However, it would have been exceptionally easy to get the required visas. Once she was accepted into university, she can apply for an F student visa. It's practically guaranteed for this visa to be granted -- there's no limit to the number of admitted foreign students in the US.
Then, with good grades and an acceptance to Goldman Sachs (which she got), she would have had little trouble getting a work visa. I know plenty of people who have done that.
It's not necessary to go through the 10+ year process to become a citizen in order to be able to study and work in the US. And getting the visas would have been far less stressful and allowed her to travel to see family in Mexico.
Not so fast. The F would only happen if she was an international student paying full tuition. The instate tuition required she not legalize her status like that.
You are still bound to the 65,000 visa cap of H1B. Nothing to do with skills (sadly).
For any non immigration visa you have to prove you will leave the country after you finish school (= visa expires). If she is here illegally that's hard to prove. You also have to prove you can financially sustain yourself here.
An undocumented immigrant? So she was legally in the country, but with paperwork incomplete? Or a refugee?
Oh no, they mean illegal immigrant - in this case, someone who violated the law to make more money. Got it.
Every time I see the term "undocumented immigrant" I am horrified at how easily people will thoughtlessly toss away the rule of law to serve their own self-indulgent empathy.
Mexico today has more GDP/capita than New Zealand did in 1990. There's no justification for encouraging the human trafficking and dangerous cross-desert trips (often ending in death or rape or robbery) this way. Immigration should be orderly and safe.
If someone wants everybody on Earth to have free access to America, they should campaign to make that the law, and face the real consequences. This "let it be illegal but keep the border-jumpers as our empathy pets" stuff is self-indulgent and self-defeating on so many levels. Ugh.
The mood affiliation is strong here... do you feel as strongly about the rule of law when it comes to, I don't know, medical marihuana (the smoking of which is a federal crime, since it's a schedule I drug).
The analogy is not entirely facetious: immigration is--like pot--a crime with real economic benefit, and where any negative externalities are exacerbated by knee-jerk prohibition. Take as an example wage depression due to immigration. The less that undocumented immigrants can report unfair labor practices, the more they are likely to be exploited for extra-depressive wages.
The same dynamic is present, for example, when it comes to prostitution (also a crime). If you punish the prostitute instead of the john, prostitutes are more likely to be abused, exacerbating the negative consequences of prostitution.
(Again, the analogy goes deeper: the answer to immigration is the same as prostitution or drugs or whatever: _tax the externalities_. If you really think that some honduran woman scrubbing toilets for less than minimum wage at a motel 6 is "bad for america", then you should jus _tax her_).
One other comment: you seem quite upset about the use of the phrase "undocumented immigrant" instead of "illegal." There are Really Good reasons why the first term is preferred:
1. Not all undocumented immigrants are criminals. The only criminal act is crossing the border without permission. Overstaying a visa, or coming here as a child, is emphatically not criminal. Yes, it's a deportable condition, but not a criminal one. Undocumented seems to be a better description of that situation--and unless someone has been tried, how do you know?
2. Semantics matter. Undocumented immigrants have rights, just like all people in America. To refer to a human as as being "illegal" anchors the situation in a way which makes it easier to treat them in a way where those rights are violated, and _no one cares_. For example, alleged illegal immigrants are not offered counsel in immigration courts. Flagrant violation of their sixth amendment rights. It somehow seems to be ok in the public consciousness because they are "illegal."
I'm not advocating for open borders, or for amnesty or whatever. I'm just asking you to think, critically, about the situation, and leave your mood affiliation aside.
Someone working without a US social security number is working illegally. Someone failing to pay income taxes is committing a crime. Filing taxes under an incorrect social security number is also a crime.
Unless the "undocumented" are actually not doing anything, they are most likely committing many other crimes including tax fraud, identity theft, tax evasion.
"Undocumented" is a euphemism. Illegal alien is the correct legal term. And let's stop using "immigrant" to refer to illegal aliens. That is an insult to the thousands of legal immigrants.
