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I have friends who are expats and they’ve done this for years. I had one family member who left every six months to renew their visa.

It’s a chore, but very common around the world.


In the EU you do not need to leave to renew your visa. I don't know how common it is elsewhere.

Visa rules are country specific and don’t apply to the EU in general. There are countries that require you to leave.

Do you have any examples? I expected Schengen to have a common set of requirements regarding visas.

An Irish work holiday visa can only be requested from outside the country and has a maximum validity.

https://enterprise.gov.ie/en/what-we-do/workplace-and-skills...


That's not a renewal. It's fairly standard for EU countries to require being outside the country to apply for a visa or residence permit when it is your first one, or (in some cases) when changing the type of visa or permit. But renewals never need you to leave.

An in addition Ireland is not part of Schengen

Applying for/getting a permanent residence permit in NL didn't require going anywhere.

Ireland is not part of Schengen.

Japan doesn't require you to leave either.

Were the visas for the US? B1/B2?

I know stuff like this happens for digital nomads in southeast asia or Schengen but the US generally doesn't approve of "visa runs".


Visa renewals are processed at a US consulate. You can extend your status (ie you ability to legally be in the US) while staying in the US, but if you want to renew your visa (your ability to leave and re-enter) you need to visit a consulate and those only exist outside of the US.

I was questioning the renewals every six months and asking about US visas which are granted for 6 months (i.e. expire after 6 months). I am aware of renewals requiring leaving the country.

Common around the world? I'd be curious what other countries require this, pretty much everywhere else I know has you renew your status within the country (incl. US), and they give you some form of proof of residence that takes the place of a visa (excl. US).

In many cases I've seen this is either a sticker on your passport (incl. possibly a visa) or a physical card, and does not require traveling abroad for it for "consular processing". This is the case for Schengen countries, Canada, UK, Australia, Japan, Thailand, etc.


Hong Kong and the UK at least when I lived there, had to leave and come back, easy in HK to go to China and come back with a fresh stamp.

Thailand explicitly requires you to leave the country. There are companies that specialize in bussing expats to nearby countries.

The so called "visa runs" are for getting around not having the appropriate visa.

I was on a proper employment visa 8 years, never needed to leave the country.


No, you can extend your visa at the local immigration bureau if you have the appropriate type (that lets you work, though even tourist visas are extendable¹) and pay the cost².

People who do visa runs are doing so to extend their tourist visas for cheap.

¹: I've done it before at Si Racha Immigration Bureau. In my case it was more expensive than doing a visa run or paying the fine for 3 days of overstaying, but it was less hassle and left a positive/neutral mark on my passport, not a suspicious one.

²: This can sadly also require bribery just to get them to do their job, even if you do everything by the book. People around us were bringing bribes in form of food. We weren't asked for a bribe, probably because the person I was traveling and applying with had an official passport.


Were they able to come back when they did this?

I think the whole point of making someone leave is the possibility that they may not be allowed back in. If staying was a foregone conclusion then there’d be no point in leaving.

Isn't there's a special case with Canada where you can return within x days even if your visa has expired, if your status is valid? Many go there for "consular processing" for that reason if I recall correctly.

I can’t think of any other rationale. What, only border officers are able to process a visa renewal? Please. We can have offices inside the country handle this stuff, just like offices handle Trusted Traveler applications and Social Security card issuances.

The point is surely to get another chance to grill the immigrant and potentially bar them entry. Other countries don’t always do this: Canada for example has inland changes of status and I believe renewals.


> I can’t think of any other rationale.

For many visas, people are expected to maintain a home that they intend to return to in their country of origin. Forcing people to leave every once in a while makes this more likely (at least in theory.)


> I can’t think of any other rationale.

Lack of real domestic enforcement would be an obvious one, so everything gets pushed to the border entry points.


They know who you are and where you work… how hard could it be to enforce rules?

Wait, what’s getting enforced here, anyway? They are getting a new visa, no? I don’t believe this rationale at all.


> how hard could it be to enforce rules?

