@mavnn @pluralistic yes, the forms, forms, forms is absolutely out of control
no debate there
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@pluralistic I've always wondered why I hear so much more about "undocumented immigrants" in the USA than anywhere else
@pluralistic That sounds awful!
And I'm German. Used to well-crafted bureaucratic mazes of considerable size. And very aware that our bureaucracy is also much harder for immigrants and other less privileged groups.
But I think it's not *that* cruel. And does not have *such* open ties to capitalist profit-seeking by immigration lawyers et al.
@pluralistic Another another Canadian who had to deal with it (in my case through marriage which is supposedly the easiest path) it still took close to 8 years and more lawyers fees and application fees than I care to think about.
@pluralistic Horrendous. I'm a privileged white guy who emigrated to the U.S. on a green card in 1977. No lawyers. I made one visit to the U.S. Embassy in London, and after a short outsourced medical exam, the Ambassador shook my hand and said, "We're glad you're coming to the United States."
Didn't even think of becoming a citizen until 1994. No lawyers. The paper application was easy to fill out. After an interview, I was "naturalized" at a surreal ceremony in Derby Line, VT.
No more. 😡
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@pluralistic @ASegar I got a US visa in 1973 at the Embassy in London. Filled in a small form, went to collect passport with visa "valid indefinitely for multiple applications". Never went in the end.
@pluralistic
Whenever anyone says they're "proud to be an American" I congratulate them on getting through the US naturalization process, which is difficult. If they respond they were just born there, I have to say "dude, your parents did that, not you!"
@pluralistic the cruelty is of course the point.
It's similar here in the UK. "If only they came here legally", the Reformers cry about refugees arriving on small boats. As if A) this isn't actually legal and 😎 this doesn't only happen because all practical routes have been shut down by the government.
I'm surprised about your experience. As a European, I thougt, that #US/#Gilead (and other American) #immigration works as easy as:
"You go there, kill the existing population, and settle. Optionally, BYOS (bring your own slaves) from elsewhere."
It used to be like that. Good ol' times.
@pluralistic @NicksWorld It absolutely makes me want to throw things every time I see some yahoo talking about how they don’t hate immigrants, they just need to do it the right way. Right now, there ostensibly is no right way, because all avenues are being blocked. And even those who have been doing it the so-called right way are being snatched up and deported.
@jcsteh @pluralistic I have lived in the United States for nearly 30 years. The only thing left was the interview, but I withdrew my citizenship application in 2017. You can probably guess why.
@pluralistic the whole morning of deporting people who have open pending cases is absolutely atrocious and nobody is doing Jack shit about it. It's like the one clear thing they can bring uscis to court on
Meanwhile a certain E. Musk probably did a lot of that perjuring and defrauding.
But hey, if you can hang Kesslers syndrome over all our heads then I really meant to say that he is a really swell guy...
"it's obvious to me that Americans have *no idea* how weird and tortuous their immigration system is:"
Why would we?
None of us have ever passed through it, and very few of us have ever assisted anyone though it
Have you collected data on the immigration process from other countries, to compare?
Have you collected information from people world-wide about their understanding of their own country's immigration process?
It's obvious to me that few non-Americans have any idea how to see things from an American point of view
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@codebyjeff Yes. I also was naturalized as a Briton, and my father was naturalized as a Canadian. The American system is incredibly bad, by international standards.
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@[email protected] @[email protected] I have family members who have applied for (and in some cases received) naturalization to seven different nationalities. The US applications were the most time consuming and expensive by an enormous margin. Not because the actual requirements were more restrictive (all four US applications were eventually successful, while some of the others were not), but because of the process.
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not to waste your time in things I can look up, but what could people do efficiently in other countries that they couldn't do in the US?
