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Legalize illegal immigration, YES or NO

This discussion is tilting toward the legal crowd.
Just keep in mind that whatever the legislation becomes, there maybe little to none that will benefit the millions of people who are doing it the right way.

In another news, the USCIS is already preparing for the influx of applications from these illegal immigrants.
USCIS Prepares To Legalize Millions Of Illegal Immigrants | Judicial Watch

Under the direction of a Clinton official who orchestrated the pardon of a major-league drug trafficker, the federal agency that oversees lawful immigration is preparing to legalize millions of illegal immigrants.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is getting ready for the huge influx of applications that will bombard the agency when President Obama’s plan to legalize the nation’s estimated 12 million illegal aliens becomes law, according to a major newspaper report.

The agency’s director, Alejandro Mayorkas, says his goal is to be ready to expand rapidly in order to handle the massive increase in visa applications under Obama’s comprehensive immigration reform plan. As the Homeland Security agency responsible for overseeing lawful immigration and granting visas, USCIS is equipped to handle applications from about 6 million immigrants a year.

If Obama’s amnesty measure comes to fruition USCIS could receive that many applications in just a few weeks, according to Mayorkas, who recently distributed $1.2 million in grants to help migrants adjust in America. In order to efficiently handle the increase, Mayorkas is implementing several measures to process applications faster. Among them is a method of receiving visa forms in the mail and another that allows illegal aliens to start the legalization process through a simple mail-in registration form.

One high-ranking Republican lawmaker points out that the agency is risking national security by neglecting its current workload, which includes thorough background checks of visa applicants, to focus on preparing for legislation that hasn’t even been introduced. While this is a valid point, consider who’s running USCIS.

A Clinton U.S. Attorney in California, Mayorkas resigned in shame after arranging the pardon of an Argentine drug dealer serving a 15-year prison sentence for operating a monstrous cocaine ring. The convicted felon, Carlos Vignali, is the son of a wealthy political donor (Horacio Vignali) who convinced influential community leaders—mostly recipients of his generous contributions—to advocate for his son’s pardon.

Mayorkas’ intervention was the most crucial and by far carried the most weight, Clinton officials later revealed. Vignali was one of 140 pardons and 36 commutations that Clinton granted during his last hours as president. Outraged federal prosecutors in Minneapolis, where Vignali was convicted for trying to sell 800 pounds of cocaine, said Mayorkas called them several times inquiring about the case. The Minneapolis federal prosecutors subsequently wrote the Justice Department strongly opposing the commutation but were ignored.

A congressional investigation into Clinton’s last-minute pardons blasts Mayorkas for intervening on behalf of Vignali, pointing out that senior law enforcement and political officials should have been precluded from supporting a commutation for such a criminal.

When Obama named Mayorkas to head the USCIS earlier this year, he conveniently omitted the scandals of his past and instead boasted about his credentials as a prosecutor of public corruption, organized crime and civil rights violations. No mention of getting a serious felon pardoned while serving as U.S. Attorney.
 
I am not sure why IITs are discussed whenever immigration/high tech is discussed. IITs produce good students, but that cannot say anything about the entire India or skilled immigrant population by any means. There are many institutions in India(many less well known than the IITs) and many other emerging countries(China, southeast Asia, eastern Europe etc), but have produced stellar people.

I agree with Alain about the quality of IITians he might be seeing. I have not done any major research on this topic,but I will go a little into the reasoning behind them.

There was some analysis done about the payback to an emerging country by higher educational institutions like the IITs. It concluded that it take many years for a higher educational institution to pay back and it took about 50 years for such institutions to produce tangible benefits to India. The first IIT was established in 1951, and 2002 was the first year when India started seeing any benefits out of it. It also said that starting that time, the best students for IITs stopped going westward and found enough opportunities to stay in India(thanks to a pretty booming economy -- and to some extent the headache with visas, research funding etc..). A close friend, who is a professor in a prominent US B-school, also agrees with this assessment.

