EB-5 status = green card. One needs to invest $1M in a job-creating venture. I assume a startup or a rental property would do. Still, they would need to have permanent residency for 5 years as @twoinanddone said.
I know several folks who got their citizenship petitions approved in 2-3 months which is not that surprising… but it took them 5 years of greencarding prior to that. As far as I know, only military folks (and used to be spouses of US citizens) who got a shorter ride. But having a green card is not that bad - almost all the perks of citizenship are included, plus no jury duty summons.
Make it illegal for an individual who is not a citizen or legal resident to wire money out of the country. Make it illegal for people here illegally to carry large quantities of money out of the country. Impose large penalties on individuals and companies who try to send money out of the country on behalf of others. If deported for being here illegally, assets are subject to forfeiture.
If you can’t send money back home, there is much less incentive to come here illegally.
I do think we need some sort of guest worker program for 6-month and 12-month durations. Register these people so we can make sure they are legally paid and leave on time. If you overstay by more than a certain amount you cannot get back in the program. No path to permanent residence or citizenship from this.
I could get behind eliminating birthright citizenship. No more anchor babies!
I have more extreme ideas, like making English the official language of the country, and requiring all government work to be done only in English. Make it the responsibility of the immigrant, legal or illegal, to be able to communicate with the government. Require everyone the get a passport (gov’t will pay for it if you can’t afford it) and require proof of legal residence or citizenship for receiving any kind of benefits like public housing, driver’s licenses, anything other than emergency medical care, public education, voting, etc. Require the police to check the citizenship of everyone who gets arrested. If you return illegally after getting deported, mandatory 5 year prison sentence/20 years if you were deported as a violent criminal. Clamp down on employers who hire illegals. Pay for the flight home of any illegal who self-reports as illegal, and don’t disqualify them to pursuing legal immigrant status later. Give long-term illegals who self-identify a temporary 3 year visa to wrap up their affairs after which they will be allowed to take their assets with them when they leave.
Am I a monster?
A lot of these are probably not workable in practice. Most of these would never fly in the current environment, there’s too many people with a vested interest in the status quo.
“I’m guessing you would want to ‘deport’ someone from your house if they broke in one night – be it a criminal or a innocent homeless person looking for shelter – so how is illegal immigration any different? This country is our collective home…”
No, I wouldn’t want to “deport” them. And anyone breaking into my home wouid have all the rights afforded them under our Constitution.
I’m not changing my mind on my position so please don’t bother responding.
My nephew is an attorney with ICE and even he has not been able to convince me. Funny thing is his wife is from the UK (Scotland) and she has no intention to ever become a US citizen, even though she has been here about 15 years and their kids are citizens. She despises our government.
One problem I have with this is that more than 50% of the continental US was a colony of Spain, or part of Mexico at some point. It’s possible people could trace their ancestry to that time and consider the English speakers to be Kaintucks, or something like that.
Then again, when I hear about someone who has been here for 27 years and wants to be a citizen and still needs an interpreter, I have to shake my head. Spanish and English are not that different. More of us should speak both.
If I am not mistaken, during Obama’s presidency they changed the definition of deportation to include those turned around at the border, so not sure your comparison is valid. In any case, if we would enforce something like eVerify and go after anyone paying money to an illegal alien then many would self-deport.
At the most fundamental level, the United States should have control over who enters our territory.
No one should be against deporting people that commit crimes and get picked up by police. If we get rid of all those (unlikely), then we can move on to the people who have committed no other crime besides entering illegally.
I hope the lady in the OP gets a lot of money from Portland, and it would be even better if it came with public apologies and the city putting it out there that they let this illegal immigrant go free against the wishes of the federal government.
I understand not sending everyone’s name to the federal government to run through immigration records. I do not understand refusing to turn someone over to federal authorities when it is requested.
I have no problem with the federal government cutting money from states or cities that actively work against the national security of our country.
