Guest Voice: Bordering On The Absurd
NOTE: The Moderate Voice from time to time runs special Guest Voice columns written by writers or readers who do not normally contribute to this site. Guest Voice columns reflect the opinions of the writers and not necessarily those of The Moderate Voice. The following is by Robin Koerner (one of our favorite, frequent contributors), publisher of the superb website Watching America:
Bordering on the Absurd
By Robin Koerner
I am a grateful guest in a great country.
That is why I have never complained about what I’ve had to go through to be allowed to come to reside in the United States, conduct business here, invest in this country, and contribute to your Treasury and the evolving, vibrant idea of America.
But as I watch the debate about the current immigration bill, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. The absurdity of the contradictions that are being suggested would be unimaginable if they weren’t, well, about American immigration policy.
I’d like to say something about an aspect of America that alien residents tend to know a lot more about than American citizens – immigration law – in the hope of showing how the current debate, which is largely about Latino illegal immigrants by default, totally misses the fundamental contradictions in U.S. immigration policy, and may, if it results in “comprehensive immigration reformâ€? that is in fact anything but “comprehensiveâ€?, deepen those contradictions.
First, you need to know something about me. I have three degrees from the University of Cambridge, a European Ivy League institution. They cover the physical sciences and liberal arts. I have no criminal record. I have a background in business strategy and am a small-time but successful investor. Accordingly, I was able to put just shy of $100,000 in a company bank account in the U.S. before I applied to set up a business here. I spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours putting together the application for the visa (with the help of professional consultants). The paperwork was extensive – and that is proverbial British understatement.
I was therefore delighted and relieved to receive my visa (L1A, Executive Manager’s visa) just over a year ago. Despite the above credentials, I was given (as is typical) only a one-year visa to start and maintain a business. I could only even be considered for such a visa because I served as the executive manager of an affiliate company with the same ownership structure as the new company in America for three years before I came to the U.S. (Take a moment to consider just how restrictive that condition is.) Any readers who are businesspersons may also be wondering how an immigration office can assess the viability of a start-up business in just a year from authorizing its principal director to start work. Right now, as those authorities ponder the renewal of my visa, I wonder the same thing.
While I am allowed to conduct business, this visa does not allow me to work as an employee of an American company should I want to do some part-time work to help support myself or my new business.
Now, the following may surprise you: to obtain this one-year visa to set up a business and bring money into America, I had to renounce any intention to seek citizenship.
Despite the emotional resilience required to build a life without knowing if you’ll have to leave the country in a year, I’ve had a wonderful and productive time in the United States. I have successfully conducted my small property business, investing in a great project to build high-quality homes for Americans who’ve never owned one. I have contributed significantly to the cultural, political and intellectual fabric of this nation through cofounding and managing www.WatchingAmerica.com, which has led to my being interviewed extensively by the American media.
All the while, to fulfill the conditions of my visa, I’ve had to administer my business in such a way that I have had to pay tens of thousands of dollars to the Treasury (in taxes and fees) that an American who was conducting identical business would not have to pay.
I don’t resent one cent, and I never stop being thankful for this wonderful privilege to take my shot at the American Dream.
So you might expect that I just need to fill in a few forms to get my visa renewed for a few more years to that I can nurture my business and projects to self-sufficiency, and contribute more to the United States. You’d be wrong. Two months ago, I submitted my application to renew my visa: it was just shy of 700 pages long (which, for fun, is roughly one page for every ten Mexicans that come across the border each day), including copies of documents that capture every detail of what I’ve been doing in my first short year here.
The authorities are considering that application. I am waiting for their response.
Why is all this important?
President Bush is currently considering allowing illegal immigrants to “not jump the line� but at least “get to the back of the line� to citizenship – for just $3000.
