by deadmansshoes on 10/20/11, 10:39 AM with 174 comments
by compay on 10/20/11, 12:43 PM
Her fiancee visa was in fact quickly approved, pending an interview at the US consulate in Buenos Aires. We waited and waited, called, had our lawyers call, and the response was always "when the consulate is ready to make an appointment, they will call you." They never called, leaving us in limbo for over a year and saddled with thousands of dollars in legal fees.
Eventually we grew tired of the uncertainty. I moved to Argentina, we got married, and we've lived here ever since.
Argentina is not perfect. But the legal status of foreign residents here is much clearer than in the USA. As the husband of a citizen, permanent residency was automatic provided I didn't have a criminal record in my home country (I don't). I am allowed to vote in municipal elections. And, now as the father of an Argentine citizen, citizenship is also automatic if I want it.
You might think that Argentina can afford to be generous with immigrants because it has nowhere near the load of foreign residents that the USA does, and to an extent that's certainly true. But on the other hand, Argentina has fairly large immigrant communities (from Peru, Paraguay, Bolivia and China), more social welfare services (basic healthcare is free here), and a lot less financial resources than the USA.
Having now lived somewhere else and been on the "other side" of the immigration issue, I feel indignant and outraged when I read about how my country treats non-citizen residents.
by eis on 10/20/11, 11:24 AM
During the last decade though, the USA have done a fantastic job of eradicating every bit of what was left of this dream. Nowerdays all you hear from them is how Hollywood is destroying little guys' lifes for downloading a bunch of songs, exporting those policies with force to other countries, insane financial schemes and starting several wars.
Right now I am planning a trip to Japan. A country, which was hit by a nuclear meltdown crisis, floods, earthquakes and more. I'd still choose it over going to the USA any day. Maybe that's something to think about.
The USA are going down fast and it doesn't look like there are changes in sight in regards to their handling of immigrants, the wars or the rampand self-made economic problems.
And that is a shame.
by rdtsc on 10/20/11, 12:07 PM
Say someone from Africa or South America. They can't simply save enough money, get on a plane, land at JFK and then after 10 years or whatever time become citizens. They would have to be persecuted in a terrible way before being granted asylum, have to marry a US citizen, find a company that would hire them.
I think that is very interesting given that this country was founded on immigrants just hoping on the boat and coming here, either to build a better life or because things got terribly bad where they were.
I personally went through the whole process and it is a fucking mess. I knew how to deal with it, because I dealt with bureaucracy in the old country. I can sense an annoyed low level clerk's power trip coming on before they notice it. Such individual need special treatment. You never want to fall into anyone's cross-hairs, it seems like they would destroy you just because they can.
Also know someone who works for immigration. It is quite a dysfunctional entity. Very inefficient. Lots of internal mistakes, unpaid interns do the job searching through databases and picking people out for violations & deportation. Next time you know someone was picked out -- chances are some kid thought their last name sounded funny and it caught their attention.
by 0x12 on 10/20/11, 11:02 AM
To do this to someone that has been there for a lifetime and then some is ridiculous.
Too many lives have already been wrecked to satisfy little minds and to get stamps on pieces of paper.
Immigrants like these are the ones a country should hope to receive, not to turn away at some arbitrary future date for bureaucratic reasons only.
Disgusting.
by steve8918 on 10/20/11, 12:07 PM
The person is obviously a great entrepreneur, he probably should have just left on his own accord instead of fighting it to the point where he's thrown in jail.
The ridiculous thing is that he's in the US, paying his taxes, creating income, etc.... why throw him out? I suppose it's because he applied for asylum that was denied, and they are throwing him out to prove a point, but the entire thing is just counterproductive to what we want in this country.
by cperciva on 10/20/11, 11:11 AM
Can we please avoid making headlines unnecessarily hysterical?
by atirip on 10/20/11, 12:45 PM
So they applied for asylum on political grounds in 1993, because the Communist party was dethroned 4 years earlier. Well...
by mbpp on 10/20/11, 11:29 AM
by alkimie on 10/20/11, 11:44 AM
by deadmansshoes on 10/20/11, 10:41 AM
by fourmii on 10/20/11, 1:27 PM
What do you do though, the immigration system doesn't seem to be set up to handle exceptions. Once you make one, you have to grant exceptions to others. It's a tough dilemna, Atanas has been seemingly a constructive member of society, hopefully paying taxes along the way. It would be a shame in this sense to punish such a person.
by Rariel on 10/20/11, 3:16 PM
It's unfortunate that this man will have to relocate but I feel more sympathy for his son than him.
by peacemaker on 10/20/11, 12:30 PM
USA, like many countries, has a strict immigration system in which you must play by the rules and follow the process to become 'legal'. Just living in the country is not enough, you must apply for residency by qualifying in some way.
