There's one simple problem with changing immigration, and that's the system is working as intended. Farm workers can't unionize nearly as easily if they are undocumented, and undocumented workers don't have to be paid standard wages. In fact, they can explicitly be paid substandard wages and there is no way to complain. Your parents, most likely.
Undocumented workers lower unskilled work wages and working conditions far past what a documented system would. Further, as workers age out of the ability to do backbreaking farm work, they have no legal protections on which to rely, and can be thrown back out more easily. The DREAM act, however, brings people into the system with legal protections, people who can't easily be exploited in the same way their parents are. Your parents, that is.
And that's why we face an uphill battle with the DREAM act. It sounds conspiratorial, and nobody would explicitly admit this; sometimes, we get to status quo through unintended consequences, but people build their businesses on unintended consequences, and change isn't something they take easily, especially when it impacts their bottom line.
Surely there would be some way to legalize low cost unskilled workers at the expense of giving them some basic rights.
It's a labor supply shock, not a shortage however. The people who would be hired would be inexperienced and more expensive.
Anyways, it's the states policy.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2686136
After 4 years (3 years + 1 year of waiting for the citizenship test, passport generation, etc) you can come back and work in the US under TN at the border. You can also travel to the USA by applying for a 5-10 year B visa and visit as you wish once you've had your your permanent residence card for a while. This all contingent if you haven't had any issues with us immigration. Singapore is also an option.
Can programmers even apply under the skilled category anymore? I thought Canada only wanted computer managers since 2009(?).
http://canberra.usembassy.gov/e3visa/qualifying.html http://www.immi.gov.au/skilled/general-skilled-migration/175... http://www.guidemesingapore.com/relocation/pr/singapore-perm...
With that said, I think illegal immigration creates all kinds of societal problems and is unfair to legal immigrants.
The problem it creates is that there's enormous stress on those that are illegal. They live in the shadows and can be taken advantage of. My own personal experience was driving in LA and being rear-ended by someone who then fled the scene (most likely illegal). They work for less than minimum wage and don't cooperate with law enforcement for fear of deportation.
I'm a child of legal immigrants so I'm naturally biased. There is a legal system and many people every year try to go through that system like my parents did. I see illegal immigrants as "cutting in line" and I see nothing fair about it.
But I'm also human. People like Vargas had no choice (sent here as a kid) and has made a life here. I also sympathize those that flee poverty, crime and even wanting a brighter future. I also grew up in LA and know that many illegal immigrants live decent lives.. heck some of my friends are probably undocumented.
But completely opening the borders is not feasible. Creating systems that encourage illegal immigration only make the problem worse (and exacerbate the problems mentioned above).
1) United States agriculture absolutely depends on a certain amount of unskilled labor to function, for which the United States has been importing Mexican laborers in large numbers for at least 80 years. Ending this importation of labor would literally cause the agriculture system in this country to break down.
2) Many parts of Mexico have been economically depressed with high underemployment/unemployment for decades. There are physically too many people for the quantity of available jobs.
The undocumented immigrants I know (including my parents’ godson who is a migrant agricultural laborer, including several guys who stayed in my family’s house for a few months in the early 1990s, including 30-50% of young men from many indigenous communities in southern Mexico, etc.) DO NOT want to leave their parents, their wives, their children, their communities to go to a strange place where they do not speak the language to do hard labor, missing their children’s early years, DO NOT want to take on tremendous personal financial risk in the form of huge loans from loan sharks who will happily repossess their family’s home or start sending goons to beat people up if the money isn’t repaid.
Unfortunately, the choice is often hover-your-whole-life-just-above-or-below-subsistence-level (i.e. take on personally degrading and dangerous jobs to feed your family, risk starvation, etc.), or clear out and go somewhere else. If the outlet of leaving to the United States were unavailable as an escape valve, I’m quite convinced many would end up either starving or turning to other kinds of desperate action.
In other words, not really a choice at all.
You’re damn right that a system that has people staying in this country without papers isn’t fair and allows those people to be taken advantage of. You know what else isn’t fair and allows people to be taken advantage of? The whole global economic order.
[Note: this is not intended as a call to any particular action; just trying to state facts.]
Mexico isn't the only poor country in the world. They just happen to be the one that's closest to the US. When my parents legally immigrated here, South Korea was a poor nation. Look at the history of US immigration and you'll see that this is a pattern (eg. Irish and Italians in the 1900s to modern day immigrants from Africa and Asia).
I'm from LA so I'm well aware of the economic contributions of the Mexican illegal immigrants.
