There is no way, literally a 0 chance 72,000 is near anything to average. Just an exception. That's years of salary in those countries and no you can't even save that in a decade there
> The second, serving migrants from India, offers charter flights to Central America and overland transfers to the U.S. border for between 6 million ($72,000) and 8 million rupees ($96,000) per person – in many instances with full payment due after arrival in the U.S, according to Indian court documents and K.T. Kamariya, a deputy superintendent of police in the western Indian state of Gujarat investigating illegal migration.
Not every undocumented migrant is poor - especially those coming from Asia and taking the Central American pathway, which is what this investigation by Reuters is about.
Destitute Asians immigrate illegally to the Gulf, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia - where salaries, living standards, and protections for the poor and undocumented are horrid. They don't have the funds to fly to and get a visa to much of Central America (at minimum a $4-7k endeavor with an additional $6-8k to go donkey from there to the border). That is middle and upper middle class money in a lot of Asia.
My personal observation is that its not today's living standards that is their concern, but fear of what tomorrow's living standards will be that drives most of this migration amongst the youth..
That’s the thing, with that kind of money, no. Most people do not realise that living standards I. The west aren’t that great any more for an average nobody.
Those who are not poor are usually better at legal* loopholes. Having watched No Country for Old Men (in which a bunch of characters are perfectly horrid to each other for amazingly small amounts of money), I'd suspect dropping 14k somewhere like Henley&Partners might offer better options than the reported 70k for one of these packages?
* are they discovered or are they invented? this is a question of philosophy among the community serving (U)HNWIs.
EDIT: on the other hand, if the objective were avoiding even a hint of KYC (as in 935 Pennsylvania's NOC theory of "illegals"), maybe these pathways would make sense?
> Those who are not poor are usually better at legal* loopholes
> I'd suspect dropping 14k somewhere like Henley&Partners might offer better options than the reported 70k for one of these packages
My Tau's land in the old country is now valued at $100-150k thanks to a highway expansion tender and can generate $15k a year being rented out to Reliance Jio as a gas pump, and the remaining land is still tilled and gets MSP benefits of $5k. That's a passive income if $20k/yr in a small Himalayan village.
My Tau has a high school education and has never heard of the American legal system or investors visas.
This is a common story with the rural middle and upper class.
With that level of money, it's very easy to make a successful business in India, China, or Vietnam, but a mix of ignorance and Social Media convinces gullible people that this is the only way.
In Punjab+Haryana+JK+HP (where most of the migrants on the route are from), these loans are backed by large land holdings that are already worth $100-200k. A $70-100k loan is affordable when you have land worth $200k and semi-passive income of around $7-20k (fairly common for LANDED agrarians in Northwest India)
The issue is some people are ignorant and don't realize that they can deploy capital in a much more efficient manner (eg. Go to college, start a factory, grow organics, buy property in Mohali) and fall prey to advertisements on social media about how you can earn $75,000 a year as a janitor illegally (not realizing that income tax is a thing AND undocumented laborers would be paid way less).
This is an honest question since I know nothing about these tax systems, but are illegal immigrants able to open bank accounts and thus fall under the supervision of the tax authority?
EDIT: thanks for all your insights here, I learned something today which is cool. I can't help but be a bit philosophical about this thinking that illegal imigrants are denied citizenship (which, to be honest, I think is fine and would prefer the legal route for something like this) but the government is happy to collect its payment from them.
All you need is a valid form of government ID (eg. passport, driver's license) and a source of income to open a bank account without immediately getting AMLed.
That said, most undocumented migrants don't understand these complex systems and will go unbanked by being cash first or using hawala networks
Although this is difficult, it's actually pretty common:
> The best evidence suggests that at least 50 percent of undocumented immigrant households currently file income tax returns using Individual Tax Identification Numbers (ITINs), and many who do not file income tax returns still have taxes deducted from their paychecks.
Remember that most undocumented immigrants don't believe they've broken any laws (and many haven't), so of course they're going to pay taxes if they can.
But not in the US, which is what makes migrating so attractive (and the price so high) in the first place.
> and no you can't even save that in a decade there
There are many ways around that (loans, pooling family income/assets), as other have pointed out. (It's not entirely unlike the cost of US college, which the average US student probably can't save in a decade either.)
Indeed pooling, loans and I've also selling off the most fertile pieces of land to a wealthy neighbour - in (vain) hope of quickly being able to return wealth accumulated once arriving in the US.
