The US, like most countries, wants to ensure that visitors to it plan to remain visitors and to go back at the end of their stay. To that end visitors may be required to show documentation of a permanent residence in their home country; a job in that country; sufficient funds to last throughout their visit to the US; and possibly an affidavit of support from a US citizen or resident verifying that s/he is willing and able to support the visitor should those funds dry up.
And yes, it does vary depending on what country the visitor is a citizen of. There is a Visa Waiver Program for some countries under which no visa is required for an up to 90-day stay. Algeria, needless to say, is not one of those countries
AFAIK if you’re eligible for a visitor’s visa, and have the documentation to prove it, you should be able to obtain it fairly quickly. But I’ll leave that to someone who’s actually had to go through the process.
So would it be accurate to say that the majority of illegal immigrants in the USA would not be admitted if they follow the legal immigration procedure because they would not be able to meet the INS’s criteria for being a productive member of society? Or is it more that the legal immigration process is too complex and time consuming for people with few resources to navigate. Combination of both? The folks who went through the process that posted here were either admitted no problem, or found the process long and complicated but were or will be granted citizenship. Has anyone here followed the legal process and been denied citizenship? If so, on what grounds?
You’re under a misconception here. The INS doesn’t admit people based upon them being a “productive member of society”. With very limited exceptions, potential immigrants need to either have a job offer in a field with a recognized labor shortage, or to have an immediate family member who is already a US citizen or green card holder. Most illegal immigrants do not fall into these categories, so they just enter illegally or overstay their temporary visa.
Canada, on the other hand, does have a program whereby you can obtain permanent residence by demonstrating to the Canadian government that you have sufficient education, work experience etc. to be a productive member of Canadian society. Personally I think more countries should adopt this kind of policy. It probably wouldn’t help the Mexican farmworkers though.
Also, keep in mind that even if you are admitted to the US, you aren’t automatically given citizenship. You have to have held legal permanent residence in the US for a number of years before you can apply, and then you have to pass an English test, pass a US history and government test, and swear an oath of allegiance. Generally someone who meets all these requirements will be allowed to obtain citizenship, barring convictions for certain crimes of course.
Well, ruadh, I checked the INS site agian re advance parole. It still says that it MAY be granted in the case of a family emergency or a bona fide reason for needing to travel outside the US. It doesn’t seem to me that they will consider a Paris holiday a bona fide need.
Also, the page strongly cautions,repeatedly, in big, red letters, that an advance document is no guarentee that the the traveller will be readmitted to the US. After waiting so long to get my husband here in the first place, and having learned a distinct distrust of the INS, that doesn’t sound like a risk worth taking.
And I’m telling you from experience with hundreds of green card applicants that the INS does grant AP routinely regardless of the reason it’s applied for.
The INS reserves a right to refuse entry to all non-citizens - even a green card doesn’t guarantee admission. Assuming that your husband’s AOS application remains valid, and that he husband has no history of illegal presence in the US, it would be extraordinary for them to actually exercise that right in his case.
I would hate for people to get the wrong impression of the INS! From reading this thread (or from visitng the Border Patrol Museum in El Paso) you might get the idea that the INS is racist and has some kind of prejudice against people from Mexico or the Middle East. Not true! You can be a 60-year-old, upper-middle-class Canadian who’s been married to a U.S. citizen for a decade and they’ll STILL treat you like shit!
The USA is a popular destination for immigrants because our standard of living is so much better than the places these immigrants hail from. Mexico, right across the border from California and Texas provides a good example. A poor mexican laborer can earn much more money working as a brachero in the US than he can in Mexico.
Also, once in the USA, immigrants, including illegal ones, are eligible for all sorts of social welfare “bennies,” such as free medical care in public hospital ERs, public schooling for their kids and AFDC benefits, etc. Also, the USA is a popular destination for pregant female illigal immigrants who can count on the US to grant automatic citizenship to any of their kids who happen to be deposited on US soil. Canada allowed the same sort of birthright citizenship until they finally figured out that illegals were abusing the privilege as a “back door” access to citizenship. The USA is one of the last nations that still allows this sort of access for illegal immigrants.
It seems to me that the USA has rather liberal policies toward illegal immigrants, when compared to most other nations. This is despite the general criticism that we are somehow more strict than other nations. Mexico, for example, often criticizes our alleged unwillingness to accept illegal immigrants, especially those who originate from Mexico. The fact is that Mexico has Draconian policies towards their own illegal immigrants from other countries even less fortunate than theirs (yes, there are some…such as those from other Latin American states and Asia). Their policy is to expel the refugees, and if they are caught a second time, to imprison them. There have been several shiploads of Asian illegal immigrants, for example, who have been taken into custody on our shores who initially had tried to land in Mexico but were simply shooed along to the next port-of-call, along the California Coast…
I’d like to see a cite for the claim that illegals are motivated to come to America by the availability of ER care and AFDC.
A “back door” to citizenship? You’re looking at 20+ years after your child is born in the US before you become eligible for citizenship through him/her. I really, really, really have a hard time getting excited about this.
Just as a random aside, the Republic of Ireland grants not only automatic citizenship to everyone born on its soil, but residency rights to their parents as well (in the US you can still be deported even if your child can’t). I have heard of cases of women being deported simply for being pregnant, though.
