Isegoria

Tim Worstall shares a tale of “voluntary departure” from the US:

On entering the country on a 10 year, multi-entry, business visa (I owned a small business in the US at the time) immigration officials decided that I should not be allowed to enter.

I was not allowed legal representation of any kind. I was interviewed and then the notes of the interview were written up afterwards (ie, what the officer remembered he and I had said, not what was actually said).

I refused to sign such misleading notes. I was told that if I did not I would be deported, my passport declared invalid for travel to the US for the rest of my life.

So of course I signed and then made my “voluntary departure” which included being held in a cell until the time of my flight, being threatened with being handcuffed while going to the flight and the return of my passport only upon arrival in London.

My 10 year multi entry visa had of course been cancelled. My attempts to get matters sorted out, so that I could visit my business, were rather hampered by the way that the interview notes which I had signed under duress were taken to be the only valid evidence by the INS (as was) that should be discussed when deciding upon visa status.

I lost the business and haven’t bothered returning to the country in the more than decade since.

There is no law, evidence, representation nor even accurate recording of proceedings in such “voluntary departures”. It is entirely at the whim of the agents at the border post. I was actually told by one agent “I’m gonna screw you over”.

Something of a difference from what’s scrawled over that statue in New York really. And I’m most certainly not the only business person this sort of thing has happened to.

He goes on to explain the problem:

The specific point at issue was the difference between a B1 business visa (the 10 year, multi-entry one mentioned) and an H1B or even Green Card.

On an H1B or Green Card one is of course allowed to take up a paid working position in the US. On a B1, you’re not. On a B1 you can enter the US, hire staff, conduct business meetings, do most of the things which are “running a business” but you’re not allowed to actually “run a business”.

The dividing line is a little sketchy to say the least.

It’s possible that I was on the wrong side of that line. Certainly, the immigration officials at the airport thought I was. I stoutly maintain that I wasn’t (I didn’t “run the business”, didn’t take an income from it, didn’t manage it directly).

However, my point isn’t about where the line is: it’s that the decision process about which side of it I was was left entirely to those immigration officials in an airport 1,500 miles from where the actual business was, without any form of legal process being possible and under, as I’ve indicated, a certain amount of duress. And a certain lack of what we’d all consider to be due process.

Their major evidence was the amount of time I had spent in the US in the preceeding years. Time for which I at all times had a valid visa and time which had been approved by immigration officials at the various ports of entry (under the I-92 rules).

It does have to be said that it’s your country and you can allow in or not who you please, as you please. But given the way in which the decisions are made you might understand the wariness that some of us have about deciding to invest in the country?

In an entirely unrelated case, an English writer was asked to come and give a speech about his work. An honorarium was involved. He was turned back at the US airport because, in the opinion of the officials at said airport, that honorarium was “too high”.

If, even with a valid visa, entering the country is something of a lottery then please don’t be all that surprised if some decide not to buy tickets.

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