The software engineer had a B1/B2 visa and was supposed to begin work with a New York-based start-up
A Nigerian software engineer claims he was handed a written test by a US border officer at New York's JFK airport to prove his tech credentials.
According to a report in LinkedIn that originally broke the story, Celestine Omin, 28, had been working for Andela, a start-up that connects the top tech talent in Africa with employers in the U.S. For this particular role, Omin had secured a short-term joint B1/B2 visa with a New York-based start-up called First Access.
When he approached the Customs and Border Protection officer, he was asked a series of questions, following which the agent escorted Omin into a small room and an hour later, a different customs officer came in. The officer then asked him to balance a binary search tree.
Omin later told LinkedIn that the questions looked as if they had been lifted off the first page of a Google search where the query was ‘Questions to ask a software engineer’.
Omin, who finally was able to enter the country, later learned that the officers allowed him into the country after officials called First Access to corroborate his story.
Omin’s story comes days after Australian children’s author Mem Fox was grilled by immigration officers in the United States. In a piece written in UK’s daily The Guardian, Fox said that she was hauled in a room along with a wheelchair-bound Iranian, a Taiwanese woman and a few others with children. There was no toilet, no water, and there was this woman with a baby. If I had been holed up in that room with a pouch on my chest, and a baby crying, or needing to be fed, oh God … the agony I was surrounded by in that room was like a razor blade across my heart,” she wrote, adding that it was that moment she loathed America.
Both stories happened a few days before US President Donald Trump told Congress on Tuesday he was open to immigration reform, shifting from his harsh rhetoric on illegal immigration in a speech that offered a more restrained tone than his election campaign and first month in the White House.
He said it was possible if both Republicans and Democrats in Congress were willing to compromise, although he also said U.S. immigration should be based on a merit-based system, rather than relying on lower-skilled immigrants.
"I believe that real and positive immigration reform is possible, as long as we focus on the following goals: to improve jobs and wages for Americans, to strengthen our nation's security, and to restore respect for our laws," President Trump said.
With Inputs from Reuters
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