Ask HN: Are you afraid to travel to US to tech conferences?
I traveled last time to the US in 2014, but in the last 10 years or so, it seems to me that there has been a huge increase in violence, and I have huge fears about guns. I live in Europe and the thought that there are mass shooting is for me too high risk specifically considering traveling with my family. I understand probabilities but still more than 0% is a huge risk just for visiting a country.
Now I also read about non-US citizens being detained on the border.
I was planing this year to travel to some tech conferences in US but it seems that it is not a good year.
PS: Imagine why this is a throwaway account because I read they check the phone, laptops at the boarder. This is 100% more crazy that I am afraid to even speak on the internet about it.
Am I paranoid or are there other people in the same situation?
218 comments
[ 0.29 ms ] story [ 241 ms ] thread> but in the last 10 years or so, it seems to me that there has been a huge increase in violence, and I have huge fears about guns.
They do not mention Trump at all, and don't even vaguely hint at this being a problem of the last two months.
3,000 out of 66,500,000 visitors per year means you have a 0.004% chance of having this happen to you. You have significantly more chances of dying on your way to work in whatever country you are at.
I don't think there's evidence to support this and holding the line at 0 risk seems impossible / a real risk of a lot of stress for 0 gain in actual safety, or worse.
Example of the "worse", someone might see reports of a plane crash(s) and chaos at the TSA and choose to drive rather than fly. The result is they've increased their risk or injury or death (even if still very low).
Let alone the endless amount of worry reaching 0 risk would involve, sounds like a mental heath nightmare honestly.
I think people who hear "oh that strange place has this problem we don't have as much" they naturally view it as a far greater risk than it really is.
Humans are not good at measuring risk.
It's your call on travel, but that aspect of your concern seems unfounded and honestly potentially unhealthy.
> A total of 711 people have been killed and 2,375 people have been wounded in 586 shootings
Not sure how to explain this and I don't want to imply anything about US culture cause I don't know it but it is so unimaginable to me that there were 500 shootings in one year.
Were I live we had none (zero) in the last 10 years or even more. Of course a smaller country so probably not comparable.
That "terribleness" doesn't mean you're at a risk that is worth worrying about, or worse, worrying about that and not something that might be far more of a risk.
But nobody can compete with purely an emotional response to bad things.
Gun violence risk? Very low. Not as low as western Europe, but way lower than South America.
Risk of being hassled by some overzealous immigration officer? Much higher.
Obviously the latter is more of a personal choice too. But you're also not likely to have the same consequences as gun violence.
While not as high a risk as ‘dead’, it’s pretty bad, especially if your career is heavily dependent on the US or you have US citizen family/relationships.
The biggest issue is the arbitrary, capricious, and frankly nonsensical nature of a lot of what seems to be going on.
Couldn't parse this part very well. Do you mean that there is a risk of taking stress but without getting any safety in return?
But if the OP decides not to travel, then they are eliminating stress, aren't they? So they are both benefiting from reduction of stress and the safety is definitely not becoming worse by taking this decision.
Now picking a number is a little silly but OP picked 0, but if we did pick a non 0 number and did the math ... they might find the real risks far lower than they expect / find some piece of mind and operate a little more based on reality.
E.g. I'm an American, and I don't want to go anywhere (inside or outside my country) where my risk of being killed by malice or incompetence is "low", for most colloquial definitions of "low". I would like something lower than that. Feeling safe is a really big deal, especially when you have no agency. E.g. I'm happy to go on a, relatively speaking, "dangerous" hike.
I 100% agree. I mentioned that in my first post.
But then we recognize our emotional responses and even superstitions and we think about it and sometimes by doing so improve our lives.
In the end of course this is OP's call to approach this how they wish.
The US doesn't have the best safety record. But I think it was always like that. I don't think it has gotten worse. Only the border controls feel more worrisome now.
True in general, but in the specific case of gun homicides, the data do seem to support their concern. As per [1] and [2] the US gun homicide rate is more than 4 per 100k whereas countries like Switzerland, Sweden, France, Japan, UK, Denmark, and many others seem to have between one and two orders of magnitude fewer gun deaths.
If someone from one of those countries above expressed concern about gun homicides when visiting the United States it would seem no more irrational than a fellow American expressing concern about visiting Jamaica or Honduras because they have an order-of-magnitude higher gun homicide rate compared to the United States.
(I doubt the overall gun homicide numbers tell the whole story with regard to tourist safety, just that there exists a rational basis for this concern.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r... [2] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gun-death...
This still seems like a recipe for endless worry with little or no realistic reduction in risk.