I expect you see why I am still trying to get over the shock…
There is no line to citizenship that I, an educated Brit, can even get to the back of… I’ve already spent my $10,000s. I’ve already put in my thousands of pages of paper work. I’ve already invested greatly in your economy. I am using my education directly to benefit hundreds of thousands of Americans who are using the service I provide (for free, by the way), and yet American law requires me to state an intent not to stay permanently. May I humbly ask this country for at least the same rights as an illegal Latino? Now, I’m guessing the word “Mexicanâ€? isn’t going to appear anywhere in the legislation, so should I just let my visa expire; go quiet for a while; become an illegal British immigrant, and then get all the rights for which I’ve been spending so much time and money, as well as some rights that I cannot have as an alien executive manager, by registering as a guest worker? If it wasn’t so serious, it would be funny.
So watch out for your next immigration crisis, America. You will see a new phenomenon: legal alien residents like me will be trying to find ways to become illegal immigrants just so we can join the same line to citizenship that is denied to us as legal productive alien residents … And it will be the best $3000 we’ve ever spent – a small fraction of what’s it’s already cost me to conduct business here for just a year. I wonder if I’ll have to learn Spanish to fill in the forms?
Once the word is out that America has created a line to citizenship for a cool 3000 bucks, it won’t just be America’s southern border that you’ll need to worry about. You’ll have tens of millions of Europeans and Asians flooding in (on airplanes, of course) and looking forward to the expiration of their tourist visas to join the new line as illegal immigrant guest workers, waiting for citizenship. Then watch out: the Europeans, at least, will be white, so no one will notice when they take the good jobs that upstanding Americans do want to do.
God bless America. Immigration is an important issue that demands, if you’ll forgive a British phrase, “joined-up� thinking. America owes it to itself.
–Robin Koerner
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10 Responses to “Guest Voice: Bordering On The Absurd”
This is no joke. I have a Canadian friend who had to similarly renounce her intent to seek citizenship when she applied for a student visa. The catch? As is not really surprising she met her future husband – an American – in college.
Despite more limited career opportunities in their respective fields, they had to spend the first five years of their marriage in Toronto.
She managed to get a work visa after that, but has to regularly schedule days off each year to while away time at the immigration office in order to renew it on a year-by-year basis. Going home to see her family in Canada, even on such occasions as when her mother was dying, is a nightmare of red tape.
Plus, she and her husband and two children constantly live with the realization that her visa may not be renewed – and the entire family may be uprooted with little or no notice. Nice way to have to raise a family.
Last year, after then years of holding that renunciation over her head, immigration finally (and for no discernable reason) said she could apply for citizenship – but she has to start at the beginning.
This is exactly the type of problem I’ve been trying to get at. While I don’t want to go into stark details of my wife’s family’s story out of respect for their privacy, I could offer a very similar story of their attempts to get here legally as refugees from a war where they helped the United States. They know people who jumped planes and are here illegally. Those people got here within months or a couple of years of the end of the war, my wife’s family had to wait over 15 years to get here, living in difficult conditions, to say the least, in a refugee came in the meantime. These people who came illegally are living much more comfortable lives because they had over a decade to assimilate and make their lives before my wife’s family even got started. The advantage is already going to those who came here illegally.
Now, those people who are here illegally could be given essentially a free ride. They would be given legal status and granted citizenship for much less work and money than it took my wife’s family to get the same by going through the proper legal channels. Proposals going around now will simply go further to reward those who came here illegally and punish those trying to come here legally.
It seems like many people think this is no big deal. Well, seeing it first hand, I can say it is a big deal. As I’ve been stating all along, this favoring of illegal immigrants over legal immigrants only encourages illegal immigration and discourages people from following the proper legal procedures.
I have a friend whose wife is from another country. They met in the US as students. She had to return home for two years because it was one of the conditions of her visa. During that time, they were married. They followed all the legal requirements of obtaining translations of documents, copies of expired documents, paying immigration fees for applications, meeting with the Consul, etc. They were married for two years before she was even granted a temporary spousal visa, and another year after that before she was granted permanent residence.
One of the things that disappoints me about this situation is that the illegal immigrants under discussion have been allowed to stay here simply because they provide cheap labor. Neither of the two major parties have wanted to touch the issue for fear of losing the hispanic vote. But it just simply isn’t fair to the immigrants who are trying to obtain legal residence that they should have to go through the arduous and costly process of immigration while the illegals are given special status because they pick our strawberries at rock-bottom prices.
