I think anyone who wants to come and be a citizen of this country should be able to, and the process should be much quicker than it is today. I actually don’t know how long it takes, but if it takes more than 2 years, that’s too long. I’d say take in anyone who wants to come, no limit. The only ones that are restricted are three categories:
[ul]
[li]criminals[/li][li]those who have taken up arms against the US[/li][li]people who cannot support themselves or do not have a support network to rely on[/li][/ul]
Asylum seekers are a different category. I’d like to say to the world, if you are in danger, come to the US and you will not be in danger.
I think our current social safety net is a financial challenge to this plan. A requirement would be that hand in hand with the above the social safety net would be dramatically reduced for everyone across the board.
People are not committing a crime every day. Entering a country illegally is a crime that you commit when you enter the country. There is no crime of living in a country illegally.
These people don’t exist. For a lot of people there is no legal avenue for them to immigrate to America. So the only way they can immigrate to America is illegally.
Are you saying that anybody who served in their home country’s military during a war with the United States, should be barred from immigrating to the United States?
Over a million Germans immigrated to the United States between 1945 and 1960. And I’m assuming many of them were men who had served in the German military during WWII.
In my view, yes that is what I’m saying. I was more thinking of current terrorists so maybe that portion needs to be tweaked. Someone who was in the Iraqi army during desert storm who surrendered and wants to immigrate may be fine. A dude planning to bomb the US is not fine. Whatever needs to be tweaked to make that happen I’m okay with.
I disagree with this. Most right-wingers support “Immigrants should follow the law to immigrate to the United States.”
First of all, anyone participating in this discussion should look at other country’s immigration laws like the UK, Australia, France, Spain, Russia, etc. and see how easy it is to just pack up and move there. For most people outside the EU it is impossible to emigrate to many of those countries. Consider that when people talk about how unfair our system is.
That being said, we should have a plan where people can enter the country legally with criteria including
clean criminal record
ability to support yourself in the US for a year. This may include a saving account but could also include having family/friends/company already in the US that makes a job and housing available.
ability to support yourself may also be having a marketable skill or a college degree
medical check to avoid bringing communicable diseases
Pretty much if you meet these three criteria (law-abiding, ability to support yourself, no diseases) you can come to the US.
I would include a process to allow those here illegally already to gain lawful residency (but not citizenship) through a process similar to the above. For DACA (dreamers) I would offer a path to full citizenship upon
Completing a high school diploma
Service in some form to the United States.
BUT
If we are going to loosen up immigration we need to secure our borders
Revamp the system to track those on a visa and pursue those on expired visas
Not allow those seeking asylum in unless they are actually persecuted. Being poor and fleeing a fucked-up government is not asylum-worthy.
Patrol the borders using technology such as drones and when caught ship the border-crosser back to the furthest corner of their home country
Charge the home country for the cost of imprisoning foreign national criminals. If they don’t pay, drop the criminal in the middle of the capital.
Many of them, however (not all), also support policies that make it effectively impossible for most people to do so.
And many people don’t seem to realize the length of the waiting lists or the difficulty of the process. ‘You might or might not be able to get in five or ten or twenty years from now, go stand in line’ is no help, right now, to either the employer or the would-be employee trying to deal with a job opportunity right now, or the person who wants to be able to live with their two year old child or their eighty year old sick grandmother; let alone to the person who may in the meantime take severe damage from malnutrition, or be repeatedly raped and/or beaten, or be killed, or be forced into a gang where they’re expected to kill other people.
I concur. Our immigration law (like abortion laws) when looked at holistically seems self-contradictory and is an absolute mess.
I will point out that many first world countries have laws in place to make it impossible to immigrate there so why is the US singled out in particular?
Any kind of rational immigration policy has to start with the proposition that the government may not for any reason disrupt people’s lives by forcing them to relocate after they have established lives in a place, not matter how they did it, and that the government may not separate families for the sake of enforcing immigration law.
And that includes people who commit crimes. There should be no option to deport people based on their behavior. If someone commits a crime, E gets punished the way any citizen would get punished.
So, if you come to a country illegally but manage not to get caught until you get caught doing something (else) illegal, you should have the same legal rights as ever other citizen because…? How does this make sense? They are here illegally already. If they break a law and are caught, why shouldn’t they be deported to their country of origin??
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
I don’t see the words ‘citizen’ or ‘illegal alien’ anywhere in that quote.
If you come into the country illegally, every single day you are here “illegally”, you are still breaking that law … Since you know, you are “living in a country illegally”
It is against the law to enter the country illegally, which I believe is on the level of a misdemeanor. Can you point out the law that says it’s a crime simply to exist in a country without documents, and that you are committing one act of that crime every day you exist in that situation? I keep seeing this asserted, but I have yet to see a cite. I think it’s one of those self-reinforcing “facts” that aren’t.
Because 8 U.S.C. Section 1325, I.N.A. Section 275 seems to be called Improper entry by alien.
It is the action of “entry” that is illegal…and while being present in the US without documentation is a good indicator of that, please provide a cite for your claim.
Exactly. Lip service to “we like legal immigration” while enacting policies to limit all immigration. Especially from places with, let’s say, not Norwegian people.