Unfortunately, it's quite tough to qualify to stay in the US for most people. Skilled immigrant visas are notoriously difficult to attain (there's no simple points system like Australia for example) and so you must look to marriage to a citizen, asylum or the green card lottery. If you think marriage is the easy choice you'd be wrong too.
As someone who is going through the process right now, it can be difficult, expensive, depressing, demeaning (having to prove your relationship is 'real') and downright frustrating but right now that's the way the system works so you must work with the system. This guy obviously didn't and now he's paying the price.
by llcoolv on 10/20/11, 12:46 PM
by hoggle on 10/20/11, 12:43 PM
by huhtenberg on 10/20/11, 12:55 PM
I wonder what this is referring to and how it reconciles with
> ... living legally in the United States for over 20 years
Something tells me there's more to the story than what's in the linked post.
by baabuu on 10/20/11, 3:01 PM
There seems to be some confusion related to his legal status.He entered US legally and applied asylum for him and his family.During this period, they are in legal status. After they apply for asylum, they have no control or information over that process.If the immigration process was fast enough, none of this would have happened.When the immigration rejected their application after a long time, they filed an appeal which was rejected again.Now they have run out of attempts via the asylum option and are being kicked out. I hope they can try some other category.
<rant> The immigration process, with so many different categories and quotas, is a huge bureaucratic mess. The are still using papers and just recently started using online documents for some processing. It is the second highest profitable government agency minting money out of immigrants. The process can be streamlined and made faster even with the current policies. But who cares about legal immigration anyway? Let those "aliens" stand in line and wait forever. I personally know many friends and families living with constant fear and uncertainty for almost a decade or more.
The policies and rules are just too confusing and inconsistent.Two identical immigrant families can go through completely different process, duration and rules depending on whether a knowledgeable or ignorant immigration agent processing their files. </rant>
by tomgruner on 10/20/11, 12:46 PM
In 2004 I arrived in Spain as an American and found a programming job at the international division of a sizable U.S. company. But everything was under the table, and that company did not want to sponsor a visa for me. But even when I was illegal in Spain I still had access to better free health care than the uninsured do in the U.S.
Fast forward to 2008, I was still living in Spain and had done some great work for a unrelated startup that was purchased by a much larger U.S. company. I was still in Spain illegally, but this major U.S. company on finding out my status was willing to help me out in any way to become legal here.
Spain has something called "Social Normalization for Exceptional Circumstances" which means if you have been in the country for three years illegally and have a company sponsor you, they will give you a work visa. You also have to be integrated in the community and speak the local languages well. So in 2008, this major U.S. company paid a lawyer and helped me through that process, something that I am exceptionally grateful for. During the time I worked for this company, my work helped bring in millions of Euros of contracts to the international division of this company in Spain.
Now in 2011 I still live in Spain, have the freedom to change jobs or work for myself, and after 7 more years I could become a citizen here, on the condition that I am always working and living in Spain during those years. That means 15 years from illegal to full citizen. I doubt I will stay that long, and don't actually plan on becoming a Spanish citizen, but knowing that if I had a family here and have that option is amazing. Now I am happily working for a Spanish university research group, fully legal.
And I have to say, I think it is disgusting to take a man, and especially his son who has lived in the U.S. since the age of two and treat them like criminals when the father has been actively contributing to the U.S. economy in one of the areas that the U.S. excels at. To criminalize this contribution is to spit in the face of all those immigrants who became American and made America what it is today.
And it is also denying the basic human rights of this individual.This clearly violates Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Article 15.
* (1) Everyone has the right to a nationality.
* (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.
Edit: As noted in the comments below, actually this does not violate Article 15 at all. I still stick with my conclusion though.
by zzaz on 10/20/11, 3:23 PM
If you are an international student and not on OPT, you cannot legally work full time/part time/do an internship with the startup your friend just launched (or any other company, on this note). You may want to risk spending your months, or doing some other jazz, and then try to figure things out, but as we can see from the case at hand these maneuvers do not work out well for everybody.
As for sponsorship, from the employer's perspective, the whole visa sponsorship application process costs about $10k, which is not little money for a small company.
by alain94040 on 10/20/11, 6:35 PM
by pandaman on 10/20/11, 3:36 PM
by TomGullen on 10/20/11, 1:42 PM
by torontos on 10/20/11, 4:15 PM
by ebaysucks on 10/20/11, 3:23 PM
The "National Origins Formula" was only abolished in 1965. Before 1965, US immigrants were 90+% white.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Origins_Formula [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Act...
This is fact, not opinion.
I'm not arguing a certain side here, but want to point out that those who say "the US has been built on immigrants" might be nostalgic to a past that never existed.
by ohboy on 10/20/11, 12:33 PM