Secondly, in recent years many new IITs have sprung up and even older IITs have increased their student intake massively(mostly political pressure). With understretched resources, it is inevitable that quality would fall atleast in the short term.
 
This discussion is tilting toward the legal crowd.
Just keep in mind that whatever the legislation becomes, there maybe little to none that will benefit the millions of people who are doing it the right way.

Ironically, politicians are more reluctant to improve the legal immigration process than accept millions of illegal immigrants. The law matters little compared to the level of competition.
Most illegal immigrants have "non-qualified" jobs that have become indispensable, U.S. citizens may not want to apply for them. So the "threat" is small and there is some also small benefit.
 
I tell you what. Through the years I have met a lot of graduates from IIT (graduates in the late 80s to graduates in 2000s). Maybe is my perception, but it looks like the quality of the recent graduates is not the same as the quality from the graduates of past years.

BTW, I'm not from India so I don't have any interest whatsoever.

The Indian IITs are not really "world-class." They are very difficult to get into, so they take the cream of the Indian crop. But their academic standard is not stellar. By Indian standards they're something special; not by European and North American standards. But the product (the alumni) is consistent -- like a McD cheeseburger. And the product is not expensive by American standards. It's interesting that with a population of over a billion, India has no ranking universities. Japan with a tenth of the population possibly has several. Even Israel, with less than 1% of the population, probably has one or two ranking universities (such as the Technion).

---------- Post added at 01:32 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:27 AM ----------

Most illegal immigrants have "non-qualified" jobs that have become indispensable, U.S. citizens may not want to apply for them. So the "threat" is small and there is some also small benefit.

I don't know of any jobs (given the current environment) that Americans are not willing to do. They may have turned their noses up at picking fruit and vegetables or working in slaughterhouses in the past but this is not true today.
 
The Indian IITs are not really "world-class." They are very difficult to get into, so they take the cream of the Indian crop. But their academic standard is not stellar. By Indian standards they're something special; not by European and North American standards. But the product (the alumni) is consistent -- like a McD cheeseburger. And the product is not expensive by American standards. It's interesting that with a population of over a billion, India has no ranking universities. Japan with a tenth of the population possibly has several. Even Israel, with less than 1% of the population, probably has one or two ranking universities (such as the Technion).


Purely as undergraduate engineering institutions they are world class, and at par with ANY engineering school in the world (MIT/Berkeley/Technion/Sharif).

But there is not enough research activity (no money) and the graduate students in IITs are not of good quality (less than 1% of IIT undergrads do grad school in IIT).
They don't show up in rankings because rankings put a lot of emphasis on research money and kind of research carried in those institutions.


And to prove how fickle the rankings are, in 2006, Times Higher Education ranked IITs 3rd in the list of "Technology universities", after MIT and Berkeley (Technion is 30 ):

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/hybrid.asp?typeCode=163
 
I don't know of any jobs (given the current environment) that Americans are not willing to do. They may have turned their noses up at picking fruit and vegetables or working in slaughterhouses in the past but this is not true today.

It depends. Not too many would rush to wash dishes for 5, 6 bucks an hour.
 
It depends. Not too many would rush to wash dishes for 5, 6 bucks an hour.

The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. Washing dishes is a nice job, picking produce in 95 degrees heat, and being paid by weight or being pushed to meet quota is not. Nor is working in a slaughterhouse. But Americans are willing to do even these bad jobs today. This is part of the reason immigration inspectors have been cracking down on illegal workers: they literally are taking jobs from Americans today. Don't have the link any more but when an American farm put out an ad for unskilled farm workers, people with degrees and grad degrees were among the applicants.
 
Originally Posted by Andy
This discussion is tilting toward the legal crowd. Just keep in mind that whatever the legislation becomes, there maybe little to none that will benefit the millions of people who are doing it the right way.

Appears that there are too many legals that dream of GC which is causing the blog to tilt that way. Its not hard to become illegal on an H1, if you quit your job, get fired or laid off -none of this is a good thing and stay in the US past two months you become illegal automatically.