I highly suggest getting a re-entry permit. It’s another 80 bucks and a photo but as far as I know it guarantees re-entry to the US for it’s validity. The validity is either 5 years or until the temporary green card expires.
In my case, ChinaWife got a temporary 2 year green card because we had been married for less than two years at the time. We lost the first green card because we were outside of the US and tried to get it turned into a permanent. I spent hours on INTERNATIONAL hold to get through to the INS center several times only to be told the computer was down. I filed papers the requisite 6 months in advance, which would have been fall 1995. Guess when I got a written reply? Yep, that’s right, about one freaking MONTH ago. Can you believe that?
We had to reapply for the green card, and got a permanent one the second time. The second time around it wasn’t so bad becasue we didn’t have to resubmit a lot of the documentation.
Not trying to top your horror story, but I highly suggest you try to get citizenship in the US. Dealing with the INS on anything outside of the US is a nightmare I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.
Sorry to hear about your difficulties, China Guy. I’d love to get a re-entry permit for my husband, but he’s not eligable. He needs his temporary green card in order to to apply for the permit and he won’t have that for another 14 months (26 months processing time total). So, for him, it would be advance parole.
While I appreciate that ruadh works for the INS and is telling me this is no big deal, we have been mislead by the INS so many times that I don’t trust them. Even in this instance–the INS web page says one thing, ruadh is telling me another, and I’m sure if I called the National Service Center I’d get yet another answer. We might decide to try the advance parole option, but not until we have enough money saved for a really good lawyer.
First he has to get his temp green card (another 14 motnhs). Two years after that, he can apply for his permanent green card (I have no idea how long the processing time is for that). Sometime after that (I thought it was 5 years but ruadh says 3), he can apply for citizenship.
Thanks, but that wasn’t the question. To rephrase, it was “why are people compelled to sidestep our legal immigration process?”
I’m still interested in hearing from someone who actually did sidestep the process and is here illegally, or who went through the process and was denied entry.
No, I don’t. I worked in an immigration law firm. I specialized in green cards (mostly employment-based, admittedly, though I did handle quite a few spouse-based cases as well). We filed for advance parole simultaneously with every I-485 we filed and it was always - I mean, without one exception - granted by the INS. (Prior to my working in the field there were cases when it was denied, but the INS loosened their policy considerably when the I-485 backups started getting humongous. Their website may not reflect this de facto change in policy.) And there was only one case where a client was denied entry with his AP document and that just was because the document was stamped but not signed and the immigration officer didn’t realize it was still valid - and even then the client was let in after a few phone calls were made.
By all means, though, you should talk to a lawyer if you feel uneasy about it.
zwaldd:
To rephrase what I already said, it’s because they don’t qualify for our legal immigration process.
I am not anti-immigrant. My grandparents were immigrants (they came from Italy and Germany) in the last decade of the 19th Century and the first decade of the 20th…
I do believe that immigration serves our national interests. But I also believe that our current policies are too lax and attract immigrants (mostly illegal) who cost the nation more than they contribute to our wellbeing.
This is quite clear in our generous provision of social welfare benefits to illegal immigrants.
I happen to know a lot about this, because I am a physician. During my medical school and residency training I worked in large county hospitals in NYC and the SF Bay Area that provided a great deal of medical care to illegal immigrants. During my obstetrics rotation in Brooklyn, most of the babies I delivered were to illegal immigrant mothers, none of whom had insurance or paid for their medical care.
I’m not sure how the INS viewed these mothers, but I do know that the kids I delivered were considered US citizens.
This, IMHO, is pretty damned generous of our country, and I am sure the generosity is not lost on the illegal immigrant women who definitely make a decision to have their kids on US soil. It’s nice to hear that Ireland is similarly generous. But as I said earlier, Canada, that wonderful socialist country to the North, decided to stop recognizing as citizens the spawn of illegal Canadian immigrants.
On Canada’s west coast we’ve been getting a fair amount of migrants coming from China’s Fujian province. They willingly go tens of thousands of dollars into debt in order to pay snakeheads to smuggle them to our shore.
Obviously, their willingness to work hard is not in question. So why don’t they go the legal route? It’s pretty simple: The only place to get information about immigrating to Canada is in Beijing. Due to the weird nature of local economies, it’s easier for illegal migrants to give up their life savings to a snakehead than get information sent from Beijing.
Like JillGat, we did the international adoption thing - South Korea…
INS is a pain in the back end - and our whole process went smoothly. Apparently, a lot depends on which INS district you are in. Ours has a good reputation for orphan petitions, but people I know in some INS districts have to have their congressperson’s office “make some calls” in order to get their paperwork processed.
It is, generally speaking, very difficult for anyone to get into this country, and the hoops you jump through to get here and stay here legally are mind-boggeling to anyone who takes their US Citizenship for granted. It is possible to enter this country legally, miss (intentionally, or unknowingly) one of the hoops, and end up an illegal.
You may not be satisfied with my answer, but here it is: I have spoken to many illegal immigrants who turned up in the drop-in and emergency care clinics I have worked in the SF Bay Area. Being the inquistitive kind of Doc I am who likes to BS with his patients, I have asked many straight up what they were thinking of when they presented with their medical problems in the USA, and specifically in my ER. Surprisingly I heard that most of them knew that we were quite generous with our medical care. I’ve even met some immigrants who moved to California from other States specifically because California had more generous welfare benefits…