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I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed

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Re: I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed

#221

Post by bradleyjg »

Spoom wrote: post #202
bradleyjg wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never, ever heard of any Federal, State, or local governmental agency suing a sponsor to enforce an affidavit of support. I'd be interested in knowing if anyone else has.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/obligations-affidavit-su... - This details at least one court case of USCIS enforcing an Affidavit of Support, and was literally the first Google result on which I clicked. They do mention that it's rare, but it happens.

No, that's an immigrant enforcing the affidavit of support as a third party beneficiary against the sponsor, I've heard of cases like that, though they are relatively rare.

What I was talking about was where a government agency sues to recoup funds when a beneficiary uses in a means tested program. That I've never seen and google doesn't seem to come up with any examples.

Re: I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed

#222

Post by explorer666 »

aineko wrote: post #141

As a New Zealander going through the US immigration process, this whole post rings extremely true to me. People who have not gone through immigration before have no idea what its like for your entire life to be dictated by the whims of an opaque bureaucratic system. The most frustrating thing about it is that you have essentially no opportunities to better your situation via your own initiative. Don't like your job,…

Why did you leave NZ? I ask because I was thinking about moving there.

Re: I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed

#223

Post by chrisper »

aineko wrote: post #141

As a New Zealander going through the US immigration process, this whole post rings extremely true to me. People who have not gone through immigration before have no idea what its like for your entire life to be dictated by the whims of an opaque bureaucratic system. The most frustrating thing about it is that you have essentially no opportunities to better your situation via your own initiative. Don't like your job,…

What visa do you have now?

Re: I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed

#224

Post by steve-howard »

saalweachter wrote: post #195
kuschku wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The debate the politicians in my state (Schleswig-Holstein, a state in Germany) had about this was really interesting, sadly it’s in German. Essentially, it boils down to two issues: Morally, we all are descendants of immigrants, or at least most. Economically, most immigrants are willing to work hard. Combined with the fact that our society has a birth rate below replacement rate (1.3 vs. 2.1) we need immigrants jus…

Another frequently-cited benefit of opened borders is that -- for the most part -- current citizens own everything in this country, and stand to make a bit of cash if there's an influx of new faces looking to buy houses, used cars, rent rooms, etc etc etc.

I can only follow that argument if we're talking about citizens that already have assets. Increased competition for houses, used cars, and rentals will drive up prices, which is good news only if you own houses, cars, and rental property respectively.

Re: I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed

#225

Post by LoSboccacc »

jacquesm wrote: post #163
hluska wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the OP, but I mostly support the idea of open borders and I'm from Canada. Canada has many of the same issues that New Zealand has. We are the second largest country (by landmass) in the world, yet our population is slightly smaller than California. Much of our land is quite rugged, or very cold but our country is still capable of supporting more than the 35 million we currently have. The best argument that I…

Opening the Canadian border would not magically bring jobs back that have been moved to low wage countries.

people failed to realize while still in time that the outsourcing of manufacturing would have destroyed the production chain of all related goods.

even if one were to reduce labor costs to china level, china has the infrastructure (technological and industrial) to build things and the countries that were abandoned 20 years ago do not, not anymore and not at the level they have.

it is not about, say, producing mobile phones or cars, it's about the steel and plastic they need. and at least all around my area all refineries and mills are long gone. even if we drive down labor prices, china is now technically more advanced than us and at a scale we would never reach.

Re: I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed

#226

Post by mc32 »

sliverstorm wrote: post #197
Nadya wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It is not unreasonable for people to want to preserve culture. It has sentimental and historical value, but I don't think it's particularly important. We can argue cultural identity, but that's only important so long as there are various cultures. In a monoculture world, the idea of cultural identity would be a lost concept. Cultural anthropology, which while highly interesting and informative of human relations, is…

Culture is not totally benign. The export of America's culture has had a huge impact on the world, for better or worse. I think people who want to preserve their own culture have reasons aside from simple nostalgia.

Up and till approx the 40s we imported our culture from Europe -as did much of the rest of the economies of the world. American culture exports didn't become popular till the US became an economic power to contend with.

In Asia, however, the cultural exporters, at the moment, are Japan and Korea, not so much China, despite its economic size. Fortunately and unfortunately, Asia is more pragmatic about cultural imports. There isn't the OMG our indigenous culture is being subverted and devoured!!

The pragmatism is in the form of foreign ideas with Asian values which seems to make the ideas less problematic.

Never the less, I think in many places, it's uncertainty or inferiority and superiority complexes which give rise to ideas of wanting to preserve culture. A fear of change. In the US people lament the change in our culture for 'the worse', as some believe. In other places, similar local changes are interpreted as 'westernization'. But really, do they want to go to how their culture existed in 1900, for example?

Re: I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed

#227

Post by exelius »

bruceb wrote: post #113
IkmoIkmo wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From Europe, where people share some culture, they never the less still experience integration issues where locals resent foreign populations, example France and polish workers, or Germany and Serbs or Turks, or Spaniards. It's not really foreign populations per se. The resentment is really mostly socioeconomic. Nobody resents Persians in the Netherlands because the Persians who migrated here are mostly upper-class…

In Europe it is a cultural issue also. There is a reason even Canada has Canadian content laws to protect from the onslaught of American music. It is not unreasonable for people to want to preserve culture.

Only slightly related, but for as much as Americans consider ourselves inextricably linked with Europe, we're much more similar both economically and culturally to South America. The average American's life looks a lot more like that of an office worker in Colombia or Brazil than it does someone in Berlin or London. This is likely because South American countries developed using the USA as a model, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Re: I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed

#228

Post by peterayemi »

This strikes too close to home. I am packing my bags and heading out soon too. I have spent 5 years here and have a masters in computer science from a top ranked school. The H1B visa is essentially a lottery which locks out talent from American companies. I failed to get a visa through the lottery process and I have to head back home too.

Re: I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed

#229

Post by chrisper »

mzs wrote: post #201
bane wrote: post #72

I sympathize with the author, the path to a green card is ridiculous. [1] But that's where my sympathies stop. It's not a hidden process either. If staying here matters to you better work tirelessly to put yourself on a path to permanent residency and you better be the one to push it daily or it won't happen. Here we have a highly educated, Ivy Leaguer with a LAW DEGREE , who didn't. But about 500,000 people a year d…

It is very likely that the first time he applied for the lottery he would lose his visa and have to leave the US for an indeterminate period of time. The way it works in practice, people that had another visa before are at a disadvantage in the lottery. It is also not free. Military service was potentially another route though, but may have been intractable due to circumstances like student loans or military fitness…

No. There is no connection between the lottery and your visa except if you win. You do not win the green card, you win the application. Not sure why you thinking that the lottery is not free, but it has been free forever (except for the scam sites).

Military service only gives you green card and residency if it is war time. During non war time, it allows you to apply for citizenship after you served (instead of waiting 5 years), but you need a greencard before that.

Re: I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed

#230

Post by azinman2 »

So no one seems to mentioning the one obvious fact (to me)... it seems like it's working as designed and there is a good reason why:

Part of US diplomacy is to educate foreigners and let them go back to their own countries so that those who are improving/leading said countries are more friendly to the US. It also is part of diplomacy to spread education so that the rest of the world can buy into our model of functional capitalist countries so we can have trade and not war or famine.

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