INS rules are sort of vague, some immigration attorneys say 10 days to become illegal, some 60 days some say six months. I know for certain anything past six months of unemployement on an H1 ban is illegal for sure and it puts a few years of ban on entering the US if captured.
 
The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. Washing dishes is a nice job, picking produce in 95 degrees heat, and being paid by weight or being pushed to meet quota is not. Nor is working in a slaughterhouse. But Americans are willing to do even these bad jobs today. This is part of the reason immigration inspectors have been cracking down on illegal workers: they literally are taking jobs from Americans today. Don't have the link any more but when an American farm put out an ad for unskilled farm workers, people with degrees and grad degrees were among the applicants.

Well the whole idea of illegal workers is that employer doesn't abide the law. So they can pay under $7.25 if there are people willing to work ...
 
hmmm.. I believe the word "illegals" are not only people who cross the border without legal documents. " Illegals" are also people who overstay their visit visas, work visas, business visas,etc as visas are given for a purpose and only have a certain grace time to stay after their purposes have been done with if they are unable to obtain a Green Card in that time period.

I did quite a bit research on being unemployed on H1B as it concerned me. After reading alot of material on the USCIS and speaking with several Attorneys in this matters. I believe you are out of status after 60 days of unemployment but "lawfully present". The INS tones are harsh and the way they are worded can scare people off quite easily.

The US constitution protects your lawful status for upto 180 days which is six months after that you are "Unlawful" aka "Illegal".

The words out of status,lawfully present, illegal are all not the same :)
 
Here's the deal: if you're on a student visa, H1B visa, etc... and feel like staying in the U.S., apply for a green card. Assuming that the bureaucrats have their ducks in order and fill their end of the bargain if you fill yours, if you apply for a green card, you can become a naturalized citizen and not get kicked out of the country.

If by simply legalizing illegals, we are setting up a massive moral hazard, that would just allow anyone to come in and stay in and then rely on getting legalized rather than kicked out.

I am an immigrant. I am pro immigration. Most of my best friends are also immigrants (2 Russian, 1 Chinese and then lived in Canada), as are my most favorite professors (French/Russian), as are Columbia's OR faculty that I know of (Maria Chudnovsky is Russian/Israeli, Emanuel Derman is South African, and Daniel Bienstock I forget which country he was born in originally).

However, everyone I just listed is on their way to becoming, or already is, a naturalized citizen. They filed the correct paperwork, and went through the process. This process exists for a reason, and it should be followed.

Yes to immigration.
No to illegals.
 
Its not a problem if your from Russia,France other European countries that have atleast a Masters or higher. As you mentioned, do the right paperwork and you will get it.

If your unfortunate enough to belong to one of the countries that are severely retrogressed and have a Masters or less the paperwork can take forever, with no guarantee of ever getting it as you may get laid off, fired or may have to quit for some reason.

I believe your not on top of the GC policies/procedures
 
Here's the deal: if you're on a student visa, H1B visa, etc... and feel like staying in the U.S., apply for a green card. Assuming that the bureaucrats have their ducks in order and fill their end of the bargain if you fill yours, if you apply for a green card, you can become a naturalized citizen and not get kicked out of the country.

You need to understand the process and that not every tom, dick and harry on H1B can apply for GC on their own. Your employer usually has to apply on your behalf, and most employers tend to back off and utilize all or most of the time you have on H1 , before they start the process and that's 5 to 6 years plus another few years before you actually get it. Good luck to you if you're from China or India, as I hear the backlog is years long.

Get a Phd and go into academic and the GC process is fast tracked (heard this from a friend)

Of course there are other ways through relatives, marriage, and the most interesting I've found so far: invest 500k in an US business to create some jobs and you get a GC in exchange.
 
Actually, the investor visa (EB5) requires you to invest at least $1M (500K in some cases) to open a business that employs at least 10 full-time US employers.

How much investment is required to be an EB-5 investor?

