Hacker News Reader

Comment by dennisgorelik | Hacker News Reader

gdilla, by pointing Vargas to the end of the line you are shooting yourself in the foot. You are imagining that if Vargas would get green card your wait time would be longer. It's not the case. If it would be easier for illegal immigrants to get green cards, it would be even easier to make a compelling case for you and your wife. Why do you think that number of granted green cards per year is a fixed amount? It's not. It can change any time when society is ready for that. Help the society to make that change.

View on HN

There's a finite amount of bandwidth any society can spend on immigration, not an infinite amount (and hint: it's negligible).

At the moment, so-called liberals whatever reason are more concerned about ILLEGAL immigrants than legal immigrants.

Do you know how many legal immigrants' green cards got delayed the last time there was an amnesty program for illegals? Do you think the US govt. will hire more immigration dept. workers if illegals start getting legalized. They don't even hire people in the patent office! Every legal immigrant in the green card queue hopes that an amnesty program won't get passed until he/she gets the green card.

IMHO, there are practical reasons why gdilla is concerned about illegals getting preferential treatment.

Exactly. The bw issues are tremendous. How do you process 10m + illegals whose cases are all so varied, documentation are various levels of sketchy, while there are millions waiting in line LEGALLY, and somehow think 1) it's fair and 2) it's more efficient than now.

There is no technical or business problem to process millions (or even billions) of immigration cases. Immigration cases pay for themselves.

I wish I could be in business of approving/rejecting immigration petitions. That would be a very profitable enterprise.

The problem is that US society is not culturally ready to stop unfair discrimination toward immigrants.

Maybe you've heard of something called time. That is a problem. If you think you can get it down to some kind of automated algorithm, good luck. Like I said, the input will be crap. Have fun proving Mr. Martinez is Mr. Martinez. People like us, who are waiting in line, have already provided the nec input. And paid up too. That's where you solve problems. Not by catering to the dudes at Home Depot who dont trust you, can't afford the fees, and have documentation you can understand if you're lukcy.

Immigration does not have to be free of charge.

I'm sure Jose Vargas is ready to pay for getting his legal status.

But immigration quotas should be removed (or at least significantly increased).

See my previous point. Patent cases pay for themselves too. But the federal govt. is so strapped for money that it takes money from these depts. And Congress is notorious for passing unfunded mandates. Unless you address specifics like this, I'm afraid what you are saying is just wishful thinking.

"Wishful thinking" is when you hope that government would process legal immigrants' cases faster if government spends some extra resources on prosecuting illegal immigrants.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com