the immigration system is such a clusterfuck that it is genuinely difficult to explain to people what a clusterfuck it is I'm not even talking bad faith right wing assholes - regular, sympathetic normal people will simply refuse to believe what the process looks like even for "the good ones"
I guess the only shorthand way to explain it to the average yokel is that it would make even Kafka would go "What the fuck?" Or for more American audiences: "Catch-22 would somehow make this whole system a lot simpler!"
I honestly think it should be eliminated, and haven't heard a convincing argument otherwise. Just let people come in if they want.
I'm with you, and I'm surprised we don't hear the argument from *anyone* in government leadership www.econlib.org/archives/201... There's no moral case for restricting immigration. There's no economic case for restricting immigration. So why?
I honestly think they're just too afraid of being dunked on by DJT.
When he frames "open borders" like it's the most idiotic position possible, people seem to believe him, so they react to that by backing away from anything that could even be potentially mistaken as that position. So that *actual* position doesn't even get talked about. Just my guess.
I dunno. Many liberals have been claiming "no one wants open borders" for long before Trump (though this is from 2022) www.foxnews.com/media/hillar...
I admittedly don't know much ... okay, I know almost nothing about the discourse in this area.
I would agree that public sentiment has shifted significantly against any immigration during Trump era It used to be up for debate, and libertarians would actually fight for immigration. No longer
I do seem to hear a lot more lately about how we should get rid of *all* immigrants, not just the undocumented ones (or as they like to call them, "illegals"). It's all such rubbish. Immigrants make things better.
Got any questions? I'm a para and could try to answer or one of these other fine folks can. I am convinced info is the solution here.
Not particularly, unless you have an interesting rebuttal to my position that actually makes me think, or some data that I can use to solidify my argument. BTW you're a para? Usually that's a prefix, like paralegal or paramilitary or parachute.
Paralegal. And I mean I am fine with Ellis Island style open borders like we used to have minus the Anti-chinese racism. But nothing Joe has done is close to Open Borders.
Gotcha (and should've looked at your bio). I would also prefer to do away with the racism, though I will give the authors of the Chinese Exclusion Act one bit of credit: they didn't give it some kind of "short title" that flies in the face of what it actually is, like "Make American Labor Great Act"
Your link argues that immigration improves the global economy. But people are mainly concerned with improving their local economy, sometimes even at the expense of the global economy. So the economic case against immigration focuses on the US economy, where its effects are complex.
The economic case for open immigration is similar to that for free movement of capital: moving car factories to Mexico can improve the global economy by making Mexicans more productive. But there may also be a lot of pain in the short term, and that means resistance despite the long term benefits.
By design. youtu.be/bRzpiYIR6Xg?...
i am of the opinion there is no good reason not to allow in any person capable of working without a criminal record, maybe with a medical check up to ensure disease free. I also feel even beyond those parameters it should be allowed, but I don’t even understand why its controversial to let people in
well, i understand why (racism) but i don’t understand why even people who claim to not be racist can’t seem to wrap their head around letting people in. more workers is good for the economy
Being an immigrant in this country has been hell. From top to bottom. And yet I fight to stay. People who talk about how easy we have it or how easy the process is or why don't we just do X are exhausting.
It’s also hard to explain to otherwise well meaning people who work in it how cruel it actually is. My dad did consular work for 30 years & insisted the system wasn’t inherently racist, it was just a mosaic of priorities cobbled together from reactionary congressional consistencies.
Much of this is due to (surprise!) Ronald Reagan, who dismantled much of the immigration service.
Like how the queue for the regular "I'd like to come to this country and work please" line is longer than the human life expectancy in several countries.
I like this explainer: www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/why...
This really shows up on an interpersonal level - most people, when you just ask them what they think, will simply say “why can’t people come here legally? I have no problem with that.” And they do not believe that is currently impossible, and they vote accordingly, because no one pushes back
Or people will say “well MY great grandparents came here legally” as if that gave them any insight into what the process is like *today*
Yes and guaranteed all of them will whine about immigrants "not assimilating/learning English" when very likely they have a grandparent or great grandparent who never learned English even though they lived here for decades.