Undocumented immigrant is like calling a drug dealer an unlicensed pharmacist. Let's not legitimize illegal immigration by wrapping it into benign terminology.
I agree wholeheartedly that we should reform immigration policy.
Personally I don't care if the undocumented immigrants are paying taxes or not. But as a former legal immigrant and now naturalized citizen, I would really appreciate the government and civil rights advocates to focus more on the legal immigrants and less on the undocumented.
I have a friend with PhD degree in biochemistry on F1 visa, and now on OPT. He's been here for probably 9 or 10 years, starting from undergraduate to PhD program. It's difficult to not view DACA with distain when he gets less protection and privileges than those that has not gone through the legal process. Especially with CA offering (not sure if still just talks) in-state tuition while he has to pay for full out-of-state, not allowed to work (with limited exception to working on campus), and only 1 year of OPT and playing the H1-B lottery for work authorization.
I would support DACA and similar programs iff all legal immigrants currently on the wait list gets precedence over undocumented immigrants. My simple proposal was to grant whatever privilege the undocumented were to receive to those on the wait list to empty it, and place the undocumented immigrants into the now empty waitlist, with the understanding that they star with blank slate to go through the legal way, but may not stay in the US if the legal immigration path they are seeking doesn't allow them to stay in the US while pursuing legal residence.
Regarding medical marijuana, I believe the right approach is to change the law, not to flaunt the law. And we've seen that already in many states legalizing marijuana.
Regarding the use of the word illegal, it is the proper legal terminology. An alien is classified as either legal or illegal, depending on their status to enter and stay in the US. The legal/illegal refers to their alien status, not the person.
And this ties into the third point. The reason immigration court doesn't provide counsel is just as you've stated--it is a civil matter, not criminal. Right to attorney doesn't apply to civil cases. On the converse, make immigration law violations a criminal act, and the accused has right to counsel.
Hi, maybe I am one of the people who you would say thinks, "Let it be illegal, but let's keep the border-jumpers as our empathy pets." Let me try to explain the thinking (which, by the way, has nothing to do with some sort of paternalistic moral smugness, as you seem to be suggesting).
With immigration, there is a situation where (at least in my opinion) it is not morally wrong for anyone to illegally immigrate to the US for economic reasons, yet it may be that the US should not allow unfettered immigration. It is true that in some cases a behavior can be morally wrong only because it is illegal (e.g., violating corporate disclosure requirements), but making immigration illegal is not enough to make it wrong because most illegal immigrants have compelling reasons to immigrate and are not doing any clear harm (not shooting border guards to get across, for instance).
It is true that, as a general principle, we are better off if we can arrange that only morally wrong behaviors are outlawed because that somehow makes people more respectful of the law, but in the case of immigration, it isn't possible without allowing unfettered immigration, and that may be too high a price to pay.
What we can do to improve alignment is to allow anyone who manages to come to the US and remain for a certain period of time (say five years), and perhaps to meet some assimilation targets (like learning English), to stay and ultimately become a citizen. Then it will be more reasonable for law enforcement to aggressively pursue illegal/undocumented people, and the "rule of law" can be stronger.
> What we can do to improve alignment is to allow anyone who manages to come to the US and remain for a certain period of time... to stay and ultimately become a citizen.
This is dangerous, in my opinion. It gives foreigners an incentive to come here illegally and stay for a long time, during which they work lower-class jobs for well under market value. That displaces American workers, lowers wages, and gives the foreigners a reason to come here instead of working on building industries in their home country, thus maintaining the issues that lead them to want to come here in the first place.
It's worth noting that the majority (~60%) of illegal immigrants arrive legally and simply overstay their visas. Also, Mexicans no longer make up the majority of the undocumented.
Not arguing for or against anything, just putting some numbers out that I recently learned, and found surprising myself. Should be an easy google-verify if you're interested.
