4 ms·

It may be easy to overstay, but it is not easy to retain a good middle class lifestyle long term. For example: 1. Mandatory I-9 verification means you will not

It may be easy to overstay, but it is not easy to retain a good middle class lifestyle long term. For example: 1. Mandatory I-9 verification means you will not be able to work at any large or non-shady company. No more highly paid tech jobs. 2. You can not re-enter and therefore you cannot leave, e.g. to see your parents in your home country, business trips or international vacations. 3. You cannot renew your drivers license past your visa expiration date. At best you can get a worse alternative (depends on state; AB60 in California) that lets you drive and not much more. 4. You would live in fear of ICE. After going through the legal immigration system, I cannot even imagine the stress of interacting with the illegal immigration system. 5. At that point your chance of naturalization is gone. Even everything else being equal, leaving and legally coming back on another H-1B would've been a _much_ more appealing option. And I don't think any illegal immigrants would be laughing at the efforts of legal immigrants. I am shocked that you would write that. I am pretty sure nearly all illegal immigrants would love to follow a legal path if there was one that was achievable for them. After all, undocumented immigrants currently pay billions of dollars in state and federal taxes every year.

notch656a 4y ago
Isn't immigration nation the program where they showed something like 98% of those going through the legal immigration process to seek asylum being denied and sent back to get hunted down and killed by gangs waiting back home? When they could have came illegally and only had something like 5% chance a year of being caught and removed (and most likely, far less if they dont engage in non-immigration related crime)? You know anybody in tech jobs working on contract? Did you know they don't verify I-9 for 1099 workers and B2B payments? Did you know about half of illegal immigrants have no high school diploma, yet they make roughly same as American non-high-school graduates? AS you say California does issue driver license. The fear of ICE for illegals who are off the record is swapped for other fears when you're legal and on the books. Like the fear I have of CBP (customs/border patrol), who actually served me a search warrant since I'm a citizen with a recorded address who goes through the legal port of entry. Last time I got tossed in a cell for 16 hours and was strip searched, put into medical debt, printed and booked, shackled and cuffed, made to perform bodily functions in front of CBP officers, taken around by prisoner transport van, even though I did nothing wrong -- all because I used the legal port of entry instead of sneaking through the desert. Citizens aren't immune to persecution by our immigration and border apparatus, and unlike illegal immigrant I don't have another nation to fall back on when my own countries immigration system turns tyrannical on citizens like me. And it's a myth you can't be naturalized if here illegally. People get married and do it all the time.
- Ao7bei3s 4y ago
  Thank you. While my overall opinion has not changed (legal immigration is preferable), I appreciate your factual corrections (e.g. no I-9 for 1099). And I am sorry you had that interaction with CBP. Then you can relate to the cruelty of that system better than me. I too have been treated arbitrarily and incorrectly, but it has only resulted in delays and paperwork. Nothing like that. Immigration Nation was very hard for me to watch back then, in the context of the time at which it was released.
  - notch656a 4y ago
    Sorry for the shit you experienced. I do welcome immigrants to our country. I just despise our immigration system and have become quite jaded from my observations. I felt quite embarrassed when I watched that documentary; these agencies have never been great but they seem to have really went off the rails post 9/11.

notch656a 4y ago

Isn't immigration nation the program where they showed something like 98% of those going through the legal immigration process to seek asylum being denied and sent back to get hunted down and killed by gangs waiting back home? When they could have came illegally and only had something like 5% chance a year of being caught and removed (and most likely, far less if they dont engage in non-immigration related crime)? You know anybody in tech jobs working on contract? Did you know they don't verify I-9 for 1099 workers and B2B payments? Did you know about half of illegal immigrants have no high school diploma, yet they make roughly same as American non-high-school graduates? AS you say California does issue driver license. The fear of ICE for illegals who are off the record is swapped for other fears when you're legal and on the books. Like the fear I have of CBP (customs/border patrol), who actually served me a search warrant since I'm a citizen with a recorded address who goes through the legal port of entry. Last time I got tossed in a cell for 16 hours and was strip searched, put into medical debt, printed and booked, shackled and cuffed, made to perform bodily functions in front of CBP officers, taken around by prisoner transport van, even though I did nothing wrong -- all because I used the legal port of entry instead of sneaking through the desert. Citizens aren't immune to persecution by our immigration and border apparatus, and unlike illegal immigrant I don't have another nation to fall back on when my own countries immigration system turns tyrannical on citizens like me. And it's a myth you can't be naturalized if here illegally. People get married and do it all the time.

Ao7bei3s 4y ago
Thank you. While my overall opinion has not changed (legal immigration is preferable), I appreciate your factual corrections (e.g. no I-9 for 1099). And I am sorry you had that interaction with CBP. Then you can relate to the cruelty of that system better than me. I too have been treated arbitrarily and incorrectly, but it has only resulted in delays and paperwork. Nothing like that. Immigration Nation was very hard for me to watch back then, in the context of the time at which it was released.
- notch656a 4y ago
  Sorry for the shit you experienced. I do welcome immigrants to our country. I just despise our immigration system and have become quite jaded from my observations. I felt quite embarrassed when I watched that documentary; these agencies have never been great but they seem to have really went off the rails post 9/11.