See the recent events and pushback on immigration enforcement, to answer this, with whole cities (with their judicial system and police) refusing to participate, and governors condemning enforcement.


Those cities had very little problem when Obama was deporting millions.

Almost like what I have an actual problem with isn't deporting illegal immigrants, but armed thugs kidnapping citizens, harassing my neighbors, and murdering several citizens

Our police department hired a guy, did a background check, yup, he can be here legally. So of course ICE tracks him down and abducts him for a month. That drove our sheriff, who is not fucking liberal, to basically say "Uh, what the fuck, how can you possibly be this incompetent?"

If you have actual evidence of some kind that a human being does not have their paperwork in order, the correct thing is to give them a summons, get a judge to declare them not legal, and deport them. Very simple.

If your complaint is that too many immigrants just come back, then we should try enforcing the law against hiring illegal immigrants which we put on the books under Reagan, 50 years ago, and have never enforced because it hurts the profits of well connected Agriculture industry people.

Why hasn't Trump done that? Why hasn't Trump done the one thing everyone involved has suggested for decades, which is known to be the primary reason immigrants come here? Why did Trump tell Republicans to reject the Boarder bill proposed by democrats in 2024? One which absolutely would have provided more funding for the boarder?


> Those cities had very little problem when Obama was deporting millions.

Incorrect. They were "sanctuary" cities during Obama, as well.

> the correct thing is to give them a summons, get a judge to declare them not legal, and deport them.

Correct, and this is a popular right wing perspective. You should look into this more. These sanctuary cities and states are specifically against this. They release people with deportation orders back into the public, and ban city and state employees from helping. See "California sanctuary state laws" and "sanctuary city list".

> Almost like what I have

This isn't relevant.


If you don't agree on the laws in your country, you need to figure that out civilized instead of hurting third-parties.

No, not necessarily. Sometimes visas are rejected. Unless you're talking about giving everyone who gets a visa a green card?

> They know who you are and where you work

Most visas don't permit their holder to work.

> Wait, what’s getting enforced here, anyway?

The visa holder is forced to expend nominal financial resources and time in their home country (where they agreed they would return to.) Most people can't afford to maintain a facade of residency or two actual residences (and those who can aren't the intended targets of this type of restriction.)


You do not need to do it in your "home country" at all, though, is the thing. People plan vacations around appointments they manage to land for this, in countries they want to go for their summer holidays.

Additionally, it doesn't really do that either, you don't need a valid visa (only valid status) if you don't plan to leave and re-enter US, so this mainly forces people to stay within US rather than going elsewhere for visiting family, vacation and whatnot. I'd not be surprised if the net effect was less time/money spent in "home country".


Not sure if things have changed recently, but up until at least 2019 (last time I had to do it iirc) you definitely had to do a "flagpole" (drive through the border and immediately turn back) to change your status in Canada.

Nah, you can renew work permits online—-and in fact, they push you to.

However, the in-country processing takes 6 months while the flagpole option (If you’re eligible) takes 15 minutes.


Canada effectively requires leaving and re-entering. It can take multiple months for an online visa to get processed, meanwhile leaving and reentering takes hours.

there were other dumb factors pushing people to do border runs, like your paperwork says "expired" but your status still being valid while being processed.

Except you had zero paperwork to show to an employer and they had no way to verify themselves. Even if an employer understood the process and accepted some proof that you submitted an application, they would have no idea if you were rejected and became out-of-status.


They've made no secret of the desire to purge the country of "others". This is part of that plan.

"Must leave to renew" certain visas has been policy for decades - through at least the Clinton, Obama, and Biden administrations.

Most visas are for temporary guests: obtaining a visa doesn't normally give someone the right to permanently reside, and most don't permit their holders to work.


Prior administrations were not full-throated nativists. Having a presidential campaign promise of mass deportation (happily consumed by The Base) is proof positive of the mindset of this administration.

Maybe stimulating the airline economy? Is Big Plane at it again?

