[midasuni]

The US asks if you have been to places like Iraq, Iran, Libya etc since 2011. If you do, you can’t ESTA, you need a visa.

Work would like me to go to Iraq, which is fine. They’ll pay for me to get a US Visa too.

Trouble is in 20 years time when I want to go to NY for my kids wedding or whatever, I’ll still have to answer “yes” to the “I visited Iraq” question, and I won’t be working for the company that sent me there, so I’d have to go for the long arduous process of prostrating myself at the US embassy to beg for a visa, incurring a large expense to do so. Just because the stamp isn’t in my active passport doesn’t mean I can answer “no” to the question

It’s not like Israel, where the stamp would cause problems but they don’t ask (or the other way round where an Israeli stamp would cause problems going to Iran).

Even when I apply for a visa and have to list every country (often in a comically small box with like 100 characters max length), like with India, it only asks “what could tries have you visited in the last 10 years”

[frostburg]

I wonder how that works for people that went there because their country joined one neocon middle eastern venture or another. Does it count if you went there for invasion purposes?