She's pitched here as an ideal success story, and an example for why we should just forget having a law and borders and stuff. She did much better than the average under-the-table elote-selling "entrepreneur", but I'm not so sure that a few hundred thousand in income tax from working in finance, and then working for a non-profit committed to undermining the rule of law and harassing publications who refuse to use the Newspeak of "undocumented" is the best possible return for 10-plus years of subsidized public education.
Pro-illegal immigration propaganda. We should not be celebrating that illegal aliens are now apparently working in white-collar jobs with stolen documents, because they are finite resources and should be given to Americans. Do you guys think that this article would get a positive response here if she had an IT job? If Goldman Sachs wants South American talent, why don't they open an office there? It's disgusting that this is celebrated - American jobs should be filled by Americans. I'm reminded of some things I hear a lot about illegal aliens:
"They only do the jobs that Americans won't do."
"Who will scrub your toilet, Donald Trump?"
Tell that to the person whose job at Goldman Sachs she stole.
She committed identity theft or fraud and this should be celebrated? "She bought fake papers."
That's a crime.
How is she get SEC licenses as someone who has admitted to fraud? Why would Goldman not catch her fraud during their due diligence when hiring her? She's being trusted with financial instruments as someone with a flagrant disregard for the law?
She should be deported. If she's any good, she can trade derivatives on Goldman's Mexico City desk.
For those here that would defend her -- are you suggesting we only follow laws we agree with?
Stop living in a dreamland. The law exists to prevent people from doing harm to themselves and each other. Which is why when we start wars or shoot people out of the sky without trial or prop up institutions to big to fail or run mass surveillance programmes the law bends. As it should. Cause people are too dumb to realize the dangers that exist.
Whether its Google or Goldman in todays competitive world smart competent people are the premium. Why should they send her to Mexico City if she can make 10-20x more for them sitting at the centre of the action.
War? Too big to fail? NSA? Surely all of this ties back to illegal immigration. Maybe scale back the FUD factor a bit?
Immigration is regulated for a good reason. If we allowed free resettlement from Mexico what do you think would happen?
The US would be flooded by 100 million people that don't speak English, know almost nothing about our country, have little or no marketable skills, and are therefore wholly dependent on government support.
It's better to have a controlled amount of people enter to help them assimilate without a huge government burden. Letting in too many low skilled immigrants is bad for US citizens and the immigrants already here. We've already seen huge wage suppression for low skilled jobs.
There's already clear paths to the US for skilled immigrants that speak English because they're not a burden on government funds. The US is not a charity, the government exists to benefit US citizens. Letting in unskilled immigrants that don't speak English does not benefit US citizens so the government has no business making it a priority.
That is a dangerous attitude for a society. If we disagree with a law, we should change it. If we don't we breed a disregard for all laws, not just the ones we disagree with.
Agree, but that doesn't happen instantly. Changes come time by time, after occasional breaking unethical laws (while they are still active) - e.g. unlawful freeing of slaves, helping Jews during Nazi regime, etc... These are all examples of breaking unethical laws, which should happen and will happen.
It does seem kind of ridiculous to allow someone who committed fraud to sit for the Series 63.
> To obtain a Series 63 license, the applicant must pass an exam to demonstrate knowledge of state securities acts and related rules and regulations, as well as knowledge of ethical practices and fiduciary obligations.
29 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 65.1 ms ] threadHowever, it would have been exceptionally easy to get the required visas. Once she was accepted into university, she can apply for an F student visa. It's practically guaranteed for this visa to be granted -- there's no limit to the number of admitted foreign students in the US.
Then, with good grades and an acceptance to Goldman Sachs (which she got), she would have had little trouble getting a work visa. I know plenty of people who have done that.
It's not necessary to go through the 10+ year process to become a citizen in order to be able to study and work in the US. And getting the visas would have been far less stressful and allowed her to travel to see family in Mexico.
For any non immigration visa you have to prove you will leave the country after you finish school (= visa expires). If she is here illegally that's hard to prove. You also have to prove you can financially sustain yourself here.
Oh no, they mean illegal immigrant - in this case, someone who violated the law to make more money. Got it.