In the end if OP is overwhelmed by this that's their call. I'm not going to tell them what they should do, but will offer different ways to think about it.
But people worry about all sorts of irrational things with zero basis in fact. I'm merely pointing out that there is, in fact, a factual basis for this concern.
Personally I consider the benefits of traveling even to other countries (even those with higher homicide rates than the US) to vastly outweigh the risks. But if someone feels otherwise and avoids traveling to places with higher levels of risk then I think this would technically provide a "realistic reduction in risk".
I couldn't find any specific numbers with regard to US tourist safety, though Australia's travel advisory does mention the high rates of gun crimes and about a month ago a couple Israeli tourists were shot in Miami Beach.
Again, gun violence would not be my primary concern if I were visiting the US as a tourist, I'm just pointing out that there exists a basis for this concern.
The European preoccupation with American gun violence as it relates to tourism is misplaced in my opinion as tourists are almost never involved. Compare that to the frequent truck/car ramming attacks in Germany which seemingly always kill tourists. Should I avoid visiting German Christmas markets?
Yes. Glühwein can be enjoyed in more comfortable setups anyway. If that's your thing.
Is there anything else to marketing X-mas?
What's the reason to drink that stuff there, for usually insane amounts of money, while not much else noteworthy is on offer there, for similar overblown prices, while feeling tense about all the possible shit which could happen, while doing so?
Personally I would find such a risk acceptable just as I find the risk of traveling to countries with a high homicide rate acceptable.
But if a friend or family member expressed concern about visiting a German Christmas market due to prior cases of terrorists murdering tourists there I would not dismiss their concerns as irrational or unfounded as there exists a rational basis for this concern.
Especially in Germany.
The only reason you're afraid of some things more than others is because you came across some stories, and not others. We're all wired like this evolutionarily, on purpose. When we see stories, we're supposed to alter our behavior, because all the stories used to be local and relevant. "A bear ate Timmy near the river" is a good warning to be extra careful near there. Now that we have internet, and the entire planet's worth of carefully selected bears eating Timmys is getting fed into everyone's mind, we must learn a new trick: understanding how odds and relevancy works.
This is a logic driven community, but this statement is 100% emotionally driven. (E.g. you understand it's extremely unlikely, but you don't feel comfortable still)
There's nothing wrong with making emotionally-driven decisions, but there's also very little anyone else can say (or at least no stats, no probabilities, no logic based reason) to make you feel differently about the chance of improbable events occurring.
In fact, in human matters, relying purely on logic means ignoring the fuzzy, analog decision system called instinct and gut feeling, which has served us very well historically.
Since the benefits of going to the US or not are relative, not purely right or wrong, there is no incorrect choice; gut feeling is good enough and takes much less effort.
if one will be too afraid of gun violence to enjoy a US vacation, the rational choice is to go somewhere else
that said, the rational choice for, say, an agoraphobe is not "never go outside"
Without evidence, that’s an emotional claim.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/18/germany-inve...
[0] https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2025/03/19/etat...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/19/canadian-det...
It's like people who insist on using crosswalks without looking for oncoming traffic. You may be right, but you will also be dead. Follow the rules.
>She was denied entry into the country while trying to make her way from Mexico to San Diego, California after her work visa was revoked back in November while traveling from Vancouver to Los Angeles.
Presumably she wasn't in the US or she wouldn't have been trying to enter the US from Mexico.
> Presumably she wasn't in the US or she wouldn't have been trying to enter the US from Mexico.
She was likely doing what many folks do: cross the border briefly for the explicit purpose of getting documents refreshed. This is common and expected in many cases, but she was without a visa for months at this point. And she likely crossed from Mexico because it is close to where she was previously living. Again, this is common.
The fact that she didn't cross back over from her home country of Canada immediately sets off alarm bells.
Just because it doesn't reduce the chances of harm to zero does not mean it's useless. She was less likely to be detained had she left the country as soon as her visa was revoked. Not really up for debate.
> illegally
And we're back to the "I can cross the street here without looking both ways because I have the right of way by law!!!" argument. I don't know if you experienced the last few US presidential/administration changes, but things that are "illegal" and yet "allowed anyway without consequences" are becoming a hot topic!
If overnight, people suddenly start getting arrested and thrown in a pit for speeding, you shouldn't think "ah, they were breaking the law". If you agree there's not much justification for this, I don't even understand what point you're trying to make. Laws are not simple or black and white. They're often a huge contradictory mess. That's why you need flexibility, precedent, and most importantly humanity. Her family couldn't find her. No access to legal. Her treatment was psychotic. Period.
