Nigerian software engineer detained at JFK and given a test to prove he's an engineer
 

I wonder if they test incoming medical professionals also. That could be entertaining.

They've asked me where did you go to law school, what firm do you work at, what type of cases do you work on, etc.

They've never asked me to explain the Rule against Perpetuities to prove I'm a lawyer, nor have they asked me to prove I'm American by explaining the Infield Fly Rule.

It's happened before -- even to US citizens. And you can pretty much be sure that racist stereotypes held by CBP employees come into play in whom they ask which questions, how frequently and why they ask them, and the extent to which they may try to research the person or a subject matter related to a person and then use that "research" to ask additional questions or do something else that further delays the individual from being allowed to continue on their journey.

I've seen CBP ask Americans -- and I'm speaking of those with prima facie evidence of US citizenship and identity already presented -- about what is famous about listed home address cities on a declaration form. It's rather amusing when the CBP employee's ability to Google flops to try to verify information that may or may not be that esoteric depending on where the persons have lived, their interests/historical knowledge/age, and/or when and how competently/incompetently CBP employees use the search engines.

I was once quizzed on who won the World Series when I returned from a trip to Jamaica.

In fairness to CBP here, there's an awful lot of visa fraud in Nigeria, including fraud specifically relating to people posing as professionals to get visas for short term work visits.

https://www.theatlantic.com/internat...-visas/280445/

Young Nigerian males who travel alone outside Nigeria are often involved in scamming, drug dealing and other criminal activity. Southeast Asia is full of them.

There's always an excuse to be presented when CBP gets it wrong again or prejudices otherwise hit.

How did they get it wrong? They inspected him and let him in. Not every secondary inspection of a racial minority is racist.

When they detained a white Australian lady, you suggested that they had googled her name at primary and referred for secondary inspection based on her political beliefs.

You seem to grasp for a nefarious motive whenever you see any story about a CBP secondary inspection, even when there's no evidence to support that. Referring people of various backgrounds to secondary inspection is part of their job.

The second and third paragraphs above are a false representation of what I've stated and of my position, as I know full well what I meant and what I wrote better than anyone beside myself. ;)

In regard to the first paragraph above, which is on topic:

When the likelihood of a given flight's admissible passenger being sent to secondary is much higher for those of some perceived ethnic or religious minority backgrounds than it is for people perceived to be part of the demographic majority/plurality group, there is prejudice on display that disadvantages the innocent and admissible ethnic minorities and can be fairly described as evidence of racism in action performed under color of authority by those in uniform.

When the CBP does wrong (which includes getting it wrong) -- and CBP isn't perfect -- CBP gets the criticism it deserves.

Beside the CBP's bigotry in action, what else could be wrong with the situation? That CBP acts as if its conducting a superior check of visa holders at the airport by going by "instinct" and using Google (or whatever to do an online search) to challenge those seeking entry with a visa even as the confirmed individual has already been more extensively vetted by State than is likely to be done by CBP even in secondary. It really is a sign that the government doesn't even trust itself and makes the public pay for its follies. That's also what is wrong.

There are many stories of US Embassies and Consulates granting visas when they should not have done so. CBP is (properly) a check on that. Could CBP have handled this particular situation better? Probably.

it doesn't mean the check was racially motivated though.

It doesn't mean the check wasn't racially-motivated. If the software engineer were European, South Asian or East Asian in ethnicity (rather than African) and had the same kind of visa, would the odds of being challenged by CBP about professional capabilities in this amateur hour way have been equal? I doubt it.

Of course sometimes State indeed does get it wrong; but when CBP gets it wrong, it's not a check on that. And it's not like CBP doesn't get it wrong at least as much or more frequently than State, as with Canadian passport users and US VWP users who travel to the US without applying for a visa at a US embassy/consulate. Where is the check on CBP getting it wrong?

The game of "gotcha" and relying upon quality control checks is what results in a waste of resources and government showing its own incompetencies while fixing less than it messes up and messing up what it is supposed to fix.

I see your point, but absent further clear evidence of racial or origin bias, I'm inclined to give CBP a pass on this one. They could have handled it better, but I don't expect much in the way of true competence from any government functionary.

