10/31/09 PHD comic: 'Detained! Part 3'

Greg Bernhardt

Piled Higher & Deeper by Jorge Cham

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Borek

Garth

Thank goodness it has all ended happily, I was getting seriously concerned and embarrassed for my country....

Garth

sylas

This is a longstanding problem; and not only in the UK.

I did a postdoc in the UK, at the Uni of York. My supervisor there, Hussein Zedan, had an Egyptian background. He was invited to some facility in the US (I think it was) to give a lecture on his field of expertise (real time systems and verification techniques) and the whole thing nearly got called off when he arrived and it was discovered he had an Egyptian passport. It got ironed out; but only by having him accompanied within the facility at all times by some security clowns -- even when he went to the bathroom.

Cheers -- sylas

Monique

I know a student who went on a vacation to Iran and after that wanted to request a visa to do an internship in a lab in the US. In order to prevent that she would be denied a visa she went so far to first get a fresh new passport before going to the US consulate. I was amazed, but it probably was a smart thing to do.

mgb_phys

I have had that even as a Brit holding a security clearance visiting a US company that had DoD contracts.

The craziest one I had was flying on a UK research aircraft testing a sensor I had designed at a UK university. Because the aircraft was operated by a commercial airline for us and didn't have a door to the cockpit we had to have airport security passes. Which meant police checks, which since I had worked in the USA also meant FBI checks, which meant finding someone in the UK to take fingerprints to FBI specifications, which meant months of delay.

Then after the flight there is a scandal in the papers where half the ground crew and security at the RAF base used for VIPs and the Queen's aircraft turn out to be illegal immigrants with no passport!