Again, no idea what point you're trying to make here.
Detaining someone indefinitely in inhumane conditions is not acceptable under any circumstances.
It is also true that she could have avoided detention by leaving the country as soon as her visa was revoked. It doesn't matter whether revocation was reasonable at that point, because she is now in a country that is actively hostile toward her.
Her visa was revoked in November. She obviously remained in the US, where she attempted to cross again at the Mexico border, because she was obviously still living and working in California all those months when she should have been back in Canada.
It is not acceptable for the US to detain her; she also could have avoided it by following the rules, and others can avoid it too.
That's my point.
So, how do you suggest she managed to enter the US after November in order to have remained there illegally? Did the CBP, who have just revoked her visa a few days/weeks prior, just let her in on a tourist visa? That does not sound very believable, even for the previous US administration.
And what do you suggest her plan was? Previously she was on TN work visa. You seem to think that after having her TN visa revoked, she managed to get into the US on a 90-day tourist visa instead (thus working there illegally), which is why she needed to run for the border after 3 months, and why she was detained when trying to re-enter. But what kind of plan is that – to run for the border every 90 days after having your TN visa revoked. That is such an obvious recipe for failure, nobody who employs an immigration lawyer – like that lady – would have gone ahead with it.
I've definitely seen other headlines overselling similar detention stories for rage bait, but I don't see much wiggle room in this case.
Recently, it seems to have gotten even worse.
It's not worth the stress for me personally, even if the real-world probability of getting detained or rejected is still relatively small.
"The German government has responded with a warning to travelers to the USA in response to several Germans being placed in detention pending immigration upon entry in recent weeks."
https://www-welt-de.translate.goog/politik/ausland/article25...
The risk of gun violence is incredibly low, especially in venues like you might find traveling to a conference.
The real risk is the Immigration and Customs people. They are insanely unpredictable right now, and are taking wildly unexpected actions against any targets, usually on a political basis. Visitors from Canada, Britian, France, Germany and others have been detained in unpleasant conditions for days to weeks.
If you come, take at least these steps:
* scrub all social media accounts of political content, especially anything critical of right-wing policies
* Bring a digitally clean phone and laptop, preferably one you can afford to lose. Stare with a clean install, make sure there is no social media history or documents or images related to any kind of protest action. It may be wise to have a sanitized social media account with only work-related posts and likes.
* If your friends or family are involved in any kind of protests or actions (including against Tesla), be sure they are at least not referenced in any of your accounts or content you have on your devices.
It really looks like ICE are trying to make examples of anyone to discourage visitors, especially visitors who might be activists. If you are an activist, do not come, or be sure to scrub well to hide it fully.
If you can make it through the gauntlet, we welcome you and hope you have an enjoyable visit! (and deep apologies for this administration most of us do not want; they did not win by a majority)
My understanding is the French scientist was deported on arrival because he had a text complaining about the new administration's defunding of science. So, an even innocuous complaint about policy is politicized to an insane degree.
(and yes, I fully understand the implications of the North Korea reference. Unfortunately, it does not appear we can take it as a joke or exaggeration. All signs are this administration is doing everything possible to convert the form of govt from a democracy to a dictatorship)
So you think that there's more violence because you hear about it on the news/social media, or is it informed by actual statistics? The latter shows a slight bump during the pandemic, but is back to pre-pandemic levels.
>Now I also read about non-US citizens being detained on the border.
The two cases I've heard about both involve people with visa issues trying to cross a land border, with neither side wanting to accept. If you're traveling for a conference and don't have obvious work intentions (eg. interviews lined up) you should be fine.
I agree it is an emotional comparison and probably driven by media.
Still I have replied in some other comment the idea that there are 500 shootings in 2024 in US seems to crazy to me. I know US is huge and this does not tell anything if I visit a specific place. Thus my emotional fear
Then more recently in the news, which wasn't a visa issue
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/19/trump-musk-f...
So I agree that most people will be fine traveling to the US, but I understand some want to reconsider their travel plans. I can only imagine some immigration officers thinking they now have a free pass to harass people
"The French government said on Wednesday, March 19, that a French researcher had been denied entry to the United States and sent back to France because he had expressed a "personal opinion" on US research policy."
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/03/20/f...
> France’s research minister said a French scientist was denied entry to the US this month after immigration officers at an airport searched his phone and found messages in which he had expressed criticism of the Trump administration.
Sure you have freedom of expression in your own country, but since when does a country owe freedom of expression to foreigners? when those views are plainly anti state/administration (and not tangentially opposite). The state can and should exercise their right to reject entry. Interestingly constitutional rights start applying upon entry to the country, which was rejected, so..