Every time I see the term "undocumented immigrant" I am horrified at how easily people will thoughtlessly toss away the rule of law to serve their own self-indulgent empathy.
Mexico today has more GDP/capita than New Zealand did in 1990. There's no justification for encouraging the human trafficking and dangerous cross-desert trips (often ending in death or rape or robbery) this way. Immigration should be orderly and safe.
If someone wants everybody on Earth to have free access to America, they should campaign to make that the law, and face the real consequences. This "let it be illegal but keep the border-jumpers as our empathy pets" stuff is self-indulgent and self-defeating on so many levels. Ugh.
??? What an oddly specific comment...and I don't think it helps your point.
The analogy is not entirely facetious: immigration is--like pot--a crime with real economic benefit, and where any negative externalities are exacerbated by knee-jerk prohibition. Take as an example wage depression due to immigration. The less that undocumented immigrants can report unfair labor practices, the more they are likely to be exploited for extra-depressive wages.
The same dynamic is present, for example, when it comes to prostitution (also a crime). If you punish the prostitute instead of the john, prostitutes are more likely to be abused, exacerbating the negative consequences of prostitution.
(Again, the analogy goes deeper: the answer to immigration is the same as prostitution or drugs or whatever: _tax the externalities_. If you really think that some honduran woman scrubbing toilets for less than minimum wage at a motel 6 is "bad for america", then you should jus _tax her_).
One other comment: you seem quite upset about the use of the phrase "undocumented immigrant" instead of "illegal." There are Really Good reasons why the first term is preferred:
1. Not all undocumented immigrants are criminals. The only criminal act is crossing the border without permission. Overstaying a visa, or coming here as a child, is emphatically not criminal. Yes, it's a deportable condition, but not a criminal one. Undocumented seems to be a better description of that situation--and unless someone has been tried, how do you know? 2. Semantics matter. Undocumented immigrants have rights, just like all people in America. To refer to a human as as being "illegal" anchors the situation in a way which makes it easier to treat them in a way where those rights are violated, and _no one cares_. For example, alleged illegal immigrants are not offered counsel in immigration courts. Flagrant violation of their sixth amendment rights. It somehow seems to be ok in the public consciousness because they are "illegal."
I'm not advocating for open borders, or for amnesty or whatever. I'm just asking you to think, critically, about the situation, and leave your mood affiliation aside.
Unless the "undocumented" are actually not doing anything, they are most likely committing many other crimes including tax fraud, identity theft, tax evasion.
"Undocumented" is a euphemism. Illegal alien is the correct legal term. And let's stop using "immigrant" to refer to illegal aliens. That is an insult to the thousands of legal immigrants.
Undocumented immigrant is like calling a drug dealer an unlicensed pharmacist. Let's not legitimize illegal immigration by wrapping it into benign terminology.
In any case, let's use some of this energy to making immigration policy that works and we'll remove all the undocumented immigrants.
Personally I don't care if the undocumented immigrants are paying taxes or not. But as a former legal immigrant and now naturalized citizen, I would really appreciate the government and civil rights advocates to focus more on the legal immigrants and less on the undocumented.
I have a friend with PhD degree in biochemistry on F1 visa, and now on OPT. He's been here for probably 9 or 10 years, starting from undergraduate to PhD program. It's difficult to not view DACA with distain when he gets less protection and privileges than those that has not gone through the legal process. Especially with CA offering (not sure if still just talks) in-state tuition while he has to pay for full out-of-state, not allowed to work (with limited exception to working on campus), and only 1 year of OPT and playing the H1-B lottery for work authorization.
I would support DACA and similar programs iff all legal immigrants currently on the wait list gets precedence over undocumented immigrants. My simple proposal was to grant whatever privilege the undocumented were to receive to those on the wait list to empty it, and place the undocumented immigrants into the now empty waitlist, with the understanding that they star with blank slate to go through the legal way, but may not stay in the US if the legal immigration path they are seeking doesn't allow them to stay in the US while pursuing legal residence.
