That FBI definition is a start, but it still contains a lot of wiggle room. For instance:
We don’t have all of the facts yet, but once the parents make a statement, I think it’s a pretty safe bet that they’re going to claim that the way that they treated their kids was required by their religion. Now, there are a lot of other people who identify as the same religion as these folks who are absolutely aghast at what they’ve done, but then, there are also a lot of Muslims who are similarly aghast at what ISIS and al Qaida do in the name of Islam.
Or the Bundies: Sure, charges against them were dropped, but would they have been if it had been foreigners doing exactly the same thing?
And of course, there are always going to be a lot of violent crimes for which the motive just isn’t known, especially since in a lot of these cases, the perpetrators end up killing themselves, too, and so can’t be interviewed.
Fair enough. I would probably favor adding some additional criteria for individuals, but my understanding is that there isn’t exactly a flood of 85-year-old cancer patients wanting to immigrate, and while we don’t have a perfect track record of it, America has historically done a pretty good job of taking people like Anja and turning them (or perhaps her children) into productive members of society.
That’s kind of my thinking, and I’d worry that adding in additional criteria about, say, what medical care a person might require would ultimately cause more damage than it’d prevent. Government bureaucracies and regulations, amiright? I’d prefer to keep it simple and, to the extent possible, bright line.
Right. I actually think that just the act of moving far, far away (in addition to the paperwork and filing costs) is somewhat self-selecting in a way that is sometimes not fully appreciated. I have a feeling that the United States transforming into an economic and cultural powerhouse can partly be attributed to past generations dividing up along lines of willingness to get on the scary rickety boat to far away versus staying safely at home. Of course modern travel is much easier but it’s still fairly daunting to move far away.
In Bob’s case I have a feeling that just the travel would be enough of a deterrent. In Anja’s case some more context would be required. But quite frankly if she is the sort of person who is in her position because of “poor life choices”, I think that would correlate quite well with simply not being bothered enough to plan for this non-trivial move. If she did actually follow through that would be a good sign that she is or has become the sort of person that might follow through with work and education improvements.
Heck, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that this is a factor even within the country and it’s citizens, that much poverty is endured by people who can’t or won’t move out of an area with no opportunities, and that people willing and able to move to more booming areas are far more likely to be the sort of people capable of contributing.
There is also the logistical problem of accommodating the large number of people who would want to come. Consider how many people today are willing to risk terrible, dangerous journeys to travel from Africa to Europe, or Latin America to the U.S.; and now imagine how many more would come if it were convenient, safe, and legal. Affordable housing is already in short supply, what about when there are ten million new people to house?
Is there any country in the world that has this type of policy?
I don’t want to stereotype, but the lion’s share of new immigration would likely come from Central America, and you’re worried about whether we’d be able to build enough new houses to accommodate the new immigrants? Have you looked a construction crew lately?
What percent of the people in India, for example, would want to immigrant to the US under this system? Let’s say it’s 20%. Are you prepared to increase the US’s population by 200M people next year? And that would just be from India. Do the same calculate for Mexico, the Philippines, Central and South America, the rest of Southeast Asia, etc.
Why don’t we say it’s 100% of everyone in every country instead? Plus let’s say that aliens from other planets also want to immigrate, and also all the penguins.
(I don’t actually find your figure to be realistic)
To be less flip than the question probably deserves, the system is self-limiting. If somehow, bizarrely, one in five Indians both wanted to come to the US and could scrape up the background check fee, the system would slow to a crawl. Let’s say that an agent can clear an average of 100 cases a year. There are 20,000 folks or so working in immigration now, meaning we can clear 2 million folks a year. I think we could plausibly double that, or implausibly triple that, in a year, meaning that we could process applications from 6 million immigrants each year. Hell, maybe we go crazy and in five years have trained and hired 100,000 folks to do this work: we can process 10 million folks a year! Your proposal of 200 million folks wanting to come would mean that people would be waiting 20 years to come; few are going to put in their application fee, facing a wait time like that.
The more folks that come, the less other folks will want to come, as the “ecological niche” for new immigrants, so to speak, is filled.
But, of course, most folks are tied to where they live. The folks who want to immigrate to any specific country and who are willing to take the steps necessary to do so are always a small minority of the origin country’s population.
What method do you propose to determine what it would be before you instituted this program? There have been several surveys done over the years that indicate upwards of 50% of Mexicans would immigrate to the US if they could. Now, you can argue that that’s just talk, but wouldn’t it make some sense to put a cap on the total number? You know, just in case? And once we say: Come on in, the doors are open! don’t you think people are going to be worried that the doors won’t be open 5 or 10 years from now?
There’d not be a cap, there’d be a flow. Nobody gets in without being background checked.
As for Mexico:
Cite?
Couple this with a broad decriminalization of drugs, to sweep the feet out from under the cartels, and maybe Mexicans won’t be as interested in fleeing the problems we’ve helped create in their country.
Don’t have much time to add anything to your proposal, but I will say that I would be mostly on board.
The only thing that I would change is that I don’t think the immigrant should have to pay for the background check, but I’m very flexible on that, if they can make the payments in installments over time after they get here.
I’ve always been for the idea that if someone wants to come here, they should be allowed to come here. We want people to be here that want to be here.
And when they get here, and they realize that they have managed to leave the “shithole” they were born in behind, and have a happy and productive life here that they would not have been able to achieve elsewhere, they will be our most loyal citizens.
I don’t see how such a proposal could make it through Congress. Even the liberal wing of the Democratic Party might not endorse it, and it would probably run into opposition from perhaps 80% of the electorate.
Goddamn, if I wanted to talk the politics, I woulda put it in Elections :). I know there’s no way it’d pass under current conditions, I’m saying what I think might be the best approach if we can ever get politicians that don’t suck.
Another issue is - this is often viewed as not being in the interests of the United States, but it may not be in the interests of the “sending” nations as well. Sure, many impoverished people might immigrate, but there might also be significant brain drain as well. To drain away the talents of many developing nations wouldn’t be helpful to those nations; something often lost in the “charity” rhetoric.
You are the one who wants to open the doors to anyone who can pass a background check and pay a fee. Tell us how many people you think will come in over the next 5 years (or whatever timeframe you have figured) and how you determined that number and then how you determined that we can absorb that number. If you don’t like my number, give us yours and tell us how you got it.
Again: the practical limits of vetting every immigrant, and of requiring immigrants to pay for this vetting, are going to slow things down. We’ll never talk about 20 million immigrants a year for fifty years. But I’d be interested in seeing some stats on how many people would be able and willing to pay for a background check, and how that’d affect things.
It’s not a pissing match to ask how many people your policy will end up bringing in to the US. If you don’t care, that’s certainly a fair position to take. I would disagree, but I can’t objectively say it would be wrong. If you don’t know, then I’d say your proposal has a serious hole in it. And to be honest, I’m not sure there is a good way of knowing. Like I said, if there was a huge influx, the doors would slam shut. And that makes me think people would want to hedge their bets and get in while the gettin’ was good.
If you think the approval process would provide a natural limit, then that puts us pretty much where we are now, and then you have to create some system to prioritize.