It isn't so crazy, a US citizenship is worth quite a lot of money. It is pretty obvious that just walking in and settling in the US will lead to that sooner or later - based on the stats I've seen the sheer volume of people involved makes any sort of expulsion program infeasible.
I personally would consider this as an option if I wanted to migrate to the US. Probably wouldn't take it; I don't like risk or rule dodging. But there is something to be said for it. From a distance it looks like a relatively low-risk high-reward approach to migration and I can imagine even if it is a terrible choice a bunch of people in the global middle class would take it out of confusion and optimism.
What makes you think citizenship is inevitable just because mass deportation is impossible? It seems more likely that people will just be in an irregular state forever (as has always been the case for a lot of illegal immigrants in the U.S. even before the present wave).
Something like 3% of the population of the US are illegal immigrants. I'd be happy to gamble on that being too many people to expel. And although maybe there wouldn't be an official citizenship you'd get all the benefits of living in the US with confidence your kids would be full citizens.
Thinking it through I doubt it'd be for me - but there must be a lot of people in South East Asia for whom it'd look like a reasonable gamble at ~$100k. That wouldn't make up the bulk of the migrants, obviously, but there is a value proposition to justify the money.
So it basically sounds like you completely agree with me? I was not disputing that expelling all the illegal immigrants in the US is probably impossible. I was disputing that they'd become citizens.
> you'd get all the benefits of living in the US
There are more benefits to US citizenship than "not being deported". Illegal immigrants certainly don't have all the same benefits a citizen (or even legal immigrant) has.
> There are more benefits to US citizenship than "not being deported". Illegal immigrants certainly don't have all the same benefits a citizen (or even legal immigrant) has.
Unlike the west where families don't help each other.
72k USD is easily accomplished by big 20 plus member families pooling money together to pay a mule to have one member get in America . Because they know once he gets status they ALL will be allowed to come thanks to the generous family entrance rules.
So no, this isn't the exception. This is the norm. They'll then pool their cash to buy a 4 bedroom house and live 25 in it because that's what real families in developing countries do.
Is that really an annual salary in the countries some migrants are leaving? The average US household income is around $76k, I wouldn't have expected that income level to be a salary in those countries.
They're probably going indentured to someone or to an organization that they'll be paying off for a decade or so.
My cousin payed someone to get a work visa to Canada from North Africa, which cost about $15k. Although the first time she did it it was a scam and she lost all of that money, which was pretty devastating for her. Another cousin payed a coyote to get him to Europe (via Greece), and that was cheaper, but they also left the boat for dead in the Mediterranean and he ended up getting deported back to North Africa.
So yeah, $72k is a lot, but if you're desperate and it's not all upfront, I can see it happening.
For the Indians who are taking this route they are not.
My family is from one of those villages where immigration (documented and undocumented) to the West has been common since the 1970s.
The ones who are truly desperate (the rural poor and working class) cannot afford to immigrate illegally to the West so they end up immigrating to the Gulf, Malaysia, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, or South Korea to work as unskilled laborers.
The only people who take these routes in Northwest India are those who area weird mix of landed (so rich as they have a high value asset that can be mortgaged) and ignorant. Oftentimes a healthy dose of "stunting" as well, because even if the guy immigrated abroad illegally, they can at least get a wedding offer now whereas before they were a NEET.
Most of the these routes are organized by Russian state actors to be used as a political weapon. The money paid by the would-be immigrants are also eventually going back to Russia.
Could you explain how this can be used as a political weapon? Both parties in the U.S. seem quite happy with the perennial Mexican border topic that is used to distract from other issues.
I think neither party actually wants to stop anything. Republican farmers in the south need the labor, urban Democrats need voters (or so they think) and virtue signalling.
The ID voting requirements are about keeping marginalized American citizens from voting (seniors, poor people who are bad at managing their documents, etc). Studies have been done of before/after ID requirements have been added in various states and there’s no indication that illegal aliens were taking advantage. Maybe a few anecdotes of people with a green card who were confused about the requirements - the illegally present usually try to stay as far from the government as they can.
That does not sound even remotely plausible there are way more mundane activities
that all require IDs.The study like that is purely meaningless because you can not control for all the other variables of societal change in the same time frame. I can take any other variable and claim it's the cause of the decline. Also I spent most of my life in Europe in way more left leaning countries than US and this is not even remotely on the radar of anyone.