Absolutely
Even when my father's maternal grandparents (my closest immigrant relations) came down from Canada in the 1920s, my great-grandfather never naturalized because it was a hassle (he never failed to tell anyone who would listen to vote Democrat, though).
When your ancestors became citizens by getting off a boat a century or so ago, the idea that other people need to wait 20-30 years to get citizenship, and endure intrusive interviews and bureaucratic nonsense deadlines the whole time, is hard to imagine.
Earlier this year an Australian e-sports team tried to come into the US to participate in a competition and immigration just wouldn’t let them enter the country. If a bunch of white well to do Aussies can’t come to America, of course it won’t work for asylum seekers from Latin America
This applies to the legal system in general, and it's one of the reasons why the J6 folk thought they were being persecuted , because they didn't realize that the system treated almost everyone with the same disregard and cruelty. They could not accept that system does actually suck like that.
I know multiple people --highly skilled/educated, employed, living here as part of communities for years-- who have had to go back to their home countries because they could not get a visa renewal. It's a whole mess!
And the painful truth for liberals is that Bill Clinton signed the bill in 1996 that probably did the most to eff it all up. My partner was working for a refugee org at the time & it turned everything upside-down overnight.
A friend of mine is currently in ICE lockup because someone in the government physically destroyed the fiancé visa he and his partner worked for a decade to get between it being issued and his getting to the US. And when they do that it’s your problem, not theirs, and they don’t have to explain why.
Revolving and heartbreaking
He got 27 seconds in front of an immigration judge after weeks in lockup, during which his lawyer didn’t get to say a word, before being summarily slated for deportation to Venezuela — where he was not living before and people want to kill him for being trans.
The cruelty is, in fact, indiscriminate and the entire point. And, as an immigrant myself, I’d really love it if more Americans understood what kind of monster they’d created.
I'm so sorry that's fucking insane
My mom’s wife is what I would consider an immigration success story, and it took her the better part of 15 years and Herculean effort on the part of many for her to finally get her citizenship here. The system is perversely broken, seemingly on purpose.
I concur. The struggle to get my green card despite many years of marriage to an American citizen contradicts: “ Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me”
I suspect the changes over the decades are part of what pushed Dad (who is a white anglophone who entered the US in the late 70s on a student visa, married a US citizen, and worked in academia as a professor) away from the Republican Party. 🧵
Like, Dad being a white anglophone with a weak accent meant that, over time, people forgot he wasn't a US citizen from birth and working in STEM in academia meant he got to see how the system worked from decade to decade via his students.
It really drove home how hard it was to 'do everything right' and still deal with xenophobia, and that it was often based around where you were from. Dad, born in England and growing up in Ireland, wasn't treated like his non-white grad students/postdocs, despite both 'doing it right'.
And that was with universities trying to mitigate what they could because they had to deal with a lot more visas than the average business. Harder to stay ignorant of the process, and how it changed when you know immigrants personally and see them deal with the bullshit.🪡
Normally people saying that have never dealt with any other immigration system (or even any other government service in the world). In reality the US immigration system - with all its problems - is still way better than many others.
I have a friend who came here from Trinidad. She ended up getting married. She was married for over three years and had a child and was still waiting on a green card when she divorced the man! It’s crazy!
the uscis will be the death of me
It costs thousands and takes years to become a permanent resident, doing everything the “right” way. Strangers scrutinize your relationship in great detail to make sure you’re married for the “right” reasons.
Took me 16 years. Even LOST money on a check that was cashed but told it was lost. People have no clue what doing it “the right way” actually entails.
I’m an immigration attorney and I’ve had multiple conservatives tell me “we won’t talk immigration” in an attempt to get along when they find out what I do. I can talk immigration with anyone, because I want to talk at the granule level, where it’s nuts. INA 212(a)(9)(C) shouldn’t apply to babies.
My brother in law (a natural born US citizen resident outside the USA) has been attempting to claim citizenship for his son and has been putting it off for months because the forms are so complicated.
Kiddo is also an Irish citizen by descent and getting a passport in that case is sending his birth cert and his mother's to the Irish passport office.