I actually don't like the idea of CBP simply substituting its judgment for state department officials about whether someone was a genuine visa applicant. Foreign service officers review all sorts of paperwork, conduct in person interviews, have time to do thorough investigations, know the local conditions, and are infinitely bette suited to determining if this guy is a real software engineer who deserves a visa.

I remember reading a story on another website a few years back about a Filipina who got a fiancee visa to the U.S. but then CBP rejected her on suspicion of her being a domestic worker.

In the absence of some new evidence unknown to embassy officials that jumps out at CBP during an inspection (like a box of resumes and business cards and a wedding dress in the luggage of someone with a tourist visa), I just don't think its their role to override the judgment of whoever issued the visa as much as they seem to do.

If they have a concern about whether the person standing in front of them is the person to whom the visa was issued, then I think that warrants greater scrutiny.

Back to racism issue, a European ordinarily wouldn't have the same incentive to lie about his profession to enter the USA as a Nigerian would, because Nigerians live in more desperate poverty. I don't think it's racist to scrutinize non-immigrant visa holders from impoverished countries,just as I don't think it's racist that people from developed countries can generally enter the USA visa free while people from undeveloped countries don't.

People from undeveloped countries have higher overstay rates. They also happen to have darker skin.

On the 419eater page one time, I read a report from somebody in Thailand about how she'd presented herself to a 419 scammer as a potential victim, and she arranged a face to face meeting with him and alerted the police, who were ready, and they caught him. She said he wasn't going to be imprisoned, but he was going to be deported.

Um, no.

Look, I teach computer science at a respected university. I actually understand the questions that were asked. I find it extraordinarily unlikely that the CBP officer actually understood the questions that he forced the detainee to answer, much less understood how to evaluate the answers. As the article states, it seems much more likely that the officer Googled "questions to ask a software engineer" and, when the answers provided by the detainee didn't match the webpage verbatim, declared the detainee had failed the test.

Even if you grant that the exam was legitimate (which it wasn't), how do you expect someone to perform on a technical exam when they've been awake for 24 hours on an airplane, then accused of lying to obtain their visa, then told to take an incredibly vague exam under the threat of deportation? Sheesh, my students have problems with these sorts of questions even when they're awake and have weeks to prepare for them.

If you're going to question someone's expertise, you'd better have expertise at least as great as the person you're questioning. CBP gets no pass on this one.

Um, yes.

As I said, CBP could have handled it better - the approach was incompetent. I'm quite sure I made that clear.

My point, which you seem to have completely missed, was that there is no clear evidence that the "test" was given due to racial or nationality bias.

I have a computer science degree and I'm a software engineer at a very high profile tech company. If you asked me to balance a binary search tree after a long-haul flight, I would fail.

You'd think the US would 1) have computer records of its own visas and 2) be able to tell if it's own visas are fake.
No doubt the tan from working in the sun all day?

That makes a lot of sense. I've had an encounter with a teacher who didn't know the material and marked me wrong for not expressing things like the answer key when there were multiple valid ways of expressing the same concept.

Balance a binary tree? I'd go to the bookcase second from the right, second? shelf and grab my copy of Knuth and look up how to do it. It's the sort of thing you use so rarely (I haven't used it since school) that it's not worth memorizing.

I would be inclined to say something along the lines of: "You have no idea what you're asking me. Where exactly did you get your PhD and what was the title of your dissertation?"

As a generally cranky US citizen, I imagine I'd end up saying something that would land me in the penalty box for a while. At least I know they'd have to let me in.

Balancing a binary tree isn't Ph.D. level material. It's a perfectly reasonable thing for an older person to have encountered in school (although much less emphasis would be placed on that sort of thing these days, organized containers are now normally from the library or the database, not something you implement in your own code much.) The problem is that it is no longer something most programmers would use in the real world and thus is likely forgotten. Knuth sits on that shelf but I don't think it's been opened in 20 years.

FTA:

"But when he handed his answers back after about 10 minutes of work, the official told him his answers were wrong."

Solving the BST problem in ten minutes is actually impressive. I couldn't do it that fast.

Assuming his answers were correct, mostly likely the CBP was doing a law enforcement trick: lie to the suspect to see if he cracks.

I love that line. Gonna appropriate it.