It's also being helped by the fact that the right wing has a history of attempting to restrict votes, from mass purging of voter rolls without telling people, to closing voting sites such that voting in-person requires traveling farther and waiting longer in line, to making it illegal to hand out food or water to people at voting sites (in Georgia), to having gutted the VRA in 2013 with Shelby v Holder, which is often what allows them to do this in the first place. I have no faith voter ID laws wouldn't be used simply to further suppress votes in states where Republicans control the state legislature; and yes, often in racist ways, because non-white people tend to support the left more than white people, so suppressing their votes (often those of rural black or Hispanic voters) is beneficial to Republicans.
And the Democratic party has a history of systematically rigging elections. The Chicago machine and Tammany hall only worked one way. The presidential election was notoriously rigged for JFK by his influential criminal father. There's very good reasons historically to argue either side of that opinion.
> In the remaining 14 states and D.C., voters can cast a ballot in person on Election Day without showing an ID document. These states have "non-documentary" ID requirements, meaning voters must verify their identity in other ways, such as by signing an affidavit or poll book, or by providing personal information. All states have procedures for challenging voter eligibility.
The census counts those living in the US regardless of their immigration status. That census count is used to determine Congressional representation. Plus, anyone born in the US, regardless of immigration status of their parents, is a legal citizen and in eighteen years, a voter. Politicians might not be able to see past the next election cycle, but political parties play the long game (e.g. "the Southern Strategy")
I think he's referring to illegal aliens voting illegally (which does happen sometimes) or, once they become legal through whatever means, they will become reliable Democrats. Or, their children will do the same. One way or the other, replacement-Americans tend to support the left. Always have. It's proveable.
And yet shouting about evil immigrants taking your jobs, living on your welfare (even if it's contradictory), mugging you in a dark alley, raping people left and right seems quite a successful tale that empowers the most atrocious parts of the far-right political spectrum.
Deglobalize, polarize, institute the rule of the power as opposed to the rule of law seems to be the message. The consequence, though, would be overall weakening of the states, erosion of trust, and making the defence of all the values our predecessors have already paid in blood for even more toothless.
I think your statement puts the cart before the horse, though. Both parties are "ok" with the status quo not because they necessarily collude to create it, but they are full to the brim with opportunists who use the status quo to their advantage. I don't think there is major political will to actually change anything, but if change forcefully comes any other way, they will happily try to ride any wave to their advantage.
I don't believe this mode of operation is going to change much while the facto regime in the US is gerontocracy which is also all about risk aversion. Oh, and quite possibly a drive to protect big money at all costs.
Well, I am Russian who has left the country for political reasons. I have some idea of what Russian government is capable of, and how critically they are interested in destabilizing the West.
I know Russia and Belarus are playing games sending immigrants to the borders of Finland and Poland respectively, but is there proof they’re involved in the US/Mexico border?
I can't find definitive proof in open sources, but yes, Russia smuggles migrants to Poland, to Finland, establishes control for the migration routes via Sahel to Southern Europe (https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/africa-file-ma...), why wouldn't they do the same for the US southern border? The presence of Russian-speaking smugglers on the Mexican border is well documented (https://globalinitiative.net/analysis/russian-migrant-smuggl... their link to the Russian government is yet to be clearly established, but I have little doubt.
The immigration to the US is the collateral damage of the bad US foreign policies towards those countries. Those "banana republics" are poor because the big companies own the banana business. The poor people flee to the US.
Same with Syria. But in the case the immigration went to Europe, not the US. Again Europe f-ed up.
Russian propaganda always blames US state department for all kinds of random problems in Russia.
Navalny was accused of being a CIA asset, Middle East instability was there as some kind of sinister plot against Russia, even potholes in the road are somehow part of the plan.
I never thought I would see this get mirrored in the West.
Now there are people that believe that Russia blew up its own nordstream, that every bit on twitter is Russian bot, but there are no western bots, etc
Like I get that they are a sinister opponent, but you can’t blame everything on them
Sounds too expensive. At that point it’s easier to go to the US to do a masters degree in STEM and get a 3 year legal work permit and try to work from there.
As alephnerd has pointed out elsewhere in these comments, hoping for "a guide" to a process that's nearly trivially researched on one's own is almost begging to be rolled.