My solution to the Immigration Problem is a $1m fine on any company that hires an undocumented worker, payable within 10 days or the government locks your facilities down. Business owners can appeal the ruling in the immigration court system. I acknowledge the pettiness of this solution.
On 3rd offense, the business owner or CEO goes to jail for 6 months per undocumented employee.
Goes to jail in a for-profit prison. In Louisiana. Where apparently, people in for-profit prisons might not get released on their scheduled dates because of "missing" paperwork because they get paid per occupied bed. Meanwhile, their appeals run in the immigration courts, which are unfunded.
So you want to let billionaires continue to exploit the system?
You're right. Make the fine $10 billion per violation.
Or.... Universalize the CAA and keep the CBP One program. I can promise you will see the pendulum shift to legal immigration if you do that.
That one flow chart that shows it is basically impossible for someone from India (and only India) to immigrate using the highly educated specialist route has been revelatory for tech peers. And that’s by the Cato institute, so as far from left as possible. (www.cato.org/sites/cato.o...)
Came here to post that flowchart - it is, sadly, the most simple and straightforward graphic I've ever found of the process, and I'm not even being sarcastic (lolsob)
It really is. And that’s incredibly sad.
This podcast is a great listen for addressing immigration policies in the us podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/m... @mskellymhayes.bsky.social
I should find time to do more of that again. Because yeah. Like....Consular Processing? Mind fucking blown.
Sounds like it's the sort of regulatory clusterbleep that most right-wing assholes assume the whole government is like. The sort of thing where it needs top to bottom reform and streamlining.
love to write letters to the federal government explaining that yes my friend and his wife actually do love each other and are not perpetuating some nefarious scheme upon this country
A good friend of mine had his wife sent back to England because she couldn’t answer questions like what brand of toothpaste he used and things like that. I can’t even imagine how bad it would be if she were from a less favored country.
You're joking?? I got my partner visa to Australia last year and I didn't have to do anything nearly so dramatic? Which is good because I have wiiild ADHD
This was some years ago, but her dark skin may have had something to do with it. She was born in Indonesia and her family moved to England when she was very young and she held an English passport.
The "joke" question at my husband's initial greencard interview of "what color is your wife's toothbrush?" at the end of the interview was almost amusing, but for the fact we were both scared to death of being deemed nefariously scheming.
Yeah, I had a coworker in the late 90s who thought marriage was the easy way to handle his lady's immigration. It was years before the feds stopped doing things like showing up unannounced at 7am to make sure nobody is sleeping on the couch.
Yes, and submitting paternity tests for any kids you had over overseas, at least if you want them to get citizenship.
Didn’t John Oliver not get a green card until 2019 (after working 13 years in the US and 8 years after marrying an American)?
Parts of the process are also discretionary. When my wife was applying for her immigration visa, another woman she met in the process who had her visa interview the same day had her application denied because she didn't wedding photos (not unusual there not to have them until months after marriage).
It seems like the immigration process is particularly susceptible to a single employee with a grudge or having a bad day.
There were literally visa officers who applicants tried to avoid at the consulate where my wife had to interview because they had a reputation for being very quick to issue denials! There's no recourse, no appeal; it's very frustrating.
Yeah, as one of 'the good ones' (white and British), I can tell you it took me a good five years to get even a provisional visa by marrying an American. I dread to think what it looks like for someone not white
I got Canadian citizenship in 2009 and the process is expensive, hellishly complicated and takes years. The people who talk about immigration (to any country, as far as I can tell) being easy have apparently never met an immigrant.
People who have not navigated that clusterfuck have no idea. Just absolutely NO idea. And the fun part is that it’s a clusterfuck that changes all the time and that’s one of the ways it sure looks designed to trip people up.
What I see is extremely sought after professionals (scientists, doctors,IT) get booted or never allowed in even with lawyers and money. I hear, “it’s a big company, you can fix it” nope. Write your congressman. No secret loophole (assuming you want to do it legally, unlike some of our uh, elite?) 🤷♀️
Explaining to people that even with a valid fiancee visa it took almost 2 years to get the right to work and leave the US and another 2 to get a green card. That's after the 2 years it took to get the fiancee visa in the first place
