7 ms·

The US legal immigration system is perfectly described by the adjective, Kafkaesque. In terms of the arbitrariness of bureaucracy, it has more in common with wh

• bane 11y ago
  Part of the problem with improving the system is that there's simply no incentive. Immigration reform almost entirely centers on managing undocumented/illegal immigrants. Law Makers don't have to listen to petitions from people outside of the country let alone their own jurisdictions. The other part is that people who've suffered through the process don't turn around and try to fix it, I remember when my wife was going through the process almost 2 decades ago (and it took us something like 2-3 years to get through it), not one of the employees in immigration we dealt with were obvious former immigrants. If people who finally made it in turned around and went into government service and tried to fix the hellscape they went through, it would probably be better. But most people seem to be glad to get through the process and then get as far away from it as possible. All that being said, people who I know who've gone through the process recently report a vastly simpler and streamlined process from the one we went through. So there is improvement being made. For better or worse, the difficulties around immigration come purely from limiting the number of immigrants. If immigration entry was virtually unlimited, these stories wouldn't happen. I'll leave it up to you to decide if unlimited immigration is a good or bad thing.
  • shas3 11y ago
    Even if the objective is to limit immigration, the rules are arbitrary. Like bureaucracy in general, it is also counterproductive to the economy. Skilled immigrants, after all aren't like industrial pollution or worker safety or pharmaceutical drugs to be deliberately doomed to bureaucratic labyrinths.
    • bane 11y ago
      I would strongly support massive expansion of the lottery system (and the reserve on advanced degrees), and have written my local congresspeople about it in the past. I do this knowing that it may even result in driving down wages in STEM fields. Because I think it's too important over the long-term.
      • bsder 11y ago
        The simplest solution is to shorten the H1-B time to a year and auto-convert to green card. More tech immigrants. No indentured servitude. Everybody wins. Except for the tech corporations who are suppressing wages--which is all of them--which is why it never happens.
        • winter_blue 11y ago
          > Except for the tech corporations who are suppressing wages--which is all of them This is not true. I'm on an H1B, and I can change jobs freely. Employers can't prevent you from changing jobs. Employers have zero power to suppress wages if you have an H1B -- because you can get a better paying job. (This is unlike the L-1, which locks you to your employer.) The only thing preventing someone from getting a better paying job is how good they are at what they do. What's funny is that a lot of the engineers that outsourcing companies (like TCS, Infosys) bring over, end up leaving their poorly-paying sponsor soon after getting to the US (usually in 6 months), for a higher-paying job elsewhere. The only people left behind are those who can't find a better job...
          • 11y ago
• pekk 11y ago
  Which country recognizes a universal right to naturalize as a citizen of that country?
  • shas3 11y ago
    How is this question germane to my comment or OP? I am not advocating any universal right. Just bureaucratic efficiency.
    • pekk 11y ago
      All the emotionally charged language you used (like "iniquities") belies this claim. Obviously you do not feel this is simply a matter of inefficiency. Now you are moving the goalposts.
  • dogecoinbase 11y ago
    Svalbard, effectively.
    • schoen 11y ago
      Isn't that only for signatories to the Svalbard Treaty, though? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Treaty#/media/File:Svalbard_signatories.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Treaty#/media/File:Sv...
  • arde 11y ago
    Argentina.
• donohoe 11y ago
  I had to get finger-printed 3 times because they INS/BCIS/USCIS kept losing my prints - or perhaps the FBI did. I'll never know, and now no longer care
• kingmanaz 11y ago
  A nation exists to serve the will of /its people/. With rampant illegal and legal immigration, a nation cannot know who /its people/ are. A nation serving no one people is a nation serving no one, it instead arbitrates in favor of whichever group screams the loudest. Diversity leads to division. Division leads to divestment. Divestment leads to dissolution and war. America is more than a place to make money, it is more than a marketplace, it is a /home/ built by North-Western European ancestors for the benefit of their progeny. The rest of the world is not entitled to live in the United States, hence the inconvenience of the law which the parent article so illogically decries. There's no need for America and the West to bankrupt themselves raising the children of others; other's haven't, don't, and won't do the same for dispossessed European peoples.
  • chetanahuja 11y ago
    "it is more than a marketplace, it is a /home/ built by North-Western European ancestors for the benefit of their progeny" So... straight up racism is your explanation. Got it. Was there really a need to write so many words to couch your racist views?
  • homulilly 11y ago
    What appears to be bizarre racist paranoia aside, allowing skilled workers to stay here helps America both economically and culturally. Lawyers and Software Engineers aren't coming here to mooch off America's welfare system (which sucks anyways), they're coming here to contribute and they usually have more to offer than native-born racists.
  • emodendroket 11y ago
    If that were truly the rationale behind the current system, presumably we'd have no limits to "North-Western European" immigrants and not let in the others, which is not actually what we're doing.
  • charonn0 11y ago
    I assume that you can prove that your ancestors migrated here legally.