(FWIW, in my online threat model, "30 second" explanations have a default weighting of malicious, and I'm guessing the cutover occurs somewhere around "3 hours"... Of course, you didn't take longer than 30s to read the previous sentence, so don't forget to double check my claim before relying upon it!)
get decent grades, apply as an international student to Uni's on the undergrad or grad level, secure loans, graduate.
once graduated, most places offer rubber stamp visas to keep international grads; use that, get a job locally, and then hang out until you qualify for residency / green card.
not esp. difficult, conceptually speaking. the devil is in the details, but its impossible to write a guide for every country and Uni. like Ontario vs. Alberta will be different, vs. California, vs. the UK, etc. etc.
Yeah, but you actually need to study and work hard to do that.
And at that point, there wouldn't be a reason to immigrate to the US, because education and $100k in assets in India, China, and Vietnam is enough to start a successful business or your political career.
The people who take this route are at best ignorant and at worst idiots (and my family is from one of these villages where people would take the Dunki route abroad)
> The second, serving migrants from India, offers charter flights to Central America and overland transfers to the U.S. border for between 6 million ($72,000) and 8 million rupees ($96,000) per person – in many instances with full payment due after arrival in the U.S, according to Indian court documents and K.T. Kamariya, a deputy superintendent of police in the western Indian state of Gujarat investigating illegal migration.
Lmao. Didn't watch Dunki (it looked stupid) but it's common sense.
The people who would get the most advantages for being undocumented immigrants (the rural poor and working class) cannot afford either any immigration route to the west.
The only people who can afford it are the subset of the rural elite (ie. Those with land) who are ignorant.
In high school, a friend complained that his mother only watched the sort of movie "with two people who love each other passionately but can't marry because they have the wrong colour dots".
Unfortunately for my movie-going, soon after I realised that Hollywood follows nearly the same formula, only the star-crossed (yet happy-ended) characters' dots are not on their foreheads, but left implicit.
[tbf, Bound (1996) did feature an unusual-for-the-time pair of incompatible dots. Try separating artist from art in that one!]
That's one way of doing it and the path many take but earning an MS in a STEM field is quite a lot of work and beyond the abilities of many. People come into money many ways, not all of them through hard work. $72k is a small trade off for some, especially those who can integrate into an existing network of their kinfolk already in the US so "living in the shadows" doesn't become much of a burden. Plus they don't have to spend years of their life toiling away towards a degree they might have no interest in. Entering illegally and joining a family network reaps benefits immediately.
Rent + living expenses + tuition for two years is way more than that. Even in really cheap places in the US. Plus, you have to account that for certain nationalities everything is more complicated, i.e. expensive.
>Illegal immigration is the migration of people into a country in violation of that country's immigration laws, or the continuous residence in a country without the legal right to.
Sigh: "a person whose behaviour is in willful, criminal violation of the immigration laws". "illegal immigrant" is just shorthand for the adults.
What you are trying to do is to imply that a) no country may control their immigration using legislation, b) any attempt to do so is immoral.
If you truly believe that we are all just wanderers on this planet, then motivate publicly a for private members bill (or equivalent) to explicitly rescind all immigration laws and their enforcement.
But you know that's futile, so you push this polemic to discourage the enforcement of the laws that are on the books.
Why doesn't the government simply offer legal immigration for anyone for $70k?
Minimal paperwork - just wire over $70k and we send you a passport with your name on and a complimentary welcome pack for whichever city you decide to move to.
I think if you have $1m USD (or is it 500k) and open a small company that hires X employees, you get a decent visa (can't remember the type).
The problem with making that number too low is that people will be encouraged to get loans and whatnot and how does the government prevents small folk from getting exploited? Even without this, today, people are in slave-like situations already.
Sure, the government can just keep out of this and make the libertarian dream come true, but there are usually other consequences (human trafficking, violence, etc) that will cost the government (more? less? I doubt there are studies about this).
The US wasn't founded by immigrants, it was founded by white supremacist colonizers.
There is a reason Americans don't care about immigration from Canada but wanted to build a wall with moats, gun turrets and razor wire across the southern border.
Even if it wasn't like that, it's pretty normal for people to settle in and dictate cultural norms. (Legal and not ostracized) immigrants don't feel like immigrants after a few generations. Their children are now native, treated as native and the original immigrant reality fades away.
For example, my family immigrated to South America from Italy 3 generations ago. I don't say I'm Italian and don't feel like an immigrant.
