Immigration Rant

[affreca]

Ok. My knowledge of immigration comes from working the USCIS phone support a year ago. I've never been an immigrant, I haven't even had a visa yet*. Hell,** my family hasn't been immigrants for three generations, at least. I come from South Dakota, which likes to think it has an illegal immigrant problem.*** And I remember "debating" my freshman year of high school.****

Ok. I'm not a big believer in amnesty. Blame it on my reflexive rule kick.***** Or on my fairness issue. See, I've looked up the table on processing date for permeanant resident visas for family members. See, the path to citizenship has a stage called permeanant resident. With that you have most of the rights as a citizen, except voting, jury duty and a security clearence with the military,****** and can stay as long as you like, but after 5, or 3 or no years you can apply to become a citizen. Now, to be a PR, you enter (usually) the US with a PR visa, issued by the State department. There are three basic ways to get one, an employer petitions for you, a family member petitions for you or you win the lottery.*******

Now for employer and DVL you get the visas relatively quickly. For family members, it depends on the relationship and status of the petitioner. And what country you're from. In the case of brothers of citizens living in the Phillippinnes. Forget it. Approx 20 years. Literally. Oh, and if the relationship changes.. Lots of hassle.

So my first solution is to increase those quotas. Doing anything for the people who couldn't wait is unfair to those who did. Even if they are at the back of the line, unless we kick them out. Which is what the immigrants rights people don't want.

Crack down on employers who employ illegals because they don't have to pay taxes, or offer minimum wage, or all those other things we consider bad for our own working poor.

Then possibly talk about an amnesty/worker policy for those who can't afford the time/money to apply. Or don't have family. And pump a load more money into CIS and ICE.********

And expect produce to cost more. Maybe you should start a garden and pull out the dehydrator.

Finally, and interesting point about our current adminstration's policy. And how amnesty can be spun.
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2006/04/rude-question-was-commerce-secretary.html

*I tried to apply once, Russia is not a good choice for your first try, let me tell you, especially when you're an American service member at the embassey in Tokyo.

**It's my blog, I can swear.. I can even make lots of extra comments in footnotes. I like footnotes... and misused ellipses, at least when I'm writing.

***Especially people on the rez.

****Yeah, I would have so kicked butt if I had researched back then. Mostly, I wanted the excuse to go somewhere over the weekends, and get food money, which I could hoard to buy crappy books.^

*****Yeah, the one that I thought would keep me out of trouble in the Navy. Ha. We all know the results of that experiment.

******Why PRs die a lot in the military, or cook food.

*******The diversity visa lottery. But you can't apply if you are from a well represented nation.. like Mexico or Phillipines. One of my coworkers had won, and worked his way through the pain to citizenship. A true immigrant success story.

********The now seperated siamese twins once known as INS.

^I do mean crappy.. I do still have all my World of Darkness novels, which probably has something to do with my urban fantasy addiction.. read the Dresden files people.~

~Can you track my footnotes within footnotes? Even without superscript?

Comments

[ninja-tech.livejournal.com]

Yay for footnotes! Your rant made sense to me, but I am ill-educated on the subject. Lately, since all the fuss, it has become more interesting of an issue. Perhaps I shall look into it....