Or let’s add another absurd example. By law every Cuban that reaches the U.S. gets within one year the Green Card and immidiatly normal residency and work permit. As long as the Coast Guard doesn’t catch him ten feet from American soil, then he is send, by the notorious dry food, wet food rule, back to Cuba. And of course he gets this piviliges only if he runs away from Cuba, if he applies for a visa he can wait for years to get one.
A bit about me before my substantive response:
I’m a third-year law student at a top-10 American law school who has worked with several legal organizations that represent non-citizens in immigration proceedings. In addition, I volunteer frequently with local immigrant advocacy organization. I have studied immigration law, and have written on American immigration law analyzed in light of international law, and am currently writing on the constitutionality of some of the provisions in the Sensenbrenner bill, passed in the House last December.
That said, I am far from a radical lefty on immigration. I am drawn to immigrant rights for personal reasons, but above all my concern is for creating an orderly and reasonable immigration system. I created a blog called “New America” at http://newus.blogspot.com that I hope can help spread awareness about what American immigration law actually looks like today, because there is an amazing amount of misinformation about what current immigration law does and doesn’t do.
That said, onto my response.
Some foundational things:
1. Congress controls the number of visas available. They could easily increase or decrease the number.
2. Illegal immigration is “over the limit” immigration. For the vast majority of undocumented immigrants, immigrating illegally means they knew that jobs were available, but were told by the American government that they could not go and get the job for years. In the case of family members trying to reunite with non-citizen workers (both legal and illegal non-citizen workers), illegal immigration is them not wanting to wait years and have, e.g., their spouses miss out on their kids growing up.
To understand the current state of immigration laws, it helps to imagine a grocery store whose two open cashier lines are so backed up that they sprawl up and down every single aisle, thru the back storewarehouse, into the alley, and back to the horizon in the distance. There are six or eight closed lanes, but the grocery won’t open them – they make everyone wait. Meanwhile, just beyond the cashier lanes, out the front door, non-citizens can see their loved ones and job flyers flapping in the wind. The big question: do they wait in line for years (relatives from the Philippines may wait up to 27 years or more), or go and get the job/meet the family? The bigger question: do we blame the people who couldn’t wait in line because of financial need, or do we blame Congress for not opening up more cashier lanes by increasing the number of visas available?
Over the past two decades, illegal (i.e. over-the-limit) immigration has increased exponentially. But we have not seen a commensurate destruction of our economy. Instead, the US has the most thriving economy among developed nations. While workers riot in France, we see not a single rally of Americans who have actually lost their jobs to illegal immigrants. Unemployment is at record lows. That means that illegal immigrants are filling a labor need.
If Congress had just freed up as many visas as the market would have required to keep our economy thriving (granted, a hard number to estimate, but we’re off by more or less 11-12 million – the number of undocumented immigrants), people would have followed the rules. It is desperation that drives people to risk crossing a desert and dying of dehydration, not predisposition to criminal behavior. If state governments made it nearly impossible to get driver’s licenses, or made you wait 10-15 years to get that license, you think everyone would still follow the rules and wait until they got a license to drive a car? Especially the people who need to drive to make a living?
What McCain/Kennedy does is benefit people who have worked and been crime-free since their arrival. By doing so, the bill implicitly benefits only those who Congress should have provided a visa to in the first place. In other words, it’s akin to a concession that there should have been a visa availalbe to them when they entered, because obviously they’ve turned out to be a productive member of society and their work has contributed to our economy.
Please see my blog for more information on US immigration law.
DS, interesting thoughts but here are a few thoughts in return.