Regarding medical marijuana, I believe the right approach is to change the law, not to flaunt the law. And we've seen that already in many states legalizing marijuana.
Regarding the use of the word illegal, it is the proper legal terminology. An alien is classified as either legal or illegal, depending on their status to enter and stay in the US. The legal/illegal refers to their alien status, not the person.
And this ties into the third point. The reason immigration court doesn't provide counsel is just as you've stated--it is a civil matter, not criminal. Right to attorney doesn't apply to civil cases. On the converse, make immigration law violations a criminal act, and the accused has right to counsel.
With immigration, there is a situation where (at least in my opinion) it is not morally wrong for anyone to illegally immigrate to the US for economic reasons, yet it may be that the US should not allow unfettered immigration. It is true that in some cases a behavior can be morally wrong only because it is illegal (e.g., violating corporate disclosure requirements), but making immigration illegal is not enough to make it wrong because most illegal immigrants have compelling reasons to immigrate and are not doing any clear harm (not shooting border guards to get across, for instance).
It is true that, as a general principle, we are better off if we can arrange that only morally wrong behaviors are outlawed because that somehow makes people more respectful of the law, but in the case of immigration, it isn't possible without allowing unfettered immigration, and that may be too high a price to pay.
What we can do to improve alignment is to allow anyone who manages to come to the US and remain for a certain period of time (say five years), and perhaps to meet some assimilation targets (like learning English), to stay and ultimately become a citizen. Then it will be more reasonable for law enforcement to aggressively pursue illegal/undocumented people, and the "rule of law" can be stronger.
This is dangerous, in my opinion. It gives foreigners an incentive to come here illegally and stay for a long time, during which they work lower-class jobs for well under market value. That displaces American workers, lowers wages, and gives the foreigners a reason to come here instead of working on building industries in their home country, thus maintaining the issues that lead them to want to come here in the first place.
Not arguing for or against anything, just putting some numbers out that I recently learned, and found surprising myself. Should be an easy google-verify if you're interested.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/27/5-facts-abou...
"They only do the jobs that Americans won't do."
"Who will scrub your toilet, Donald Trump?"
Tell that to the person whose job at Goldman Sachs she stole.
That's a crime.
How is she get SEC licenses as someone who has admitted to fraud? Why would Goldman not catch her fraud during their due diligence when hiring her? She's being trusted with financial instruments as someone with a flagrant disregard for the law?
She should be deported. If she's any good, she can trade derivatives on Goldman's Mexico City desk.
For those here that would defend her -- are you suggesting we only follow laws we agree with?
Whether its Google or Goldman in todays competitive world smart competent people are the premium. Why should they send her to Mexico City if she can make 10-20x more for them sitting at the centre of the action.
Immigration is regulated for a good reason. If we allowed free resettlement from Mexico what do you think would happen?
The US would be flooded by 100 million people that don't speak English, know almost nothing about our country, have little or no marketable skills, and are therefore wholly dependent on government support.
It's better to have a controlled amount of people enter to help them assimilate without a huge government burden. Letting in too many low skilled immigrants is bad for US citizens and the immigrants already here. We've already seen huge wage suppression for low skilled jobs.
There's already clear paths to the US for skilled immigrants that speak English because they're not a burden on government funds. The US is not a charity, the government exists to benefit US citizens. Letting in unskilled immigrants that don't speak English does not benefit US citizens so the government has no business making it a priority.
By blindly following all laws we would still have slavery; holocaust would have become acceptable; etc...
We should follow ethics, not some texts.
Agree, but that doesn't happen instantly. Changes come time by time, after occasional breaking unethical laws (while they are still active) - e.g. unlawful freeing of slaves, helping Jews during Nazi regime, etc... These are all examples of breaking unethical laws, which should happen and will happen.
> To obtain a Series 63 license, the applicant must pass an exam to demonstrate knowledge of state securities acts and related rules and regulations, as well as knowledge of ethical practices and fiduciary obligations.
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/series63.asp