Sorry, but that is not common around the world. Most countries do not have such a system. I.e. none of the EU/UK/Australia countries have that.

Is it? You’re generally able to renew without leaving. Unless you mean abusing a visitor visa?

This reduces your credibility. If I was reading, I wouldn’t think “not llm,” I’d think “not detail oriented.” You may want to find some better way that doesn’t make people think less of you.

Perfect grammar and punctuation is par for any publication.


There's Goldilocks zone for resumes where you want enough buzzwords to get past the recruiter but not so many that Hiring manager would reject you.

I know what gp is saying. They want to stay credible to the general public without also bearing the over-polished and verbose hallmark of LLM.


I don't expect perfect grammar or punctuation. I expect it look like it went through traditional spellchecker. And maybe grammarchecker.

Robots

And who is going to fix the robots when they break down?

Robots

Can the robots replace the elites while they're at it?

They will surely replace the culpable "unelitables".

I think the end game is to only do interesting things and automate all the mundane parts of life.

We used to have to wash clothes by hand and it took all day. Now we have a washing machine and it takes 2 hours.

People used to spend time washing clothes and now we have more members of the household working.

I think the future from scifi that I remember (eg, Star Trek) is that humans are just being creative. Usually some sort of post scarcity where there’s no more need for money.


If everything is automated away, you won't see a Star Trek style post scarcity utopia because everyone on UBI will have lost basically all of their political power. They aren't employable so they can't threaten to withhold their labor in order to get any sort of leverage. The most they could do is withhold consumption to some extent. If you have a dependent population being managed by the same state that's already allowed wealth to accumulate to its current levels, what incentive does the state have to do any more than the bare minimum?

You actually believe this is what these people want to create?

Why then are they directly attacking many forms of creativity (writing, photography, art, filmmaking, even programming)?

Why do they resist all forms of social programs if these technologies are supposed to create untold wealth (ala Star Trek)?


In universe the society of earth and the federation only happened because there was a devestating global thermonuclear war that left the survivors being highly selected for collectivist impulses and then on top of that the eugenics wars where there was another filter (even the common people).

That's not what the tech bros are saying the end goal is.

Tell that to ios’ autocorrect that seems to really suck at it lately. I’d like to have an llm that doesn’t screw up and replace actual words with what it probabilistically thought I was saying.

I think some people suck (myself included) at writing and are amazed that they can finally generate text (fortunately not myself).

So their output from an llm has the halo/ikea/endowment effect and they want to show off what they “wrote.”

Writing is actually super easy. Editing and writing well is the hard part. It’s like co-workers who wrote a terrible book being excited just because they wrote a book.


It’s funny to me how I judge some cultural aspects as being worse. Of course it’s my own cultural bias, but I think the following things are “bad” for cultures to do:

1) long voice memos over succinctly typed notes

2) not forming lines/queues and just mobbing the train/shop/etc

3) habitually late or not on time


> 2) not forming lines/queues and just mobbing the train/shop/etc

Also even queueing can have different norms. Here people rush to a newly opened supermarket checkout like their life depended on it. I feel that should be a lot less sociably acceptable than it is, especially for those with overfilled carts that will add huge delays for anyone behind them.


> good sign your documentation has some challenges: dense; intimidating; inaccessible; or not easy to search for the specific information you want

Of course it does. And it’s not “my documentation” it’s ours. And everyone is responsible for improving it. It’s not about pointing out that documentation sucks, it’s about working to improve it.

I don’t have a documentarian on my team. No one’s main job is to write docs. So we all get to help each other by gradually improving the docs. And if I help someone with something not in the docs then the recipient gets to include that missing info into the docs to help the next person.

We also added a hat for a rotating role called “Benevolent Documentation Czar for the Quarter” where that person gets to explicitly improve team docs. Maybe like 5% of their time.


Minimizing human interaction is a feature not a bug.

I like to point people toward ESR’s “how to ask questions the smart way” [0] to new people as it takes some work to learn that questions are about investigations and collaboration, not tasking.

[0] https://catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html


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