Of the things that you mentioned, clamping down on employers would be one of the few workable things, and would be effective. Most illegal immigration is in search of jobs; eliminating employers’ ability to hire illegal immigrants would greatly reduce the incentive to immigrate illegally.
However, the farming and construction industries would lobby against that. They presumably like the idea of a work force that, due to their immigration status, is unlikely to complain to the government if there are problems with pay and working conditions. http://time.com/4465744/donald-trump-undocumented-workers/
The problem with the “kick them out, they broke the law” idea is that long-term illegal immigrants came at a time when the law was not being strongly enforced, and the lack of enforcement was solely intended to benefit business in the US. People who came under those circumstances had a sort of understanding that the US wanted them to break the law.
If there is a new policy of firm enforcement from a certain date, then announce it clearly and enforce it strictly on new or recent arrivals (including going after employers).
There are many situations where if you don’t enforce the law or your rights at the time, you may legally or at least morally lose the ability for later enforcement. Suppose nobody enforced rules about building a dam on your farm 30 years ago when you built one - you would be annoyed if the government suddenly ordered you to fill it in. If you don’t enforce intellectual property rights, you lose them. If you leave you house empty and abandoned, squatters will move in and acquire rights.
As for doing away with birthright citizenship, the main problem is that millions of US born people (born to US citizen parents), just cannot prove who they are. Many people don’t have school records, hospital records, driving license, bank account, anything. Are you going to ask if they ‘look’ or ‘sound’ American? Other countries with national ID card systems don’t have this problem.
I suppose you could do away with the right of the anchor baby citizen (on reaching age 21) to import his or her parents, but that must be a tiny part of the overall problem. Actually, I have a 26 year old anchor baby resident in the US, so I have the right to emigrate to the US anytime I want, I think it would take a few weeks to arrange. Between being subject to the IRS and US healthcare, I don’t want to.
I was talking to a friend the other day. She commented on how easy it was for her teenage son to get a summer job this year compared to her other sons. She has 4 sons aged btween 16 and 25. She attributed it to the immigration crackdown. She is a hardcore democrat. Older kids couldn’t get a summer job and went to summer programs. There were a summer or two my 20 something kid would rather get a job than go off to a summer proragm if it weren’t so competitive. It’s possible illegal immigrants unwittingly exasperate the inequality. The haves like their cheap labor for domestic or other menial jobs while the poor have to compete against them, kind of creating a modern day version of an aristocratic society. Cheap labor makes it possible for more people to have “servants”. They may also reduce opportunities to mix classes when they take summer jobs away.
There ARE already guest worker visas for various applications, including farm work and working at other seasonal jobs such as resort hotels, lifeguarding, etc. Many of the workers at Mar-a-lago have these temporary work visas, for example. The workers are not illegal immigrants but you could argue that they do take away jobs from willing Americans - with the exception of farm work which needs vast numbers of people and is grueling.
My D had a hard time finding work as a lifeguard because so many were being taken from Russian and eastern Europe on the seasonal work visa program. It seemed like a scam since there were many certified American lifeguards from her class who couldn’t get steady jobs.
There may be some effect (depending on the type of job – farm work and construction tend to be the biggest employers of unauthorized immigrants), but remember that many of the years in which older kids (now in their early 20s) were looking for summer jobs were during the economic downturn when it was very difficult to get entry level jobs because (a) there were fewer jobs open, and (b) there was more competition from unemployed older adults who desperately took any job. Also, the economic downturn was probably a major reason why the number of illegal immigrants has been (slowly) declining since 2009.
Just Google "how robots are changing farming’ and you will see there are now robot pickers, robot weeders, robot planters. Robots are cheaper in the long run than human labor. So no. vast numbers of people to do farm labor are becoming a thing of the past.
If true, then such robotic farm work will by itself reduce illegal immigration by eliminating the farm work jobs that are the incentive to come for many.
Robots are cheaper in the long run, but they require a large upfront investment. Not every farmer has the dollars and credit lines needed to be able to afford it. Farm workers, OTOH, are pay as you go kind of expense. It will be a hard sell.