With that said, I don't necessarily agree with your positions. Due to the massive rate of illegal immigration, agriculture has been able to thrive on low cost economics. If they didn't have that labor, it doesn't mean the US would shut down. What it would mean is that the US would have to adjust the economics in order to make it viable. This could result in the following:
a) A much larger legal guest worker program. b) Importing more agriculture from countries like Mexico. c) Higher wages for legal farm workers (including legal residents of Mexican origin).
In all 3 of these cases, it would lead to be a better situation for Mexican-Americans or Mexico. In the case of b), it would help the economics of Mexico.
I sympathize that Mexico is a poor country. Like I said before, there are many poor countries in this world. I don't want to sound callous but I don't understand how this is specifically the responsibility of the US. We don't even have a nationalized health system.
Also, allowing illegal immigration does not help Mexico in the long term. It won't fix their lack of economy and unemployment problems. Saying there are "physically too many people" is an excuse IMO. Every country battles the problem of unemployment.
I'm living here for more than a year and am still shocked that there are neighborhoods that only speak their native language and are virtually paperless... even though some of them goes to tijuana every other weekend. I'm here legally and still avoid going to mexico to avoid the hassle.
There is a legal system and many people every year try
to go through that system like my parents did. I see
illegal immigrants as "cutting in line" and I see
nothing fair about it.
1. Marrying an american
2. Indentured servitude via H1-B (hard to get, and if you leave your job/get fired you have to find a new job in two weeks or leave)
It used to be a lot easier in the past.
If you think the privilege of an H1B is
"indentured servitude", it seems that
immigration is not for you.
I am educated, healthy, young, have no criminal record and as a programmer I earn a significantly higher than average salary (and therefor pay significantly higher than average taxes).
I can say with a straight face that probably any country I choose to live in will benefit from me being there, so why would you want to keep skilled people like me out?
My original point is that H1B is not a right, it's a privilege. Even though you're awesome (by your own account), I fail to see why you're owed anything.
2) Being a citizen doesn't just have benefits but also responsibilities. This is why we pledge allegiance.
At age 21 I had to register for the civil service. That means that if my country goes to war and I'm drafted then I must fight and possibly die for my country.
An illegal immigrant will not be drafted.
It also means other things I'm bound under federal law like paying taxes. There are also other civil duties like being on a jury to judge my fellow citizens. As a citizen, I'm bound by the laws on our constitution and those created by our legislature.
3) The privileges of a citizen allow them to contribute to the way our democracy functions including the right to vote.
An illegal immigrant cannot vote.
The rest of my argument was already stated above to you. If we completely open the borders to everyone, then our government wouldn't even be able to serve the current legal citizens.
You may dislike the system but in other countries such as Japan and Germany it is even more difficult and exclusionary. They are based on parentage and while that make more sense to you, it actually ends up leaving large classes of immigrants unnaturalized.
I hoped for somewhat better reasoning than that. If you take "it's a law and it must stay unchanged" principle to the heart, then you would be dead by now killed as invader by one of American-Indian tribes.
2) "Opening borders to everyone" has very little to do with "Stopping discrimination against immigrants".
It has everything to do with opening the borders because if illegal immigrants have all the same rights as citizens then you're essentially inviting every immigrant to come to the US.
Of anyone, I would think you understand that our physical borders does not do a great job of preventing illegal immigrants from entering the country.
You seem to pick and choose your literal arguments from your theoretical ones.
Societies that raise slave armies aren't free.
Or, did I miss where you'd be able to abstain if, for instance, you knew the whole thing was a farce?
> Being a citizen doesn't just have benefits but also responsibilities.
And consequences. If you're a US taxpayer (one of about 200M) you've recently paid for the killing of about 1/100th of someone, likely a non-combatant.
Not to count (of course) those your country's policies have merely displaced, such as many of the poor in Mexico, victims of "Free Trade" and the like.
Darned illegals.
> If we completely open the borders to everyone, then our government wouldn't even be able to serve the current legal citizens.
Cite needed.
The USA can manufacture and deliver a bomb for every man, woman, and child in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc, and you don't think it could provide basic food and medical instead?
Everything else you said is simply biased slander on your part.
Like Iraq. It may crawl back to where it was before the attack but only at ten times the effort. Likely it'll bear the scars of the war for a century and, if the USA gets its way, suffer "treaties" long after that. Is it insulting to the Iraqis to say that this will set them back, or is it realistic?
> Everything else you said is simply biased slander on your part.
I could say you're a pro-USA fanboy who'll blindly support them regardless because he's afraid his loyalty will be questioned and his citizenship revoked. But, even if I feel you act that way, I won't. Srs. So don't do it to me either, k?
For sure the big papers and TV network here in the Philippines would race to get Jose to join them.
JV, it's time to face another world. We got your back!
Thankfully one of my divorced parents married a citizen close to when I started high school. Eventually I was eligible to apply for citizenship sometime late in college.
