You’re still wrong, but this time on two counts, december. First: I didn’t get up on the wrong side of the bed at all. I talk to you this way because, well, because you’ve proven time after time after time that you’re just an asshole. Second, being the spouse of a US citizen isn’t “a sufficient base to hold a job in this country.” It is, as I already told your thick head, a sufficient basis to apply to immigrate to this country. Once here, then the immigrant (green-card holder) can get a job legally.
Personal testimony: A family acquaintance married a man from Morocco in 2000. It took approximately nine months before he was able to obtain a visa to enter the United States, even though he had become the spouse of a United States citizen–and this was before 9/11.
minty: We’re all wasting our time here. December appears to be allergic to facts.
mhendo (in a post that you agreed with) implied that I was in a weaker moral position because I had argued in support of the use of various security measures. I interpret that to mean that s/he considers her/himself to be in a higher moral position for having opposed security measures. It may be that mhendo does support some different sort of security approach, but I cannot recall her/him ever making such a statement on this board.
Monty, I have two requests:
- Sit back and enjoy a cup of coffee and a sweet roll.
- Provide some cites.
“Various security measures”? My dear fellow, you have–as far as I have ever seen–uniformly defended everything done or proposed by the Bush administration in the name of “security measures.” I am glad that you appear to have awakened to the possibility that some of those security measures are various shades of stupid and/or evil. I am disappointed that your revelation came only when one of those measures affects you and your family.
I’d be happy to provide some cites about a spouse’s alleged legal right to move to the US. I’ll quote from the relevant FAQ from the INS:
List of steps. The relevant point here is that a spouse can apply to become a legal immigrant. A spouse is not immediately a legal immigrant, but has to go through the three-step process detailed at that link.
And per that explanation, a spouse who is not a legal immigrant does not have the absolute right to work in the US.
lno, someone who’s up to his neck in INS forms and procedures already
More or less what Monty said. There are plenty of fraudulent marriages out there, which is a much more common immigration issue than terrorism. (I’m not by any means saying that the person in question here has entered into a fraudulent marriage for immigration purposes, just that this is something that crosses INS’ radar screen much, much more frequently than terrorism issues.) That’s why it takes some time to validate the bona fides of the marriage, at least for the purpose of granting employment authorization while the marriage-based green card is pending. (It’s possible to file for separate employment authorization based on the pending marriage-based green card; while the green card itself can take anywhere from a few months to 3 years to adjudicate, depending on the jurisdiction, the employment authorization is generally granted in about 3 months. It’s valid for a year initially, and can be renewed indefinitely as long as the green card application is still pending.)
If the prospective immigrant spouse is already here on an employment-based visa, then obviously the marriage in and of itself doesn’t invalidate that employment authorization. The problem arises when the foreign national travels outside the U.S. and attempts to re-enter in a visa category which is incompatible with other immigration-related actions he has taken since the day he was granted the work visa, such as getting married and filing for a green card when one is employed in the U.S. on a visa which requires nonimmigrant intent. It sounds like when he filed the green card application, he should have switched to a category, such as H-1B, which allows for dual intent. (Yes, there is an annual quota for H-1B visas, but we didn’t even get close to reaching it this year due to the slow economy.) Or alternately, he could have applied for the regular, general employment authorization card along with the marriage-based green card and waited 3 months to travel, until he got that and his advance parole back. Sounds either like someone didn’t pay attention to the travel restrictions while a green card is pending, or had a lawyer who either didn’t understand the right strategy in this situation, o didn’t know that his client planned to travel internationally.
Again, none of this has anything to do with his nationality, or even with security issues, except to the extent that it may take a bit longer these days for applications to be approved because of all the additional security checks that are being run for all applications, not to mention the staff that has been diverted from their regular adjudication duties to deal with security-related concerns.
All of this could have been avoided with some planning. And no, the mere fact of being married to a U.S. citizen doesn’t allow a foreign national to immigrate to, or work in, the U.S.; he still has to file applications and wait for them to be approved.
Tying December’s support of Bush administration policies in general to a specific perceived turn-around on the issue of a three-year wait is both illogical (for the tie-in) and disingenuous (for the perception). All you’re doing is repeating it, and that will never make it true. There were people who supported Clinton’s policies but condemned his deceit when he shook his finger at the American people and lied. But the people who were most tasteless were those among his detractors who feigned concern for his family while delighting in his plight.
And however many Pit threads there have been for December, that does not necessarily say anything about him. Straight Dope is heavily biased toward liberalism, and liberals are on the whole a very snitty lot, taking offense at the slightest perceived nuance and inexplicably believing themselves to be morally superior to their conservative counterparts. That’s how they came to be perceived as “knee-jerk”.
I do not consider it stupid or evil to check on immigrants. In fact, NOT checking would be somewhere between stupid and evil IMHO. Canada has been too accepting of Muslim terrorists into their country, so immigrants from there certainly should be checked.
I know nothing about the checking process itself. It may or may not be appropriate. My objection is to the delay, which I believe is mostly caused by the backlog. Qualification for top-level security clearance can be verified in 2 months; qualification for entrance into the country should be a lot quicker.
A question for you, minty (and mhendo if you’re still here): What sort of security procedure do you recommend be used for foreign visitors?