The basic investment amount is $1 million. The required investment is $500,000 for a business established in a "targeted employment area." Targeted employment areas include: Rural areas, defined as any area other than one within a metropolitan statistical area or within the boundary of a city or town with a population of 20,000 or more; and areas having an unemployment rate that is at least 150 percent of the national average.
http://www.visalaw.com/news/eb5_indus.htm
 
You need to understand the process and that not every tom, dick and harry on H1B can apply for GC on their own. Your employer usually has to apply on your behalf, and most employers tend to back off and utilize all or most of the time you have on H1 , before they start the process and that's 5 to 6 years plus another few years before you actually get it.

Correct. This is the main source of frustration/stress/anxiety for H1-B workers. If you are in the financial sector, I would tend to say there is little job security on average. 6 years means at least one major downturn which leads to some major job cuts.
So many of these guys might not survive through the 6 years even if they are willing to stay with the company.

Good luck to you if you're from China or India, as I hear the backlog is years long.

Correct again. One step in the process is dependent on the country of origin. This is not the case for other visas (e.g. H1-B, F-1)

Get a Phd and go into academic and the GC process is fast tracked (heard this from a friend)

There are 3 "levels" for the GreenCard application. The most advanced one requires PhD or known research or many years of experience or patents. In this case, the process can be quick, no backlog.
However these people are over 30 (most over 35), so if you are looking only at the age of receiving the GreenCard, it is not the optimal path. If you would apply at 23-25 and it took you 5 years, you can do the Math ...
 
This might be worth a glance:

http://www.vdare.com/rubenstein/091013_nd.htm

People need to look at the costs associated with immigration and not just the (supposed) benefits. But because the benefits are garnered by business, which also controls the media, all we get to hear is about how "dynamic" the USA is because of the influx of foreign labor.
 
I think the tough immigration laws have really helped India by gaining the brain back. I had started a company with two other friends of mine way back in 2007 and we were working very hard to get it successful. But the way the immigration laws of this country are, it became really difficult for us to have a full time job (H1-B) and at the same time try to get our company flying. Finally we gave up. One of the professors from my graduate school also had become part of the company and was willing to finance it as well. We definitely had a novel idea. The other friends decided to return back to India and start a company there. And last when I talked to them couple of weeks ago, it seemed like the company is doing good, not the best but they have hired a bunch of engineers and were working on getting more capital, etc. This is not the only example. I am aware of other friends from my IIT who have started company in India and they do not want to really come to west due to tough immigration laws and the endless wait.

The point is: if the law makers were worried more about making life easier for people like us instead of GC to illegals, probably this country would have been in a better economic situation.
 
The topic of the thread is legalizing illegal immigration yes or no.
Too much focus on H1B visas, employment immigration and IITs is really taking the discussion off-track.

H1B Visas are a miniscule number compared to the number of overall loss of jobs in the USA. And even though high tech jobs have been los in the recession, they are a very small percentage (approx 4.5 million jobs los). These kind of huge job losses are caused by reasons totally out of the realm of employment visas.
Blaming such huge losses on immigration is like saying a fire pot lit in Maine caused water to boil in North Dakota!

Net Immigration to a country is a sign of strenght. If US gets huge number of immigrants means the country is prosperous and has opportunities. Tell the forum as to how many people in a year immigrate to say Namibia, Mali or Bangladesh in a year?

Sak: If you and your friends are happy with setting up shop in India and they are doing well it is good for you and your country, and you should thank the Western politicians for making life tough for you. If life were easier, your friends would have settled abroad depriving India(and other talent source countries) of your talent and the new companies and the jobs, revenue they generate.

Also, think form a politician's perspective, why would they care about miniscule number of people under H1B visas and associated problems to them. Even if they become citizens they are not likely to be a major votebank.

Compare that to illegal immigrants, since there are few millions atleast and if they are given a path to citizenship, they would be a huge votebank.

The point is: if the law makers were worried more about making life easier for people like us instead of GC to illegals, probably this country would have been in a better economic situation.
 
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