we're talking
| Europe-wide here.
| Muromec wrote:
| >You need a work permit to get a job, not the other way
| around
|
| Technically yes, but actually no, because you mostly need
| an employer to sponsor your work permit, unless you get
| yourself a residence permit that is not job-related.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| Now I'm curious what countries we're talking about and what's
| the process of "legalisation"
| vbezhenar wrote:
| My relatives naturalised in the Spain.
| dlisboa wrote:
| This is such a common thing and tolerated you have to wonder
| whether it's actually immoral. I've met many people on my
| travels who went to Europe on tourist visas, got work and then
| got to stay legally later. No one was deported.
|
| All of these were people in low-paying services industries,
| jobs Europeans don't usually want (waiters, cleaners, etc).
|
| The only ones that had issues with immigration were my
| qualified worker friends who got a work visa and then the
| company had layoffs while they were there, losing their
| sponsorship. People with masters degrees who had to scramble to
| find new work in 30 days or face deportation.
|
| It's hard not to think that's intentional.
|
| I have a nuanced opinion because it's a rather complex subject
| but it's just a weird thing to have seen happen. As a tourist I
| had to prove up and down I wasn't going to stay there only to
| see no one else cares outside the airports. There's obvious
| wage suppression going on with these policies but these waiters
| and cleaners also had college degrees from good institutions,
| probably more qualified than some citizens.
| ohyoutravel wrote:
| Borders of countries are fundamentally human constructs.
| There is no morality associated with crossing them legally or
| illegally. This is the difference between a law declaring
| something illegal because they think it is better for society
| (a parking ticket, say) and a law created that require moral
| turpitude (murder, say).
| layer8 wrote:
| Morality is a human construct as well, so I don't quite get
| your point.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| A country with no borders is not a country at all, merely
| an "economic zone" that can be leached until dry.
| mock-possum wrote:
| What is the mechanism whereby an economic zone is
| leached, such that borders would protect it?
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| I don't have hard data yet but I'm pretty sure some
| cities have suburbs outside them, connected via road,
| that rich people use as tax havens so they can live near
| a city without being subject to the laws and taxation of
| the city
| array_key_first wrote:
| Right but if you go into a country then you're in the
| country, not in the outskirts. You still pay taxes
| (generally...), and, in many countries, don't get any
| social services.
|
| If anything, many formally-colonial countries are
| leeching off their illegal immigrants, not the other way
| around.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Countries are generally big and with cities on both sides
| of a border so that doesn't seem like it would be a big
| worry for them.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Ha ha, "no morality," when it's people you like. You're
| saying pogroms aren't immoral? That's a "legal" border
| crossing!
| nicbou wrote:
| > I've met many people on my travels who went to Europe on
| tourist visas, got work and then got to stay legally later.
|
| That's completely legal for some nationalities, at least in
| Germany. SS41 AufenthV allows people from certain countries
| to come to Germany and apply for a visa there.
|
| A separate paragraph allows people to convert a tourist visa
| to a residence permit if the reason for the residence permit
| appeared while they were visiting. For example, going through
| rounds of interviews, and being offered the job while you're
| visiting Germany as a tourist.
|
| There are so many other paths, but navigating those options
| can be confusing.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The problem is, that only works if your Aufenthaltsbehorde
| isn't swamped in case load. Unfortunately, the ones in
| cities where tech workers are wanted are swamped and often
| times you need a lawyer to file an Untatigkeitsklage
| (inactivity lawsuit) or threaten to do so to get them to
| respond.
|
| The Auslanderbehorden are massively understaffed (well
| below 50% of what would be needed), and work distribution
| usually is that anything attached with a court deadline has
| absolute priority, anything from a lawyer comes next, and
| whatever comes from a generic person or company just gets
| shifted to "Ablage P" (the paper recycling bin).
| tryauuum wrote:
| How does this happen? Is there a law which just gives you a
| citizenship if you stayed for N years?
| embedding-shape wrote:
| The exact country isn't clear, it depends from country to
| country. Spain for example have "arraigo social", where I
| think if you've stayed for 3 years (illegally/legally) and
| can demonstrate you've ended up in some sort of "link" with
| Spanish society (like having a permanent job) you can apply
| for a "temporary residence and work permit". Once you have
| that, you're legal and you could apply for permanent
| residence and eventually citizenship, granted you fulfill
| those requirements.
|
| I have a bunch of friends, with jobs ranging from bartenders
| to software developers, who've successfully were allowed to
| stay in the country after doing things that way, initially
| staying illegally and later regularized their situation.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| > _The app is local by default. [...] Being local also means no
| liability. Personal immigration history is exactly the kind of
| data governments might want._
|
| That doesn't seem to be a great argument in favour of crossing
| borders with this information stored locally on your device.
|
| _> Keeping it off my servers means nobody can demand I hand it
| over._
|
| I'm not a lawyer, but I believe that this is completely false.
|
| [Edit] On second reading, I realise that he's just talking about
| him not being able to hand over the data. This is true. But the
| user can be forced to hand it over. So I retract that it's
| completely false, but it's still a very bad idea.
|
| If I was concerned about this sort of thing when travelling, the
| only sensitive thing I would carry is a password in my head that
| grants me access to end-to-end encrypted data on some server.