My point is that there has to be an extra force that keeps reminding them "this place is what it is and it was built by immigrants and we value that". If that exists or not in the US, I can't comment from the outside but without that core value being shared, people won't naturally think "oh, immigrants == good" (especially when illegal immigrants are being called refugees in some cases).
> My point is that there has to be an extra force that keeps reminding them "this place is what it is and it was built by immigrants and we value that". If that exists or not in the US, I can't comment from the outside
It does, there’s a pretty strong message in the US that it was built by and for immigrants. But it turns a large number of people have heard that and said “well now that we’re here, let’s close the gate”.
Americans don't care about immigration from Canada because they're culturally almost indistinguishable and have little reason to illegally stay anyway, as Canadian living standards are not that different from those of Americans.
Similarly, you don't see much concern about illegal immigration from, say, South Korea, Singapore or Japan, or from rich middle eastern countries like Saudi Arabia or Dubai.
If you look for racism everywhere, you'll see it everywhere.
> I always found it odd how restricted immigration is in the US
The US is home to more migrants than any other country in the world. More than the next four countries combined. You should question why you believe the opposite of reality.
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[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 157 ms ] threadNot every undocumented migrant is poor - especially those coming from Asia and taking the Central American pathway, which is what this investigation by Reuters is about.
This is the Reuters investigation into the India-Dubai-France-El Salvador-Mexico route that was disrupted by French intelligence recently - https://apnews.com/article/france-indians-plane-grounded-hum...
Destitute Asians immigrate illegally to the Gulf, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia - where salaries, living standards, and protections for the poor and undocumented are horrid. They don't have the funds to fly to and get a visa to much of Central America (at minimum a $4-7k endeavor with an additional $6-8k to go donkey from there to the border). That is middle and upper middle class money in a lot of Asia.
* are they discovered or are they invented? this is a question of philosophy among the community serving (U)HNWIs.
EDIT: on the other hand, if the objective were avoiding even a hint of KYC (as in 935 Pennsylvania's NOC theory of "illegals"), maybe these pathways would make sense?
> I'd suspect dropping 14k somewhere like Henley&Partners might offer better options than the reported 70k for one of these packages
My Tau's land in the old country is now valued at $100-150k thanks to a highway expansion tender and can generate $15k a year being rented out to Reliance Jio as a gas pump, and the remaining land is still tilled and gets MSP benefits of $5k. That's a passive income if $20k/yr in a small Himalayan village.
My Tau has a high school education and has never heard of the American legal system or investors visas.
This is a common story with the rural middle and upper class.
With that level of money, it's very easy to make a successful business in India, China, or Vietnam, but a mix of ignorance and Social Media convinces gullible people that this is the only way.
So it's not really $72k up front. It's some smaller amount + a cut of what you earn once you're working in the higher income country.
Horrific nonetheless.
The issue is some people are ignorant and don't realize that they can deploy capital in a much more efficient manner (eg. Go to college, start a factory, grow organics, buy property in Mohali) and fall prey to advertisements on social media about how you can earn $75,000 a year as a janitor illegally (not realizing that income tax is a thing AND undocumented laborers would be paid way less).
EDIT: thanks for all your insights here, I learned something today which is cool. I can't help but be a bit philosophical about this thinking that illegal imigrants are denied citizenship (which, to be honest, I think is fine and would prefer the legal route for something like this) but the government is happy to collect its payment from them.
That said, most undocumented migrants don't understand these complex systems and will go unbanked by being cash first or using hawala networks
The typical employee is taxed via withholding tax[1] by their employers, not through their bank accounts.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_withholding
The person that cleans my house from time to time is undocumented, for example, but she declares income and pays taxes.
Here's a longer explanation: https://bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/how-do-undocumented-immigr....
Although this is difficult, it's actually pretty common:
> The best evidence suggests that at least 50 percent of undocumented immigrant households currently file income tax returns using Individual Tax Identification Numbers (ITINs), and many who do not file income tax returns still have taxes deducted from their paychecks.
- https://itep.sfo2.digitaloceanspaces.com/immigration2016.pdf
Remember that most undocumented immigrants don't believe they've broken any laws (and many haven't), so of course they're going to pay taxes if they can.
But not in the US, which is what makes migrating so attractive (and the price so high) in the first place.
> and no you can't even save that in a decade there
There are many ways around that (loans, pooling family income/assets), as other have pointed out. (It's not entirely unlike the cost of US college, which the average US student probably can't save in a decade either.)