I still remember the citizenship 'test' I had to take. It consisted of telling the tester: the colors of flag, reading a sentence that said George Washington was the 1st US president, and telling her who the current president was. Ironically I had passed an AP US history course sometime ago with flying colors.
USA are not the World. I've heard Canada is very open to knowledge workers from outside. Learn about other countries.
Good luck.
"[Throughout the history of the U.S.] you had a flood of immigrants, millions of them, coming to this country. What brought them here? It was the hope for a better life for them and their children. And, in the main, they succeeded. It is hard to find any century in history, in which so large a number of people experienced so great an improvement in the conditions of their life, in the opportunities open to them, as in the period of the 19th and early 20th century.
You will find hardly a soul who will say that it was a bad thing. Almost everybody will say it was a good thing. ‘But what about today? Do you think we should have free immigration?’ ‘Oh, no,’ they’ll say, ‘We couldn’t possibly have free immigration today. Why, that would flood us with immigrants from India, and God knows where. We’d be driven down to a bare subsistence level.’
What’s the difference? How can people be so inconsistent? Why is it that free immigration was a good thing before 1914 and free immigration is a bad thing today? Well, there is a sense in which that answer is right. There’s a sense in which free immigration, in the same sense as we had it before 1914 is not possible today. Why not?
Because it is one thing to have free immigration to jobs. It is another thing to have free immigration to welfare. And you cannot have both. If you have a welfare state, if you have a state in which every resident is promised a certain minimal level of income, or a minimum level of subsistence, regardless of whether he or she works or not, produces it or not. Then it really is an impossible thing.
If you have free immigration, in the way we had it before 1914, everybody benefited. The people who were here benefited. The people who came benefited. Because nobody would come unless he, or his family, thought he would do better here than he would elsewhere. And, the new immigrants provided additional resources, provided additional possibilities for the people already here. So everybody can mutually benefit.
But on the other hand, if you come under circumstances where each person is entitled to a pro-rata share of the pot, to take an extreme example, or even to a low level of the pie, than the effect of that situation is that free immigration, would mean a reduction of everybody to the same, uniform level. Of course, I’m exaggerating, it wouldn’t go quite that far, but it would go in that direction. And it is that perception, that leads people to adopt what at first seems like inconsistent values."
You can read the rest at: http://freestudents.blogspot.com/2008/02/what-milton-friedma...
Edit: actually the natural growth rate is every so slightly positive. Read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_of_Canada_by_year#Co...
Although Canada has the most liberal immigration policy of all industrialized countries today, it will still take an applicant years to become a Canadian.
I do not disagree on any of those counts, the fact still remains that impediments to immigration are not caused (either solely or entirely) by welfare states. And more to the point, they can have considerably more liberal policies than less progressive states.
So when i hear people attack socialized systems, especially in oblique manners such as this (rather than highlighting specific policies that need to change), my bullshit radar goes off.
The real gem of this story is that the Secret Service and Whitehouse staff/security couldn't catch the fake social security card/number, that Vargas submitted.
LoL! If those institutions cant catch, then who can? Anybody can come here illegally and live/work enjoy. The fear (no reason for it) they have is similar to fear we have of accident - it rarely happens but needs vigilance/careful.
vargas, when he was smuggled into this country, was not "special case" at that time. This is a typical, hallmark fraud case. The coyote, fake passport, fake student visa, fake greencard the list goes on.
you want the Law to be just in above case? i am just saying there needs to be punishment and accountability.
Believe me, the US immigration law is lot better, just and clever than most other countries. There are lot of legal aliens that comply with it, and grateful for the opportunity.
He committed 70% of the fraud after turning 16. He is not kid anymore, and be responsible for his situation/actions.
What about legal alien kids who come (sent by parents) here legally for undergrad studies...pay upto 100K in tuition fees, and be sent back if can't get job visa or other legal immigration problems? Wouldn't you argue, this kid knows nothing , he was shown the american dream, he deserves greencard/citizenship?
Lot of other scenarios can be argued.
There is law for a reason, and 300 millions American citizens and legal aliens abide by it. Do you want make all of them feel idiots?
This is just further evidence that the system is terribly broken. And, of course, in this case the kid getting sent home still has the illegal immigration option. He/she's no worse off than someone like Vargas, though residing illegally is probably more difficult when you're already on file with the gov't.
There is law for a reason
So you say. Clearly it's not working out very well, or situations like this (and many others) wouldn't pop up so often, and immigration reform wouldn't be a hot-button issue of national importance.
... and 300 millions American citizens and legal aliens abide by it. Do you want make all of them feel idiots?
They can feel however they want to feel; I don't particularly care. They do have one huge benefit over Vargas' situation: they don't live in fear every day that someone will find out about them and they'll get sent back to their birth country.
