<p>Anyway…the problem needs to stop at the border. As long as we have borders that are easy to breach, we’re going to have undocumented kids growing up and facing these situations - where naturally many people sympathize. </p>
<p>And since a number of these undocumented are here after coming here legally with visas, but then never went back…obviously something needs to be done to prevent people from over-staying. I don’t know how that can be adequately controlled if people come here and then sort of disappear. But if they are enrolling kids here in our K-12 system, then somehow they could be found that way. </p>
<p>I know my opinion will be unpopular here, but I just can’t help but express it.</p>
<p>My relatives came to the US as legal immigrants starting in 1848. I wouldn’t be here today if the US didn’t welcome my great great grandparents from Poland, Germany and Russia. US policy changed in the 1920s. </p>
<p>One reason why we have so many illegal immigrants is because it is so hard to legally immigrate to the US. Yes, zooser, I think it would be preferable if people could stay in their birth countries and lead happy and successful lives there. But I don’t see that happening anytime soon. We used to get immigrants from Ireland and Poland and Italy, etc., and today those countries are (for the most part) safe to live in so we don’t see large numbers of illegals from those places. So a longtime goal of improving life for everyone is certainly desirable. </p>
<p>But I don’t have a problem welcoming immigrants into the US. My goal would be to loosen our immigration laws so more people can come live here. The US grew strong because of its open immigration policy. And why not start with the kids who came here when they were so little they had no choice in the matter? </p>
<p>Instead of spending billions of dollars on fences and border patrols and court officials, I’d spend that money educating and assimilating new immigrants.</p>
The important piece of the puzzle that you are missing is that many of the immigrants don’t want to come here. They feel forced and manipulated into doing so because so many more powerful forces benefit from their labor and their misery. I really don’t know how you or anyone else can ignore or justify that. We spend billions of dollars on educating new immigrants. However, we don’t do much about assimilating them because (a) that would be an affront to the cult of multiculturism and (b) they don’t want to be assimilated because they don’t want to be here.</p>
<p>Foreign medical school graduates who want to come here for their residency programs have to jump through a lot of hoops to enter. No one is forcing them! Then, they are supposed to return to their home countries for at least 2 years before applying for immigration. They can be granted a waiver for hardship or persecution, but these are very, very rare. An easier waiver to get is from one of several federal agencies, which lets them work for those 2 years in some underserved community (yes, Appalachia is one such place). Amazing that we make doctors go through this process, and they do it, but somehow other immigrants are seen as unable or unwilling to serve in this way.</p>
<p>What’s the immigration program that a poor person from Mexico or a teenage refugee from drug violence could take advantage of, greenwitch? AFAIK, there isn’t one, and there is also no queue they can get in for legal immigration.</p>
<p>Exactly, Cardinal Fang. It irks me when people with zero knowledge of the US immigration laws say that undocumented immigrants should get into the queue for legal immigration. Which queue? </p>
<p>Until US immigration laws are changed, this will continue happening.</p>
<p>The reasons our immigration policies used to be so loose was that we needed manpower to run the factories during the Industrial Revolution. Such jobs are less important these days.</p>
<p>A nation should be able to set its immigration policies based on what its current needs are, not based on whether its fair someone born in 1914 could emigrate to the U.S. easier than in 2014.</p>
<p>Actually, most top schools do have an explicit quota for international students, whether they disclose it or not. MIT’s is 8%. From my recollection, Harvard had an international quota too. So they would have an exact number in mind on how many to admit based on yield predictions.</p>
<p>The workforce that used to supply those jobs was made up of HS kids and low-income people including legal immigrants.</p>
<p>But fewer HS kids work, and fewer still want to work manual labor. EVERYBODY in my HS had jobs, full-time in the summer and sometimes part-time during the school year. I had friends in grammar school who went down South to “pick”, they left school in April or May.</p>
<p>Low-income people want a career. They are more likely to work at McDonald’s with their promise of “becoming a manager”. They don’t want to work outside or cleaning toilets. </p>
<p>The employers are the problem, and the current conditions in Mexico and Central American countries are the problem. And the refusal of US citizens to take certain jobs completes it.</p>
<p>I don’t buy the “refusal” of US citizens to take a job. Employers don’t have the right to have US citizens accept employment at minimum wage. If an employer can’t find employees at a certain wage, they just have to raise the wage. In any case, right now employers are not having trouble finding low-wage employees.</p>
<p>To the list of current needs, add scientists in my field. US-born scientists in my department are all over 55. We periodically need to hire new faculty. We advertise in national publications and at conferences, and we usually receive over 200 applications. Only a handful will be from US citizens. It is rare to find a well-qualified US applicant, and such a person is in high demand because everyone is required to give preference to US citizens. The one time in the last 20 years when we did have a highly-qualified US applicant, we offered him the job, but he went elsewhere. The people we hire are foreign nationals who have been educated here, at least for grad school. It is relatively easy for them to get green cards. </p>
<p>Since moving to the US is desirable, I’d say we should sell unlimited immigrant spots rather than offering any for free. Apple doesn’t give away iPhones for free, why do we allow immigrants to come for free?</p>
<p>Yes, there’s a category called something like, alien of exceptional ability. You have to document this, and also that a qualified US citizen could not be found. All else being equal, or even close to equal, anyone would prefer to hire a US citizen. It’s a pain to deal with the requirements for hiring an “alien”.</p>
