immigration

[topaz]

So I don't understand the big ruckus over immigration.

Specifically, I don't understand why immigration is restricted.  I don't understand why we perceive a need to have a category of "illegal immigrants" at all, why we don't classify anyone who comes to this country as a potential citizen if they pass all of the appropriate tests, and a non-citizen resident until then.

I understand the problems with having a large number of aliens who place a burden on public resources and don't contribute to the tax pool.  But it seems like a problem that would be more effectively addressed by taxing resident aliens than by trying to block them from coming here to live at all.

Anyway, happy immigration protest day to everyone!

Comments

[huaman.livejournal.com]

What's happened to a lot of folks I've known who are foreigners illegaly residing in the US is that they started out legal, then ended up not legal. Students who came for college, got a job they really shouldn't have been able to, who then can't get official permission to work, for example. Folks who did have the right visas and whatnot, but they were sponsored by an employer and lost the job for whatever reason. In many of these cases, what makes it hard for folks to stay legal is the sheer volume of bureaucracy involved in doing so -- it's more than can be handled by the infrastructure in place to deal with that. In some places, the volume of non-citizens is low enough that immigration offices and whatnot aren't totally swamped. In others, that isn't the case and even folks with good, legitimate intentions can end up with problems. Sometimes people don't even realize. It's convoluted.

Having such bureaucracy is not at all a strange thing in the global sense -- living outside the US when I was a kid, I knew tons of full-on expatriates in various other places, and some of 'em had really convoluted stuff that needed to be done to stay legal.

Last I knew,incidentally, resident aliens were, in fact, subject to the same income taxes and whatnot as citizens.