If Legal Immigration Is Too Arduous People Will Immigrate Il
This was from a blog on Google. I found it very interesting and hope that the million of legal immigrants attempting to become citizens legally will also raise their voices against illegal immigration.
Link:Nov 29 2006 6:40PM
http://sayanythingblog.com/index.php
This is one area of immigration reform we should all be able to agree on.
PHOENIX (Reuters) - Following all the rules, Indian national Sanjay Mehta came to the United States on a temporary work visa in 1997, hoping to build a glittering career in the fast-moving information technology sector.
But nine years later his application for a green card remains snarled up in a bureaucratic logjam, and he looks with frustration at the strides made by illegal immigrants who he says simply jumped the fence from Mexico.
“Washington has taken notice of them ... But what about the plight of legal immigrants to this country? We seem to have been forgotten,” said Mehta, who settled in Arizona with his wife and raised two children.
Many of the estimated 10 million to 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States are hopeful of gains from a new Democrat-led Congress next year, after massive street protests in U.S. cities pushed their cause to the top of the political agenda earlier in the year.
But more than a million legal immigrants like Mehta from as far afield as Europe, India and China complain that their lives have been placed on hold as they battle red tape to become permanent residents in the United States.
I’d suggest that one of the primary reasons why a lot of people immigrate illegally is because the legal immigration is so complex and mired in bureaucratic nonsense that it’s just easier to risk the consequences of living here as an alien. Given that our government has, in years past, failed to enforce our immigration in anything approaching a reliable manner even the thought of getting caught by the INS has to look better than dealing with the bureaucrats.
I have long said that before we even begin to address the issue of what to do with illegal immigrants already living in this country we need to adopt a “tall fence with a wide gate” policy on immigration. That means a) securing the border and b) making the legal immigration process easier. Because making a perfectly acceptable candidate for citizenship wait nine years is just plain nonsense.
I would hope that our political leaders in Washington would, before addressing illegal immigrants who have already thumbed their noses out our laws and forced their way into this country, look toward granting the people who have tried to enter this country legally but gotten tied up in red tape some relief. Because it seems to me that our first order of business should be helping people who respect our laws, not people who don’t.