I personally would consider this as an option if I wanted to migrate to the US. Probably wouldn't take it; I don't like risk or rule dodging. But there is something to be said for it. From a distance it looks like a relatively low-risk high-reward approach to migration and I can imagine even if it is a terrible choice a bunch of people in the global middle class would take it out of confusion and optimism.
Thinking it through I doubt it'd be for me - but there must be a lot of people in South East Asia for whom it'd look like a reasonable gamble at ~$100k. That wouldn't make up the bulk of the migrants, obviously, but there is a value proposition to justify the money.
> you'd get all the benefits of living in the US
There are more benefits to US citizenship than "not being deported". Illegal immigrants certainly don't have all the same benefits a citizen (or even legal immigrant) has.
Which ones do you think are material?
Being able to work in legit, not under the table jobs
Access to social benefits
72k USD is easily accomplished by big 20 plus member families pooling money together to pay a mule to have one member get in America . Because they know once he gets status they ALL will be allowed to come thanks to the generous family entrance rules.
So no, this isn't the exception. This is the norm. They'll then pool their cash to buy a 4 bedroom house and live 25 in it because that's what real families in developing countries do.
I mean legally immigrating to UK can easily cost £30,000 for a family just in direct fees to government, lawyers and in various surcharges.
Just moving between states in the US can require a third of that.
My cousin payed someone to get a work visa to Canada from North Africa, which cost about $15k. Although the first time she did it it was a scam and she lost all of that money, which was pretty devastating for her. Another cousin payed a coyote to get him to Europe (via Greece), and that was cheaper, but they also left the boat for dead in the Mediterranean and he ended up getting deported back to North Africa.
So yeah, $72k is a lot, but if you're desperate and it's not all upfront, I can see it happening.
My family is from one of those villages where immigration (documented and undocumented) to the West has been common since the 1970s.
The ones who are truly desperate (the rural poor and working class) cannot afford to immigrate illegally to the West so they end up immigrating to the Gulf, Malaysia, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, or South Korea to work as unskilled laborers.
The only people who take these routes in Northwest India are those who area weird mix of landed (so rich as they have a high value asset that can be mortgaged) and ignorant. Oftentimes a healthy dose of "stunting" as well, because even if the guy immigrated abroad illegally, they can at least get a wedding offer now whereas before they were a NEET.
I think neither party actually wants to stop anything. Republican farmers in the south need the labor, urban Democrats need voters (or so they think) and virtue signalling.
Immigrants can't vote. Let's just make that clear because it's a common right-wing talking point that is provably wrong and steeped in bigotry.
> In the remaining 14 states and D.C., voters can cast a ballot in person on Election Day without showing an ID document. These states have "non-documentary" ID requirements, meaning voters must verify their identity in other ways, such as by signing an affidavit or poll book, or by providing personal information. All states have procedures for challenging voter eligibility.
https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/voter-verificat...
Also, these sorts of shenanigans:
https://www.npr.org/2021/12/15/1064385999/new-york-city-will...
(who did their own Dunki over the Bering, back in the day)
I have ancestors who were in the Colonies before the Constitution, and once upon a time, they were also FOB.
The real long term solution would be to make legal immigration easier and cheaper. But neither party seems to be pushing very hard for that.
Deglobalize, polarize, institute the rule of the power as opposed to the rule of law seems to be the message. The consequence, though, would be overall weakening of the states, erosion of trust, and making the defence of all the values our predecessors have already paid in blood for even more toothless.
I think your statement puts the cart before the horse, though. Both parties are "ok" with the status quo not because they necessarily collude to create it, but they are full to the brim with opportunists who use the status quo to their advantage. I don't think there is major political will to actually change anything, but if change forcefully comes any other way, they will happily try to ride any wave to their advantage.
I don't believe this mode of operation is going to change much while the facto regime in the US is gerontocracy which is also all about risk aversion. Oh, and quite possibly a drive to protect big money at all costs.
This is preposterous, you can’t blame Russia for every random domestic problem in USA.
Same with Syria. But in the case the immigration went to Europe, not the US. Again Europe f-ed up.
Navalny was accused of being a CIA asset, Middle East instability was there as some kind of sinister plot against Russia, even potholes in the road are somehow part of the plan.
I never thought I would see this get mirrored in the West.