Congress controls the number of visas handed out. I have asked my Congressman about this. He told me that more visas could be handed out if so many illegal immigrants were not flooding in. The problem is that they have to cap the number of people coming in somehow. As an example, let’s say they decide that 10,000 people can enter per day. They realize that 5000 people per day are coming in illegally. To keep from an economic collapse, that means that only 5000 people can be allowed in legally. If those 5000 people per day weren’t coming in illegally, Congress could allow 10,000 people in legally without worrying about an economic collapse. However, in order to get that number up to 10,000, first the spigot of illegal immigration has to be turned off.
It’s a nice thought that these people should just be allowed to come over here to make a living but what about all the people who are waiting to do so legally? Thousands of them are in just as desperate need of help as these people who are coming over illegally. Why should people who break our laws be given precedence over those who follow our laws? Sure, they will have to “go to the back of the line” in waiting for citizenship but they get to go to the front of the line in coming here simply because they came here illegally. What kind of precedent does that set? What does that tell the people who are now waiting to come here legally? Here’s one hint: “Hmm, if I go there illegally, I may have to wait a bit longer for citizenship but I can start my life there without being penalized for breaking the law. If I wait here and follow the law, I’ll still be waiting here years from now.”
Ryan,
I’m sorry, but your congressman is wrong, legally speaking, as far as claiming that illegal entries affect the number of visas that can be allocated. There is no communication between what is now USCIS (immigration benefits application service) and USICE (immigration enforcement). Talk to any immigration law advocate. What I am guessing he meant when he said more visas *could* be handed out was that “No, we can’t politically justify increasing the number of visas because people will complain about how many illegal immigrants there already are, and freak out that we are simply letting even more immigrants in.” In other words, he was not making a statement of how the law works, but how politics works.
As for the “rewarding bad behavior”, three responses:
1. immigration law currently already provides for detention of people while they are in deportation proceedings; 3 and 10 year bars to re-entry for people found to be present without status; and criminal prison time for illegal re-entry if you’ve already been deported. But people still come illegally.
2. I repeat my original comment. We can’t blame the people for getting desperate and risking their lives. People are dying in the desert, on container ships, and drowning at sea out of desperation, not random psychos, but waves of people.
3. I am not sure why people are so touchy about “rewarding” bad behavior when we allow it everywhere else – where it’s called a statute of limitations. We used to have a statute of limitations for immigration violations (it was called “Registry”). It worked by specifying a date and saying if you were present in the US continuously since that date, you were eligible to apply for a green card in the “back of the line.” The date was last updated in 1986, and was updated to something like 1972. By 1986, the word “amnesty” was in use and made the Registry program political suicide. Think about this: a non-citizen could have overstayed a visa or entered without permission over 30 years ago (offenses that are civil and akin to driving without a license), worked continuously, paid taxes, got married, raised citizen kids, retired, and yet still face exactly the same punishment (deportation) as the first day they crossed the border or overstayed that expired visa. Meanwhile, some US citizen who assaulted them, was prone to sexually harass, and who regularly battered people in drunken bar fights 30 years ago would not have to see a day in court, much less a jail cell.
Which “rewarding” is worse?
McCain/Kennedy doesn’t allow new arrivals to benefit. There is no “bad incentive” because for the 7 years or whatever until they can apply after paying the $3,000 fine, they risk detention in a jail cell, deportation, and being denied reentry under either the 3 or 10 yr bars. And then they would be ineligible to pay the fine and apply for a green card. What this provision of McCain/Kennedy does is operate as a statute of limitations that says, “deporting you after so many years of productive work does not further enforcement interests.”
Again, see more on this on my blog (click www link above).
Are they or are they not here illegally for every day of those 30 years? That’s 10,950 days of violating our laws and taking advantage of this country. That’s 10,950 days here while others are waiting to get here legally.
As for what my Congressman said, it was nothing like what you stated. It was more along the line of “If we allow too many people in, our economy could collapse due to a rush of cheap labor. It would crush our low income labor force. If those people were not coming here illegally, we could increase the number of visas allowed without overwhelming the system and our economy.” Why do you think they would need to know precise numbers to know that illegals are flooding in at a rate that forces them to keep their limits lower? They can see the effect just like the rest of us can. They can see that increasing the number of visas without doing something about illegal immigration would result in too big of an unskilled labor force. They don’t need precise numbers to see this.