Obviously you've never dealt with immigration. My wife was a Chinese citizen here on a student visa when we married, and so I've dealt with the process first hand.
It seems to me that most people believe that the process of getting a green card or citizenship is just a matter of filling out a couple forms, going to a notary, and waiting a few months for everything to be approved. Nothing could be farther from the truth, and as a result, many people who want to do everything legally, who really try to do so, wind up with an illegal status.
The process involves scores of forms that must be filled out just so. I can tell you from personal experience that figuring out exactly what the INS wanted was a challenge -- for me, an native English speaker who got 680 on the SAT verbal section. It's nearly impossible for non-native speakers, but many of them can't afford a lawyer to help them.
My wife's application was rejected twice. The first was due to confusion about the correct papers to prove marriage. The second was due to improperly collected fingerprints. We went to the State Police to have the fingerprint cards done. Who is better qualified to take good fingerprint samples than the police, right? We were rejected because the NJ State Police are not certified by the INS as fingerprint authorities. It seems that, to get the prints done legally, we had to drive to the duly certified fingerprint authority, some 40 miles away, which turned out to be a camera shop. Her prints were taken by some Indian guy, obviously an immigrant himself, rather than a police officer -- and these were accepted.
On one occasion the wife was at the INS office in NYC Federal Plaza. The woman at the counter was telling wife that something had to be done just so, no exceptions. Wife asked to speak to a manager to try to clear up the misunderstanding -- a perfectly legitimate request in any business. Rather than trying to work with my wife to resolve the disagreement, the worker pushed a little button, and two big burly guys came out of a door and physically removed my wife from the premises, claiming that she was a threat.
Obviously this process is not about a correct and complete application: they are about perpetuating the INS itself, through the fees for fingerprint certifications; shoring up their little fiefdoms, and so on. Anyone who believes that people who are unsuccessful in navigating this bureaucracy are criminals, bad elements that we don't want in our society, is badly mistaken.
The shortest route is 10 years.
What is true is that the system is rigged against Indians and Chinese. If you are Indian and don't have a PhD, then yes, you may have to wait 10 years, probably longer in fact. Unlike the hardships of illegal immigrants, this hardly ever gets any attention though.
The entire reason we have a problem is because there isn't a good way to "do things legally".
It's probably only 'easy' for Canadians.
Dismantle the bureaucracy that makes immigration so difficult? Yes. I believe in free markets.
May I attempt to translate?: Throw my weaker countrymen under the bus. I have no human loyalties to those born in my nation who share my culture. Their welfare is of no consequence compared to potentially profitable foreigners.
I think your "tribalism vs meritocracy" line does get to the heart of the matter. Except I would substitute the term "nationalism" for tribalism. And the story of the 19th and 20th century is the absolute failure of systems of government not oriented around nationalism, and tribe. All over the world empires and larger nations repeatedly broke up into their tribal elements. This is inevitable human nature and fighting it is just stupid. This project of inviting the entire world into the borders of the USA will end in civil war eventually. Enoch Powell was right. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/3643823/Enoch-Powells-Riv...
The secret service is supposed to be able to pull up entire background check - not simply make sure if SSN checkouts against Vargas name.
I was brought here as a kid 13 years ago. I'm 24 now. I also graduated from a "top" university -- like that matters. I guess my parents weren't smart enough to get a fake social security card for me back then, I wish they were. I've also been fighting for the Dream Act for what feels like an eternity. I made a site and still maintain it, have met with Senators, protested in front of the White House, several times, other things. I'm loosing hope. I lost hope in Congress long ago. I lost hope in this President in December, when he failed to stand by us and the vote. I don't have anything left to wait for.
I'm still "hiding," most of my friends have no idea, but I see less and less reason to do so every day. I just can't take it anymore. I'm worth _something_. I'm competent coder, and fuck it all, at least I got that, my mind, and my family.
Anybody who wants to debate the pros and cons of immigration reform can go to hell. I'm done reading the hate mail. I'm done debating. I am done listening to those masked bigots. I know what it is like to live like this having done nothing wrong. I know that I don't deserve the punishment. If we can't agree on the fact that I am American and should have basic rights, then we have nothing to talk about. I'm not asking for anything except recognition.
Btw, people who were brought here on fake documents, as me and Jose, can't get married for papers. So even if Jose wasn't gay, he wouldn't be able to adjust based on marriage. It's unfortunate that people who come here on student visas get married -- assuming they have enough money -- and have a green card in six months. People like me and Jose, homebred Americans if ya will, are forever tarnished with this inherited title. Hello, my name is "illegal immigrant." That's what I feel like every single day. Every morning in the shower, I utter the words "I am so fucking tired." And I am.