(US Imigration Service)++

nicholas on 2004-07-25T04:01:32

My converstation with immigration on entry to the US went something like this

Him: So what is the purpose of your visit to the US?
Me: I'm attending a conference
Him: What's the conference about?
Me
: It's OSCON, the Open Source Convention, with The Perl Conference
Him: What, Linux and stuff?
Me [parroting]: Yes, Linux and stuff [D'oh! Why did I just repeat him?]
Him: How long are you staying for?
Me: 7 days. I fly out next Saturday
Him: Welcome to the United States
Me: Thank you

Wow! The US immigration service know that Linux is open source. (Or at least one employee at Mineappolis does)

Happened to me too

darobin on 2004-07-25T19:15:20

First time I went to OSCon I was quite worried because it was the first time I was going back to the US after they'd almost kicked me out for working illegally. Yet it went:

# standard beginning me: I'm giving a talk at a conference him: about what? me: computer stuff him: what computer stuff? me: XML and stuff him: yeah, but what about XML? me: (slightly surprised) err, it's about "XPath APIs" [this was a while back] him: oh nice, could you write XSLT extensions with those? * stunned silence* me: err, sure... him: Great! Have fun! Welcome to the US!

Quite frankly, it made me wonder what kind of training they go through. Also, I did worry about the IT economy in the US for a while ;)