As for the fine, a $3000 fine sure is a stiff penalty compared to spending years, even decades, in a refugee camp, isn’t it? Ask my wife’s family and they would tell you they would gladly have paid $3000 to bypass the legal process and get to this country a decade and a half earlier. Had they had that choice, they most likely would have had a better life now. Had they had that chance, they would have been rewarded for bypassing the legal process and it would have only cost them $3000 per person.
“Refugee” policy is completely separate from “immigration” policy. The US can, and has, increased the number of refugees we are willing to take in irrespective of how many people immigrate for economic or family reunification reasons. There are also “asylum seekers” who immigrate illegally and apply for refugee status once in the country. They are not forced to return to their country of persecution while their application for asylum is decided. Do you want to punish those asylum seekers and send them back to be tortured and killed too, because they didn’t wait in line? I mean no disrespect nor do I mean to belittle your wife’s experience in the refugee camp, as I know people who have been through the same. But my point is that line of thinking simply doesn’t resolve all the complex issues at hand.
Even after you restated what your Congressman said, it still sounds the same to me. Illegal immigration is a direct creation of the visa limitation (note: I am not advocating open borders). Because there is a limitation, illegal immigration is the manifestation of over-the-limit immigration. If the number of visas were increased, then more people who have immigrated illegally would have been able to immigrate legally, because the backlogs would have been substantially less, and less people would have felt desperate enough to violate the law. Unless you believe the people who immigrate illegally actually have an outright *desire* to break the law, increasing the number of visas would have a direct, inverse relationship to reducing illegal immigration because more people would have been channeled into legal immigration where we would know who/where they are. The amount of illegal immigration does not increase at the same rate regardless of what you do with the number of visas – to believe that it does is to believe people just really don’t give a flying crap about the rule of law and have a predisposed desire to violate it. And if that were the case, then we would have all 11-12 million undocumented immigrants in jail as career criminals. Instead, we have millions of working families.
You also have no alternative proposal for what to do with the people who are already here illegally. A statute of limitations functions because after a certain point, the illegal behavior is too far in the past to be worth going after. It is not a reward, it is an acknowledgment that the act is simply too far in the past to justify state action. Likewise, it does no good to break up families by deporting people who, despite the one act of illegality, have been contributors to the economy, raised families, and paid taxes for years. What do you want to do now, deport people, have delinquent orphan citizen children grow up as wards of the state or create millions of single-parent families, all the while with the deportee waiting for a re-entry visa back in the home country? That is not a workable solution.
By the way, the illegal entry is a single illegal act (the courts have firmly struck down attempts to count each day of illegal presence or whatever as a separate act). Even with respect to crimes (immigration violations are more like civil driving without license offenses), “possession of stolen property,” for example, is a single offense, not one-charge-for-every-day-you’ve had-the-stolen-TV.
Look: the fundamental difference between people who are pro-legalization and people who are anti-legalization is a question of basic assumptions. People who think illegal immigrants should not be “rewarded” are, at base, putting their full faith in the law and do not want people who have broken the law to receive any sort of consideration for their circumstances, whether past or present. People who break the law should pay the consequences.
People who are pro-legalization think that those who broke the law are not to blame; the law was broken to begin with. This explains why pro-legalization people liken the immigrant rights movement to the black civil rights movement: when Rosa Parks, for example, was arrested in the South, she were arrested on criminal charges. It was a crime to not surrender your front-of-the-bus seat to a white person. People who were anti-civil rights movement at the time had full faith in the law and insisted that those who broke the law be punished. According to the law, Rosa Parks was a criminal.
But today, the national consensus is that she didn’t break the law, the law was broken to begin with. But no one is sour about her getting “rewarded” while other black people meekly gave up their seats. Similarly, pro-legalization folks say that if the visa had been available for illegal immigrants to come, they would have done it the legal way. Their work was obviously needed; there has been no commensurate rise of American unemployment – we are at record lows. Hence: the law is broken to begin with.
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