If this were a diplomat and they had immunity maybe it's an issue. But I don't think a diplomat would push this hard on the policy of another country, rather they focus on their own.
I personally have publicly expressed an political opinion once on the US and I felt icky, but it was related to cybersecurity so it was within my line of work.
If my opinion were (hypothetically) something about the russians and I wanted to get involved in internet governance, I would expect a possibility of being rejected at the border.
Let's respect the borders of our countries both physically and intellectually.
Being rep aligned I don't have a similar issue during dem adm. since they have open borders. But maybe the dems will exhert their freedoms if they read about this or other personal opinions, by rejecting govmt contracts or private funding, especially in startup culture
If you are gonna meddle in another countries politics, be ready to face the consequences.
In general I've seen several cases like these, but they always have some dubious quality, a canadian that was detained by ICE, ends up she was selling some thc water.
A lot of the debate in this area is related to matters were we don't have the information, that coupled with selective effects that can make it look like a certain narrative is going on. I'm just not seeing the fascist state line. Neither in the US or Argentina. And I'm not 100% sure that Argentinians are not being influenced by american politics, there's been anti state riots and it has happened that some countries have organized them (facebook and myanmar)
That said, I do see the push for power from the executive. Executives targetting the judicial as an enemy is never a good look. But I have trust that the checks and balances will at least check or balance, especially so for the US, and to some extent Argentina too.
So yeah, I'm not in the sidelines on this one, nor with Krebs on the US Russia scenario.
although i suspect there has been an increase in like random "mass" violence, but that effects a tiny fraction of the population (but certainly scares the rest). My guess is there has not been an increase in population effected by violence -- but that could be because the USA has always been a very violent place, founded on violence (by Europeans and for the benefit of Europe, so don't get too smug).
I’m still afraid to go back now. It seems like they’re simply making an example by throwing random people into weeks of detention at the border. A green card holder credibly claims he was tortured over a decade-old marijuana misdemeanor on his record.
Needless to say this perception is pretty bad for American tourism, business travel, conferences, etc.
I don't get it. I thought we were free speech people. Now we are literal thought police? Since when is it illegal to have a picture on your phone that isn't CSAM?
And before people ask, yes I believe in free speech for everyone, even people I dislike and don't agree with.
>The professor who attended a Pro-Palestinian protest. This is disingenuous, he was the leader of the group that organizes those protests. In Europe, I probably wouldn't be welcome too long if I was the leader of a neo-nazi group while on a visa.
The US were never the land of free speech (or of the free). It's all marketing.
Basically all gun violence in America is either confined to very specific economically depressed areas, that are well-known and easy to avoid, or is between two private parties.
Yes the big news headlines are scary, yes I wish the number was zero, but the reality is that the risk is still extremely, extremely, extremely low and is not something the average person needs to even think about unless you live in one of the violence prone neighborhoods.
Like schools?
But, if you run the numbers, they're also rare enough that they're not worth worrying about at the individual level. The kind people usually mean by "school shooting" are especially rare.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7150a2.htm
Just as an anecdote: My company tried to recruit an executive from Britain many years ago. He had young children and was concerned about the high rates of child mortality due to firearms and motor-vehicles deaths (the top two causes of death for children in the US) compared to the negligible risk in the UK.
While his underlying concern wasn't specific to "school shootings", he did point out that our blasé acceptance of them was another example of our comparatively higher risk tolerance.
Fascists have taken over. It's really all down hill from here. Americans are sometimes good at coming together when we really need to, so maybe there's hope because most of us aren't far left or right. But even with the weapons we have access to and the 2A we have the right to, we would still have to go against Trump's eventual red army. So there's that. Yeah, we're fucked.
Perhaps this is what you meant, but I'd rephrase that as: if you are a well-meaning tourist with all the proper paperwork then it is very unlikely that anything will happen to you.
I've had a few "well-meaning" friends and colleagues who experienced significant life impacts due to paperwork problems with US Customs and Border Patrol. One example was a student who didn't realize they needed additional authorization to work part-time, another overstayed their visa on a prior trip and is barred from re-entry. Being "well-meaning" is entirely insufficient bordering on irrelevant compared to having the proper paperwork and following the proper processes, especially if you are young and/or from a non-European country.
For decades this has been a topic of discussion amongst international attendees at US conferences and events, and for every person who is denied entry there are several who are reluctant to visit the US due to experiences at the border. Given the particular zeal with which the current administration enforces entry rules it has become the dominant conversation amongst international participants.
