Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith offers help to Mozilla employee denied entry to US

Microsoft’s President and Chief Legal Officer, Brad Smith, has gone about offering some help to a software developer running into legal troubles. For reasons that haven’t yet been nailed down yet, a Mozilla software developer by the name of Daniel Stenberg is being kept away from an all-hands meeting occurring in the U.S. this week. Stenberg, who was the developer of the command-line tool curl, has had people from all over the tech community coming to show their support.

Brad Smith was one of the most notable people to offer their help, and it was something pretty generous – the help of one of Microsoft’s immigration legal team members.

I’d be happy to have one of our U.S. immigration legal folks talk with you to see if there’s anything we can do to help. Let me know.

— Brad Smith (@BradSmi) June 27, 2017

Daniel declined the offer for now, saying that “Mozilla legal is gonna look into it” for him. The issue here revolves around Stenberg’s ESTA, or Electronic System for Travel Authorization, which has been denied for seemingly no reason. According to a statement given to Gizmodo, the Department of Homeland Security simply said that “Having an approved ESTA does [not] guarantee a foreign national free entry into the US All travelers including those coming from visa waiver countries must clear all 60 grounds of inadmissibility.”

Further reading: Brad Smith, Microsoft