Full disclosure: My wife is Japanese and had a green card in the US before we moved to Japan
We didn't follow through to her becoming a citizen, but what we did to deal with her green card involved a total of 1 meeting and a couple of forms
I have seen how others around us who weren't coming from a first world country to marry an American were being treated - I'm not trying to defend that
I'm challenging the statement that it is worse than applying in other countries
Honestly, I skimmed the main article and found it full of emotions and low on facts and nothing at all like what my wife went through
But I WILL admit that US govt processes are a mare's nest. Often times, ironically, in an effort to be fair.
Also, ironically - this complaint against American bureaucracy is one of MAGA's biggest compliants
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@mavnn @pluralistic @codebyjeff
You're not wrong. Every country tries to make it hard for poorer people to immigrate. I'm married to a very organized white woman who drowned the application in documents. It went smoothly since it is the most straightforward and easiest way to become a citizen. And we had it easy. Even then the vagueness of questions that put you at risk of defrauding is immense. We didn't have chatbots 4 years ago when I was in the process but the time we spent on the phone was huge. And there are mistakes that happen (by their agents) and there's no way you can iron out those with a chatbot. The system is built so it is complicated, frustrating and in a way, in the end if they choose to, they can blame you for false information and escalate it to defrauding and cancel all out. So you can feel it's not an honest system.
@[email protected] @[email protected] So firstly: some other countries suck as well, just to be clear. Just maybe not as much 😁 . My wife getting her UK citizenship was far harder than it had any reason to be (answer questions on British TV shows I had never watched, do an English test that required a much lower level than she'd had to demonstrate for existing profressional qualifications from a UK university, etc).
But the main difference just seemed to be in the sheer volume of information you needed to find and submit, and obviously the more you submit the more there is that can be challenged, that you might have made a mistake on, that you might forget.
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@mavnn @pluralistic yes, the forms, forms, forms is absolutely out of control
no debate there
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@pluralistic Why would anyone - especially a canadian - even want to be s US citizen, is beyond me!
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@pa27 @pluralistic
This essay might help explain it
Whenever I despair about my country (which is often) I reread this
@pa27 Because I live in the USA. Would you rather be a NON-citizen in the USA?
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@pluralistic Fair point, but I'd rather not live there at all! 😀
A couple years ago, Americans' ignorance of their immigration system was merely frustrating, as I encountered squishy liberals and xenophobic conservatives talking about undocumented immigrants and insisting they should "just follow the rules." But today, as murderous ICE squads roam our streets kidnapping people and sending them to concentration camps to be beaten to death or deported to offshore slave labor prisons, the issue's gone from frustrating to terrifying and enraging.
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Let's be clear: I played the US immigration game on the easiest level. I am relatively affluent - rich enough to afford fancy immigration lawyers with offices on four continents - and I am a native English speaker. This made the immigration system ten thousand times (at a minimum) easier for me than it is for most US immigrants.
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There are lots of Americans (who don't know anything about their own immigration system) who advocate for a "points-based" system that favors rich people and professionals, but America *already* has this system, because dealing with the immigration process costs tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees, and without a lawyer, it is essentially unnavigable.
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Same goes for Trump's "Golden Visa" for rich people - anyone who can afford to pay for one of these is already spending five- or six-figure sums with a white shoe immigration firm.
I'm not quite like those people, though. The typical path to US work visas and eventual immigration is through a corporate employer, who pays the law firm on your behalf (and also ties your residency to your employment, making it risky and expensive to quit your job).
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I found my own immigration lawyers through a friend's husband who worked in a fancy investment bank, and it quickly became apparent that immigration firms assume that their clients have extensive administrative support who can drop everything to produce mountains of obscure documents on demand.
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There were lots of times over the years when I had to remind my lawyers that *I* was paying them, not my employer, and that I *didn't* have an administrative assistant, so when they gave me 48 hours' notice to assemble 300 pages of documentation (this happened several times!), it meant that *I* had to drop everything (that is, the activities that let me pay their gigantic invoices) to fulfill their requests.
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