>We should be giving more visas - not less or the same amount reclassified.

True, but you should also be doing more to exclude the people who don't have visas, which is the main reason the US immigration system is currently broken.

I lived in the US for a few years, did everything legally, queued up at embassies, paid endless fees, and saw that everywhere I went I was surrounded by people who had entered the country illegally and the US government wasn't doing a fucking thing about it.

Eventually I decided "Fuck it", because if the US government is more interested in letting in a gazillion unskilled, non-English-speaking manual labourers who have already shown a complete disregard for its laws than it is in letting in me, then the US isn't a country that deserves me.

What harm were those people actually causing you?

While it would of course lower afasd's blood pressure to relax and let it go, his question needs to be considered. Anyone telling law-abiding would-be American immigrants to wait their turn comes off as either oblivious or downright malicious if they tacitly condone, um, "extralegal" immigration. As an American, frankly, it's embarrassing.

I agree that would be hypocritical. I didn't tell him to wait his turn though, I told him I support open borders.

If he wanted to come into this country illegally, I personally would have no problem with it. Maybe then though, he'd see that those people don't have it easy since they obviously won't be getting high-end engineering jobs like that and will realize they are no threat to anyone whatsoever.

It's also comparable to GPL compliance too. The companies that do open source their code and comply are leaning on the FSF to make sure their competitors are also held to the same standard. If the FSF let them off, then why should anyone spend any effort complying?

It was more the moral outrage that happens when you do the right thing and see other people getting away with doing the wrong thing.

It's like if you went to a supermarket and paid for your groceries and saw that you were the only person paying. Everyone else was just walking in, shoplifting, and walking straight out, and the managers weren't doing anything to stop it. That's not a supermarket I'd choose to keep going to.

I support open borders for the reasons I listed.