Actually, I’m saying something quite different. I’m saying that you’re own personal experience should have no bearing on the value of this law. Whether this is a good law should be decided on its own merits – on the effect that it would have on the families involved, and on the country as a whole. As someone else posted, spite is not a reason to be in favor or opposed to a particular piece of legislation.
Can you explain to me how you were punished by the actions of others? I understand that you used the qualifier ‘in effect’, but what is that effect you are referring to?
In addition, you sound like you are blaming the scorpion for stinging the frog. I blame those who refuse to do anything about illegal immigration, whatever their reasons.
Because saying “they’re kids!” ought to be enough, we should not have such first rate intellects trying to construct a legalistic mechanism so that we might, somehow, ignore that. They’re kids.
If anything, it sounds like you got off lightly. I personally know an American/Canadian couple where within a couple months of their marriage she had to return to Canada for half a year. Just because the paperwork was misfiled and she had to leave while they sorted it out.
After spending countless hours and thousands of dollars, you of all people should know how broken the process is and how desperately it needed reformed. Personally, I find it hard to fault someone for coming to the US illegally considering how difficult we’ve made it for them to come in legally.
But data shows that they are likely to end up a net drain on the economy because of the high drop out rates. So you actually would be better off reducing their numbers by encouraging them to return home.
http://nrd.nationalreview.com/article/?q=YjQ4N2EyMTQ4NzZjZmNlOWQwN2RiNTZjMWZiZDY4YzQ=
Yes, I’m also part of a family that has gone through a stressful, expensive (and it will be more expensive by the time it’s finished, about £5k just in fees all told) immigration process and I would be delighted and overjoyed if that process were made easier and cheaper for other families.
I don’t understand the emotions or logic behind the other response at all, I’m sorry to say. I don’t comprehend the jump from “this process was difficult and stressful for me and my family” to “and therefore it is personally offensive to me to have it be less difficult or less stressful for another family.” How is empathy so absent? I don’t understand how to think or feel that way.
Immigration law is corrupt, racist and outright broken. Their parent in many cases could not immigrate legally; not because there is anything wrong with them, but because they are from the “wrong” race or country* or because the law is so screwed up. It is a legal system designed to be broken; we want people to come here illegally, not legally. It makes them easier to exploit.
*Mexico for example has an allowed immigration quota of zero. They cannot immigrate here legally. We don’t want them to; we want them as illegals.
I think you meant to attribute that quote to Richard Parker.
The whole point is, in the case of people who were brought here as kids by their parents, the USA is their home in all meaningful respects. They may have only dim memories, or none at all, of what you refer to as ‘home.’ They may no longer have relatives there, they may barely speak the language, they may have little if any idea how to fend for themselves or make a living there.
The use of the word ‘home’ by opponents of this bill is the fundamental travesty, and the whole point of the bill is that the assumptions embedded in opponents’ use of that word, applying to those affected by the bill, are fundamentally WRONG.
No, the data doesn’t show that. Even the right-wing studies you cite, if taken at face value, don’t say that.
But wait, if they drop out (I assume you mean from high school or earlier) they don’t qualify for this program anyway. High school graduation or a GED is a requirement for the program, in addition to some college or military service. It’s hard to see how they would be a drain on the economy.
Even if they were a drain, that’s not necessarily a dealbreaker anyway. But they’re clearly not.
Got a cite on that? Last I checked the number was absurdly low, but non-zero. Something like 10 or 20 thousand IIRC. But it’s been awhile since I checked. If it is now zero, then it’s rather depressing that our immigration policies have become even more messed up than they used to be.
I don’t think the Democrats put this up for avote because they thought it would ever get past a filibuster. I think they put it up because they wanted a record of the Republican position on immigration.
If you can’t vote for some pathway to legal residency for someone who came to America as a kid and has spent at least two years in the military or college, then its hard to see who you would provide a pathway for.
I think the entire quota may get consumed by people here sponsoring family members.
That’s quite possibly the case.
I read recently (from a good source that I can’t recall for sure: possibly Ezra Klein?) that over half of the numbers we allow in the way of legal immigration are taken up by immigration of family members of American citizens, who are understandably given a certain amount of priority over would-be immigrants with no family connections here.
If we only allow 10-20K legal immigrants from Mexico per year, it would be absurdly easy for all that to get used up by American citizens of Mexican extraction applying to bring their relatives in.
Which if true would pretty much expose the lie in the ‘cutting to the front of the line’ argument that people make about illegal immigrants from south of the Rio Grande. There’d really be no way to go to the back of the line and ever hope to work your way up to the front, because family members of American citizens apparently are always cutting in front in sufficient numbers to render the rest of the line nearly immobile.
You can find the current backlogs for quota-subject green card categories here, and an explanation of the quota system here. The backlogs for Mexicans have historically been far longer than for most people; they even have a separate list here (family-based categories only).
When doing the math, keep in mind that only 7% of the allotted immigrant visas (i.e. green cards) can go to nationals of a single country, so Mexico has the same absolute overall number of green cards allotted as, say Lichtenstein. Thus the ridiculous backlogs (a similar situation applies to China, India, and the Philippines).
Eva Luna, Immigration Paralegal
Thanks for fighting my ignorance!
I was particularly struck by the note at the end of the Mexico backlog table that says:
Retrogressing cutoff dates? Sweet. Fire up the DeLorean, we’ve got a phone booth to catch!
So you don’t see the issues raised in those articles as problematic? I probably should have added a reference to Seymour Itzkoff’s book ‘The Decline of Intelligence in America’. It explains the problems with a lowering of population cognitive ability.
Intelligence is the best single predictor of major socioeconomic outcomes,
both favorable (good education, occupation, income) and unfavorable
(adult poverty, incarceration, chronic welfare use; Gottfredson,
2002). Linda Gottfredson has an article which also explains some of the tensions that arise from different group averages.
http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/2004socialconsequences.pdf
Those authors come from right wing think tanks that are essentially propaganda machines. Their assesments have no more value than if they came from left wing think tanks. There is no reason to give credence to your articles.
Why isn’t encouraging them to graduate from high school a better solution?
How do you plan to encourage them to return home? The only thing that’s worked so far has been the recent economic meltdown.
**Chen019, **do you happen to be a member of one of the groups that Gottfredson thinks are extra smart?