Luz shares her apartment with her husband, also from Mexico and also undocumented. They met in America. He works in a bar. They have a young daughter who was born in America and is therefore a US citizen.
Nobody " jumped the line," there is no “line.” It’s dumb concepts like that that keep this nonsense going. There isn’t one line, there are immigration offices all over the country, and she went through the process locally, in an area with a much higher rate of immigration than most places, with the facilities to handle it. Nobody had to wait longer, or was refused because of how my friend came here. Stop using that ignorant reason to excuse your bigotry.
She was from Venezuela, which is occupied by an authoritarian government. It wouldn’t have been possible for her to navigate the situation from Venezuela. In the absence of the ability to emigrate legally out of Venezuela, the people cobbled together a system to come to America in a technically illegal manner, but immediately get into the legal asylum system. My friend was introduced to this “system” through her church, which had helped other people do the same thing.
Many, many people came here like she did, and when she arrived, she stayed in an apartment with three other Venezuelans, all of whom were going through the same asylum process, and my friend used their lawyer.
The US government even had a special program for Venezuelans and other oppressed nations. Trump cancelled that program, and instantly declared all those that were here under the protection of that law, over 200,000 people, to be criminals. Luckily my friend became a US citizen last December, just before Trump took office. The only thing that was standing between being a law-abiding American citizen, and being a vicious Venezuelan gang member, was a few short weeks of time.
Obviously there’s no actual line, that’s just a metaphor to illustrate a point. The point is that while there are no actual physical lines taking place, our systems aren’t limitless. They do have a limited operating capacity that’s hard capped by how many resources are dedicated to them. What this means is that if a system gets burdened not just with an overflow of legal immigration, but also illegal immigration, it gets paralyzed by the ever increasing backlog of cases that they have to review. What should be an efficient system, stops being so.
We have to accept the reality that scarcity is a real thing. Our country’s system are already overwhelmed and on the brink. We have to be able to control the flow of people into this country. Sure, immigrants legal or illegal, are a net positive on the American economy, but these people still need houses, doctors, education, cars, and so on. Tax money can alleviate some of these issues, but we’re not exactly doing anything to help expand our infrastructure to absorb all these people. Our current immigration system is unsustainable.
I’m more than open for people like your friend to be able to get asylum here. People should have a chance to immigrate here to escape from persecution or reunite with their families or to bring their skills to the economy. However, you can’t deny the way your friend did it shouldn’t be the way that people get asylum. From the myopic view that you’re looking at it, the consequences seem insignificant, but if you zoom out and look at the big picture, there are real consequences. When we have millions of legal people on top of millions of illegal people waiting for their cases every year, that’s going to stress the system. That’s going to create absurdly long wait times, that’s going to screw people who want be legal immigrants by having resources redirected towards illegal immigrants which push back their cases, and that’s going to leave the country vulnerable. How can you support this type of dysfunction? Immigration reform is absolutely necessary, and illegal immigration is not and should not be a viable alternative.
Nobody " jumped the line," there is no “line.” It’s dumb concepts like that that keep this nonsense going. There isn’t one line, there are immigration offices all over the country, and she went through the process locally, in an area with a much higher rate of immigration than most places, with the facilities to handle it. Nobody had to wait longer, or was refused because of how my friend came here. Stop using that ignorant reason to excuse your bigotry.
She was from Venezuela, which is occupied by an authoritarian government. It wouldn’t have been possible for her to navigate the situation from Venezuela. In the absence of the ability to emigrate legally out of Venezuela, the people cobbled together a system to come to America in a technically illegal manner, but immediately get into the legal asylum system. My friend was introduced to this “system” through her church, which had helped other people do the same thing.
Many, many people came here like she did, and when she arrived, she stayed in an apartment with three other Venezuelans, all of whom were going through the same asylum process, and my friend used their lawyer.
The US government even had a special program for Venezuelans and other oppressed nations. Trump cancelled that program, and instantly declared all those that were here under the protection of that law, over 200,000 people, to be criminals. Luckily my friend became a US citizen last December, just before Trump took office. The only thing that was standing between being a law-abiding American citizen, and being a vicious Venezuelan gang member, was a few short weeks of time.
Obviously there’s no actual line, that’s just a metaphor to illustrate a point. The point is that while there are no actual physical lines taking place, our systems aren’t limitless. They do have a limited operating capacity that’s hard capped by how many resources are dedicated to them. What this means is that if a system gets burdened not just with an overflow of legal immigration, but also illegal immigration, it gets paralyzed by the ever increasing backlog of cases that they have to review. What should be an efficient system, stops being so.
We have to accept the reality that scarcity is a real thing. Our country’s system are already overwhelmed and on the brink. We have to be able to control the flow of people into this country. Sure, immigrants legal or illegal, are a net positive on the American economy, but these people still need houses, doctors, education, cars, and so on. Tax money can alleviate some of these issues, but we’re not exactly doing anything to help expand our infrastructure to absorb all these people. Our current immigration system is unsustainable.
I’m more than open for people like your friend to be able to get asylum here. People should have a chance to immigrate here to escape from persecution or reunite with their families or to bring their skills to the economy. However, you can’t deny the way your friend did it shouldn’t be the way that people get asylum. From the myopic view that you’re looking at it, the consequences seem insignificant, but if you zoom out and look at the big picture, there are real consequences. When we have millions of legal people on top of millions of illegal people waiting for their cases every year, that’s going to stress the system. That’s going to create absurdly long wait times, that’s going to screw people who want be legal immigrants by having resources redirected towards illegal immigrants which push back their cases, and that’s going to leave the country vulnerable. How can you support this type of dysfunction? Immigration reform is absolutely necessary, and illegal immigration is not and should not be a viable alternative.