<p>There is a HUGE problem with US graduate programs for average colleges having 95% internationals. My college does ZERO recruiting in the US for graduate school, they spend more time in Asia recruiting full-pay graduate students. US citizens expect a stipend. Internationals gladly pay for their degree.</p>
<p>And @NYMomof2, I am wondering if you notice a pay discrepancy. I worked in engineering firms, and several of us would talk about pay. It turned out that our co-workers who were internationals were paid MUCH less, usually at least $10,000 per year less, and sometimes 50% of other workers who was US citizens with the same backgrounds and educations. We didn’t find the same discrepancy between pay for men and women.</p>
<p>I have heard many bosses say that it is just a matter of negotiation, that most US citizens will negotiate salary and do research to find out what is fair. But some internationals will just take whatever they are offered, or even be offered less initially as a negotiating point because of an accent or a degree from overseas. Also more likely to work overtime without pay (do you know how many students I teach who don’t realize that you should get overtime pay if you work more than 40 hours per week? And they are going to school full-time too.)</p>
<p>I also know of drastically underqualified internationals who nonetheless ended up with doctoral degrees. They had the money, the university gave the degrees.</p>
<p>I would love to see a pay comparison for US citizens vs. internationals similar to that done for men vs. women. In science and engineering, I can bet you’d see a significant pay discrepancy. I remember my consulting firm having different multipliers for different people, and then doing away with multipliers because they were based on salary. All engineers were billed out at $75 per hour. All project managers were billed out at $150 per hour. Guess which employees got the long-term assignments? The cheaper ones.</p>
<p>The “tech drain” is really just the path of least resistance for companies to pay less for the same job title, IMHO.</p>
<p>To hire an international, the company has to pay the hefty visa fees, and go to a process that usually takes months to prove they could not find an American citizen to take the job. And the company has to prove to the Department of Labor as well that they are not paying foreigners less. It’s not the path of least resistance, every employer in Silicon Valley or a university would rather save money and time and hire a citizen. </p>
<p>Also, in terms of graduate programs, I have taught in 3 different universities (not in STEM, but a Social Science). There are not that many American applicants to PhD programs, relative to foreigners. The university where I work now, public, goes to extreme lengths to attract American applicants to PhD programs and offer them funding, etc. and even that isn’t enough to have a majority of American students. My colleagues in STEM fields have even more issues. Many of my great American students end up in Law School or an MBA instead. </p>
<p>randco, There is no pay disparity. But I’m in an academic department and there are guidelines with little wiggle room. Foreign faculty are treated differently in any way.</p>
<p>salander, I am in a hard science, and it is true that not many Americans are going into science these days. I know someone who graduated from Harvard a few years ago in biochemistry. She was upset because many of her fellow graduates with science majors were recruited by investment banks, who want smart people, and most of them went that way.</p>
<p>collegealum, our immigration policies changed partly because of racism. And that, in my opinion, is still at the root of much anti-immigration beliefs today.</p>
<p>zooser: It’s hard for me to argue against you since you’ve worked with thousands of illegal immigrants and I’ve worked with none. But I’ll bet if you had asked my great great grandmother Esther if she wanted to come to the US in 1852, she’d probably say “nein.” I’ll bet that if you had asked many of the Irish starving from the potato famine and Russians escaping pogroms in the Pale about leaving their homelands, they would have said they wish they could have stayed home. I am not an immigration expert, but I haven’t seen any current articles about immigration where the illegals discuss their distaste for having to come to America. If there are any, please post a link.</p>
<p>And I find it disheartening that you believe that they are uneducable. Do they all have IQs below 80? Why are they uneducable? Doesn’t everyone have some potential? </p>
<p>As for OP, about whether we should pay to educate illegals – I have very mixed feelings. My opinion is colored by the fact that I don’t consider illegal immigration to be as serous a crime as many of the posters here believe. Again, I think the issue is with our immigration policy, which I would change. I almost equate illegal immigration with marijuana, in terms of seriousness on the criminal scale. I certainly feel sympathy with the Dream Act kids. But I do see the other side which has been expressed here. </p>
<p>Fireandrain, I think you are working from the position of your own perceptions and what you would want, rather than being open to an experience that is totally different from yours and you are misunderstanding what I’m saying, as well.</p>
<p>Being uneducable in a foreign language and culture in terrible circumstances absolutely does not mean that the person has no potential or has a low IQ. What it means is that the system in the foreign language is not set up to help that person reach his or her full potential at such an advanced age when the person needs to be able to work and support him/herself and function as an adult in a foreign language. Which is exactly the point. In their own countries, in their own language (and often it’s not Spanish) that person can achieve the absolute fullest potential and THAT is why I am personally outraged that these people are forced out of their homes (and they are forced and coerced) to live a less optimal life than they could have had in their own countries with the human rights and dignity that they should be afforded by their own governments. As far as articles discussing the view of the immigrants themselves, actually read the surveys and studies. The answer most frequently given is that they come to America because they want a better life for their families, but would have preferred to have the opportunity to do so in their own countries. Coming voluntarily to become American is one thing. Feeling that you have no choice is another thing entirely, and that’s what I oppose.</p>