Eva Luna, I think you and I actually agree. You wrote,
My point is that absent some sort of fraud or substantial irregularity, being married to an American does allow the foreign national to live and work here. E.g., there are no annual quotas, like the H1B visas. There’s no need to prove that the position can’t be filled by an American worker. There’s no need to invoke a special NAFTA preference.
I understand that an application must be filed and approved. My complaint is that the application process is (and has been) too burdensome, given that the only significant legal requirement is an absense of fraud.
If there are other requirements, I’d be curious to know what they are. Can a spouse be kept out because of a past criminal conviction?
Imagine, if you will, a poster who repeatedly and stridently argues that the government should raise taxes to pay for all the stuff that it does. Welfare? Raise taxes. Hunting down terrorists? Raise taxes. Immigration backlogs? Rising crime? Potholes and sewer maintenance? Taxes, taxes, and more taxes. We gotta pay for all this stuff!
Then, one day, that poster starts a Pit thread, complaining that–holy crap!–they raised his cousin’s taxes and now he can’t afford to make his house payment. This is terrible! Why can’t teh government be more efficient so the cousin can afford to keep his house?!?
Hypocrisy, anyone? Bad form? Utter obliviousness? Call it what you will, but it still smells like bullshit to me.
Dunno. Not my area of expertise. But once again, I’m not contesting the validity of your complaint.
I call it a bad analogy.
What happens is that one day, that poster starts a Pit thread complaining that his cousin is being taxed at a three-fold level above others in his income bracket.
december’s position has always been that the government should have the most leeway in deciding how to go about defending the country and that includes imprisoning people without any kind of judicial guarantee and similar measures. His position is always that if that’s what the government decides, then they must have their reasons and they are not to be questioned.
If this man was not december’s cousin and instead of being made to wait in Canada had been imprisoned, do you think december would have questioned the decision? Of course not! He has said it many times himself. Anyone who thinks december’s position would be the same if the person in question were not his cousin is just dreaming. I don’t believe it for one single moment.
december, you have granted the government complete discretion in how to defend and protect the country and its borders. Now deal with it like a man. Many other people have suffered much worse fates and you didn’t care to speak up.
Oops! Please ignore the post above and just consider this my response to it…
Yes, spouses of U.S. citizens can be kept out for all sorts of reasons (and yes, criminal convictions are one of them). There are waivers available for some, but not all of the issues that can prevent someone from being eligible for a green card. It’s a very complex and constantly changing area of law, which requires skills in interpreting the interaction between state and/or foreign law and U.S. Federal law, depending on the issue and the time period when it took place. Spouses of U.S. citizens actually don’t have to worry about some of the major issues that are problems for other green card categories, such as certain past visa overstays or unauthorized employment.
Then there’s the small matter of showing that the marriage is legally valid to begin with. When I worked in immigration court, I interpreted in cases where the groom conveniently forgot to mention on the green card application that he hadn’t bothered to divorce the wife back home who he’d listed as his spouse on his visitor visa application. SO yes, there is definitely a purpose to the various security checks, and yes, they take way too long due to backlogs. As to why the backlogs exist, if adjudications are supposed to be paid for in full by user fees: well, that’s a messy issue, and one which IMHO should be addressed by Congressional hearings.
And believe me, I’m in full agreement that INS processing of all kinds takes far too long. But 1964 was a long time ago; when I applied in 1991 for my rather low-level security clearance to work for the Feds, it took the better part of a year. Ridiculously enough, they went back 15 years for that clearance; since I was 22 when I applied, they basically verified my whereabouts and activities back to the age of seven. And yes, I’ve spent time outside the U.S., but I was born in the U.S., as were my parents and two of my grandparents. For chrissakes, I’d never even had a parking ticket. Did it really take ten months to check out the history of a law-abiding 22-year-old? Meanwhile, since the office was short-staffed, they had to hire contract interpreters from Berlitz at probably $50 an hour instead of the $17,000 a year they paid me when I started. Now was that an efficient use of funds?
If I had opposed every government action to protect the country and its borders, would you give me the same lecture after my cousin was killed by a terrorist attack?
Here’s a thread december started to defend the anti-Muslim immigration policies of the late and unlamented Pym Fortuyn. Turns out the three-year delay might be a good idea because “Muslims routinely kill all gays.” Let’s check this guy out real good to make sure he’s not one of them gay-killin’ Muslims.
Gah, will you please STOP it, Minty? That’s a new low yet! You have now insinuated that December proclaimed that Muslims routinely kill all gays. You even put it in quotes!! Where the hell is your elipsis? Where the hell is the context of the quote?
In the thread you linked, December was commenting on a statement by Kimstu. She said:
He quoted her and responded:
Bolding mine.
Criminey.
It’s just like December lamented in that thread:
In-fucking-deed.
Dammit! Eaten by the hamster! Suffice it to say that I stand by my characterization of that thread, which is truly one of the low points in december’s posting history. Others may, of course, judge it for themselves.
This is an example of claiming moral superiority through wishful thinking. I admit that my comment which you quoted was an exaggeration. But, I provided plenty of cites in that thread demonstrating significant mistreatment of gay people in certain Middle Eastern countries. Pym Fortuyn was quite properly concerned, especially since he was gay.
It was only by ignoring the very real problems being brought to Holland by some of these immigrants, that you could smear Fortuyn as “late unlamented.” Remember what Jean Kerr said:
If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, it’s just possible you haven’t grasped the situation.
On preview, I see Libertarian beat me. Thanks, Lib.