>In other words, I think I can understand the views I'm criticizing. No, you've missed the very simplest critique of the US immigration system: that it takes y

>In other words, I think I can understand the views I'm criticizing. No, you've missed the very simplest critique of the US immigration system: that it takes years to decades of effort and incredible, Kafkaesque arbitrary hoop-jumping to get an actual Green Card, let alone an American citizenship. The system is legible neither to its owners (Congress) nor to its users (immigrants and visitors). We can talk about sending "temporary" immigrants home when we've stopped making "permanent" immigrants (those on immigrant-track visas) go through hell just to turn their visa into citizenship. Let's naturalize the people we already have living and working in the country, and then talk about reforming our system for granting further visas into a nice sensible points system.