Now there are people that believe that Russia blew up its own nordstream, that every bit on twitter is Russian bot, but there are no western bots, etc
Like I get that they are a sinister opponent, but you can’t blame everything on them
(FWIW, in my online threat model, "30 second" explanations have a default weighting of malicious, and I'm guessing the cutover occurs somewhere around "3 hours"... Of course, you didn't take longer than 30s to read the previous sentence, so don't forget to double check my claim before relying upon it!)
once graduated, most places offer rubber stamp visas to keep international grads; use that, get a job locally, and then hang out until you qualify for residency / green card.
not esp. difficult, conceptually speaking. the devil is in the details, but its impossible to write a guide for every country and Uni. like Ontario vs. Alberta will be different, vs. California, vs. the UK, etc. etc.
And at that point, there wouldn't be a reason to immigrate to the US, because education and $100k in assets in India, China, and Vietnam is enough to start a successful business or your political career.
The people who take this route are at best ignorant and at worst idiots (and my family is from one of these villages where people would take the Dunki route abroad)
> The second, serving migrants from India, offers charter flights to Central America and overland transfers to the U.S. border for between 6 million ($72,000) and 8 million rupees ($96,000) per person – in many instances with full payment due after arrival in the U.S, according to Indian court documents and K.T. Kamariya, a deputy superintendent of police in the western Indian state of Gujarat investigating illegal migration.
The people who would get the most advantages for being undocumented immigrants (the rural poor and working class) cannot afford either any immigration route to the west.
The only people who can afford it are the subset of the rural elite (ie. Those with land) who are ignorant.
In high school, a friend complained that his mother only watched the sort of movie "with two people who love each other passionately but can't marry because they have the wrong colour dots".
Unfortunately for my movie-going, soon after I realised that Hollywood follows nearly the same formula, only the star-crossed (yet happy-ended) characters' dots are not on their foreheads, but left implicit.
[tbf, Bound (1996) did feature an unusual-for-the-time pair of incompatible dots. Try separating artist from art in that one!]
Umrika [0] and Zinda Bhaag [1] were much better movies about undocumented immigration.
[0] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EjDS6P_aqcI
[1] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rjBIfC96BRc
And "Mehrbani"/"Shukriya"/"Shukr" is the word for thank you in the Northwest.
Hmm ... no?
Rent + living expenses + tuition for two years is way more than that. Even in really cheap places in the US. Plus, you have to account that for certain nationalities everything is more complicated, i.e. expensive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration
What you are trying to do is to imply that a) no country may control their immigration using legislation, b) any attempt to do so is immoral.
If you truly believe that we are all just wanderers on this planet, then motivate publicly a for private members bill (or equivalent) to explicitly rescind all immigration laws and their enforcement.
But you know that's futile, so you push this polemic to discourage the enforcement of the laws that are on the books.
Which is also how you get far-right populists.
https://www.npr.org/2019/03/22/705729699/the-atlantic-if-lib...
Also, "undocumented" drugs, buildings, etc.
Minimal paperwork - just wire over $70k and we send you a passport with your name on and a complimentary welcome pack for whichever city you decide to move to.
I think if you have $1m USD (or is it 500k) and open a small company that hires X employees, you get a decent visa (can't remember the type).
The problem with making that number too low is that people will be encouraged to get loans and whatnot and how does the government prevents small folk from getting exploited? Even without this, today, people are in slave-like situations already.
Sure, the government can just keep out of this and make the libertarian dream come true, but there are usually other consequences (human trafficking, violence, etc) that will cost the government (more? less? I doubt there are studies about this).
There is a reason Americans don't care about immigration from Canada but wanted to build a wall with moats, gun turrets and razor wire across the southern border.
For example, my family immigrated to South America from Italy 3 generations ago. I don't say I'm Italian and don't feel like an immigrant.
My point is that there has to be an extra force that keeps reminding them "this place is what it is and it was built by immigrants and we value that". If that exists or not in the US, I can't comment from the outside but without that core value being shared, people won't naturally think "oh, immigrants == good" (especially when illegal immigrants are being called refugees in some cases).
It does, there’s a pretty strong message in the US that it was built by and for immigrants. But it turns a large number of people have heard that and said “well now that we’re here, let’s close the gate”.
Similarly, you don't see much concern about illegal immigration from, say, South Korea, Singapore or Japan, or from rich middle eastern countries like Saudi Arabia or Dubai.
If you look for racism everywhere, you'll see it everywhere.
The US is home to more migrants than any other country in the world. More than the next four countries combined. You should question why you believe the opposite of reality.