Your point is somewhat valid. I live in Los Angeles and never think about gun violence. But it’s a stretch to say gun violence is isolated to low income areas. The risk is non-zero for all of us.
As an Australian, my fear of being killed by the local fauna, flora or the country is near 0. Yes, the "common brown" is the worlds 3rd most venomous snake, and they are the snake I mostly see around my house, but I know where they live and their habits. Yes, the funnel web is a relatively common and very aggressive spider found in our backyards. It's also the world's deadliest spider (it killed one girl in 12 minutes). But everyone is hyper aware of them, and almost no one gets bitten. The surf on our magnificent beaches is deadly, but we are all taught to recognise rips and swim only in supervised areas.
So the reality is Australia is a very safe place, for Australians. Please visit. It's a blast.
I think you’ll be fine. Shootings here get a lot of media coverage which makes it seem more common than it actually is.
I'd love for us to be a new destination for these conferences and international events, but as a Canadian I'm not sure how easily non-Canadians can enter/exit the country. My understanding its its fairly easy but I've never had the opportunity to find out.
I personally would not feel comfortable in a country with restrictive gun laws, if my phone is stolen, I could lose valuable customer data which I'm entrusted to keep secure - it's not right to offload my security to others.
Common thieves might steal your phone, but they're just going to erase it and sell it for parts.
Currently, Trump is so surreal that it is hard to decide what is thought out policy and what is pure idiotism, but getting caught in the crossfire is rather unnecessary and I'd prefer to wait for things to calm down before committing to any US travel.
And unless you go to very specific urban areas, or are involved in the drug trade, your risk of getting shot is incredibly low.
The ‘wtf factor’ with US immigration and gov’t behavior is definitely driving everyone crazy though.
We don't need to debate over "what is a mass shooting" in Canada or Europe.
Also, please don't discount my stated number one reason: daily threats to the sovereignty of my country. Too many Americans don't seem to even notice or care about how serious that is.
I grew up a short distance from the Canadian border in a little town called Kalispell Montana, so I met quite a few Canadian tourists in my younger years, and I personally find it heinous to treat your nation that way. Every single Canadian tourist I ever met was friendly and polite. Downright decent folk overall. Now, I know there's arseholes in Canada same as anywhere, but I suspect as a nation they're largely pretty un-deserving of Trump's insanity affecting them in any way. Sadly, he's convinced he and Musk are King and Emperor of the world. (I don't think they necessarily agree on which is which.)
But ‘that doesn’t make sense’ (except, if we don’t ignore the obvious truth, it definitely does), so we’re all going to pretend it’s just Sabre rattling and rage baiting. Because no one wants to take the hit for something that ‘should never happen’.
Which it kind of is, but isn’t really. It’s infuriating, as is the inaction, but that’s why it works/happens.
And part of why it works/happens is the escalating ridiculousness for the last 5-10 years overall in the media when it comes to hitting outrage buttons.
For instance, on the mass shooting side, depending on how you count, there were between 103-706 killed in ‘mass shootings’ in the US in 2021 [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shooting], out of a country of 350 million. 103 per the FBI, 706 per some action group I can’t remember.
You’re roughly as likely to die of a lightning strike (or more likely to die from lightning), as be involved in a mass shooting. Yet, it gets endless airtime - which the media admits even just makes the problem worse. [https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2016/08/media-contag...]
And endless goal post shifting of even what the definition is, so that the problem grows and grows.
Meanwhile, we ignore actual problems.
The odds of getting an 'emboldened nationalistic fuckhead', or ENF's as I call them, at the border, or a LEO officer has gone up considerably. Scientists blocked at the border due to social media posts, Citizens/legal green card holders are being deported for simply criticizing or protesting the administration. Legal visitors and musicians are being followed and harassed by LEO's demanding their country of preference and treating them like drug smugglers. Legal visa seekers are being detained for weeks in horrible conditions. This is only a short list of the many things visitors need to be aware of and concerned about.
This administration is showing every indication of refusing to follow multiple judges orders and attacking the judicial system people would typically expect to curb and/or stop such abuses.
If you have any sort of public profile or social media presence that isn't pro-Trump/US you are at risk.
Attend remotely or not at all, and make it known to the conference organizers that the US is not a safe place anymore to host international conferences. It will only take a year or two of people refusing and these conferences will stop being organized in the US.
Hopefully a new administration comes along sooner rather than later and makes significant inroads into restoring democracy and freedom in the US, for now its an autocratic regime with a very thin skin and massive ego.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-...