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| You're correct. They're assuming that they might be served with
| a subpoena or warrant or something, but US Customs officials
| can and will demand the passwords to your personal devices or
| coerce you into giving your biometrics
|
| https://www.eff.org/issues/border-searches
| crazygringo wrote:
| It's a great article... but a strange title?
|
| This is about all the country-specific requirements for tax
| residency, visas, citizenship, etc.
|
| But I don't know what downloading a border means. The title makes
| it sound like this is going to be about downloading national
| mapping data... If the author was looking for an evocative
| metaphor, I don't think this one works. Maybe it's supposed to
| refer to:
|
| > _It would be alright with a single source of truth, but all
| these facts are scattered across (semi)official websites and
| PDFs, and you 're supposed to figure it out yourself._
|
| But they got those all through... downloading. I.e. cURL.
| cruano wrote:
| I think it's a reference to those "You wouldn't download a car"
| memes on anti-piracy campaigns:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Wouldn%27t_Steal_a_Car
| Tade0 wrote:
| I had the same association. "You wouldn't cURL a border."
| 8organicbits wrote:
| I think the title works.
|
| > You can't cURL a border. But you can track your own state
| carefully enough that when the governments know the answer, so
| do you.
|
| Maybe API would be a better term, but it's a clever.
| qrobit wrote:
| Great post! Reminds me of (UK) Passport Application game:
| https://jameshaydon.github.io/passport/
| cbondurant wrote:
| This is the kind of app I wouldn't believe could actually exist.
| Human rules are just so painfully complex and unwilling to agree
| with the concept of consistency.
|
| Insanely impressive that it works even just well enough that more
| than just the developer finds use in it.
| bitdivision wrote:
| Amusingly this appears to block access from the UK.
| https://archive.ph/pBmlV
| advisedwang wrote:
| Am I correct in understanding that this App does not include any
| built in understanding of the rules that you must comply with? It
| looks like you have to "create a goal" in which you encode your
| own understanding of the rules you must comply with and the app
| then checks that against your travel log
| ashellunts wrote:
| What is the app shown in the screenshot in the article that
| displays a flight price?
| rjmunro wrote:
| Why is it that when I travel to certain places I need to ensure
| my passport has at least n months before it expires? So what if
| it's due to expire next week if I'm only staying until next week.
| Even if I'm staying 2 weeks and it expires tomorrow, why does
| that matter? I guess I might not be allowed back into my home
| country, but that should be my concern, not the worry of the
| immigration of the country I am going to.
|
| What kind of illegal immigration / criminal activity does a
| country prevent, or economic benefit / any other advantage does a
| country get by enforcing this kind of rule?
| hahn-kev wrote:
| My guess is that it's because of emergencies. If you get
| injured and can't or shouldn't fly home then you need more time
| on your passport. It is also much easier to send you home if
| you over stay your visa if your passport is still valid. Also
| the system is setup to give you a visa of a specific length (eg
| 30 days), they can't just give you a 2 day visa.
|
| Also if your passport lasts for 10 years you've known when it's
| going to expire for quite a while, they're just expecting you
| to be responsible.
| senordevnyc wrote:
| In the US you can just book the error fare immediately and _then_
| sort out whether you can take it. You have 24 hours by law to get
| a refund for any airline ticket.
| DelightOne wrote:
| > This time, I tried to learn from that: facts are stored as
| instants, reasoning happens in local days of the jurisdiction
| that cares.
|
| I think that's how the JavaScript Temporal proposal works.
| Convert your instant to the timezone, make the
| comparisons/calculations, hope you didn't jump an hour due to
| summertime, convert back.
| csense wrote:
| I don't travel internationally. This all sounds like a nightmare,
| and I'm glad it doesn't affect me.
| anthomtb wrote:
| I travel internationally. These arcane rules also do not affect
| me.
|
| Me: Lifelong, native-born citizen of a western nation. 1 or 2
| international trips of less than 2 weeks each year.
|
| Author: Immigrant to his country of residence. Applying or soon
| to apply for citizenship or permanent residency. Has taken
| multiple, lengthy international trips and also appears to have
| had immigration status in different countries .
|
| Conclusion: If you are more like me than the author then
| international travel will not require navigation of arcane and
| contradictory rules.
| renewiltord wrote:
| My favourite is the Norway visa application. It says you have to
| bring along a confirmed flight ticket. But it also tells you that
| you shouldn't pay for your tickets till you have the visa. Oh
| sure, dude. I'll just tell the airline to hold it for me while I
| wait 60 days for you to make a decision.
| ifh-hn wrote:
| I live in the country I was born in and whilst I do travel it's
| mostly holidays and then if abroad at most once a year for less
| than 2 weeks. I have no idea what half of the stuff the article
| is talking about and less about what the app solves. I can only
| assume it's something so far out of my frame of reference I'm
| completely ignorant... I don't get it.
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