Immigrant entrepreneur arrested to meet quotas • Hacker News Board

Re: Immigrant entrepreneur arrested to meet quotas

#71

Post by colkassad » Thu, Oct 20, 2011, 1:44 PM UTC

compay wrote: post #32

I'm American. My wife is Argentine. We live in Argentina in large part because when we wanted to marry in 2006, we couldn't get her a permanent visa to live in the USA. Her fiancee visa was in fact quickly approved, pending an interview at the US consulate in Buenos Aires. We waited and waited, called, had our lawyers call, and the response was always "when the consulate is ready to make an appointment, they will cal…

I married my wife overseas in 2007. In 2008 we applied for immigration at a US embassy (I sponsored her as my spouse), waited a couple of months, and received an appointment date. My wife was granted a visa at the appointment. I made a comment during the interview on how the process was so painless and the consulate basically said, "well, you guys are married". 3 years later, she is a US citizen. I think the fiancee visa route plays second fiddle to family immigration. That and maybe the Buenos Aires consulate needs to get their act together. It's a shame you spent so much money on lawyers as well :| Good luck to you...you may want to try again now that you are married.

Re: Immigrant entrepreneur arrested to meet quotas

#72

Post by gujk » Thu, Oct 20, 2011, 1:44 PM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #19

An interesting factoid. There is no legal way for anyone to just come to US and make it their home country. Say someone from Africa or South America. They can't simply save enough money, get on a plane, land at JFK and then after 10 years or whatever time become citizens. They would have to be persecuted in a terrible way before being granted asylum, have to marry a US citizen, find a company that would hire them. I…

Is that surprising or peculiar to the USA? Is it easy to become a citizen of Japan, or Germany? It is a general pattern that highly desirable destinations to live eventually fill up (by some metric chosen by the insiders) and close borders or are made undesirable.

Re: Immigrant entrepreneur arrested to meet quotas

#73

Post by hezekiah » Thu, Oct 20, 2011, 1:45 PM UTC

compay wrote: post #32

I'm American. My wife is Argentine. We live in Argentina in large part because when we wanted to marry in 2006, we couldn't get her a permanent visa to live in the USA. Her fiancee visa was in fact quickly approved, pending an interview at the US consulate in Buenos Aires. We waited and waited, called, had our lawyers call, and the response was always "when the consulate is ready to make an appointment, they will cal…

Last time I went back to the USA from Germany, I was exposed to fifteen minutes of questioning, accused of having an invalid passport, and other such indignities. This despite being a native born American with part of my genealogy going back to the Mayflower.

On the trip back to Germany, where I am only an immigrant on a short-term visa, I was given a stamp and waved through after about ten seconds.

When you're treated worse by your own country as a native citizen than as an immigrant in a foreign country, you know your country has problems.

Re: Immigrant entrepreneur arrested to meet quotas

#74

Post by colkassad » Thu, Oct 20, 2011, 1:46 PM UTC

alttag wrote: post #68

compay wrote: post #32

I'm American. My wife is Argentine. We live in Argentina in large part because when we wanted to marry in 2006, we couldn't get her a permanent visa to live in the USA. Her fiancee visa was in fact quickly approved, pending an interview at the US consulate in Buenos Aires. We waited and waited, called, had our lawyers call, and the response was always "when the consulate is ready to make an appointment, they will cal…

Concur. My sister married a non-citizen. It took three years (and two kids) before her husband's U.S. citizenship was conferred. What a mess.

This is the rule. It's five years for non-spouses I believe. I assume he was living in the US as a permanent resident during this time.

Re: Immigrant entrepreneur arrested to meet quotas

#75

Post by megablast » Thu, Oct 20, 2011, 1:46 PM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #19

An interesting factoid. There is no legal way for anyone to just come to US and make it their home country. Say someone from Africa or South America. They can't simply save enough money, get on a plane, land at JFK and then after 10 years or whatever time become citizens. They would have to be persecuted in a terrible way before being granted asylum, have to marry a US citizen, find a company that would hire them. I…

> An interesting factoid. There is no legal way for anyone to just come to US and make it their home country.

I am pretty sure this is exactly the same for every country. Not anyone can move to any other country, it has not been that way for a long time.

Re: Immigrant entrepreneur arrested to meet quotas

#76

Post by gujk » Thu, Oct 20, 2011, 1:47 PM UTC

huhtenberg wrote: post #50

rdtsc wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Home country -- on track to be a citizen. And even E-2 is not just anyone -- it is for rich people. Even the minimum amount quoted $50,000 is considered enormous by most of almost 7 billion people living in the world.

It might be a substantial amount, but it is a legal way to live in the US. So your factoid while interesting is not exactly accurate. Also, to put the $50K in perspective - Canadian permanent resident visa has a requirement of showing $10K in available funds, and there is a metric ton of such visas getting granted every year. $50K is not far off.

That is exactly what the "oid" in "factoid" means, by the way.

fact : factoid :: human : humanoid

Re: Immigrant entrepreneur arrested to meet quotas

#77

Post by Symmetry » Thu, Oct 20, 2011, 1:47 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #45

eis wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree it was worded a bit harshly but on the other hand, that dream I had honestly is gone. So it's not hyperbolic, just maybe not worded perfectly I admit. Some people may understand my initial comment as bashing against the USA. I want to clearly state that I didn't mean that at all. The last sentence was to express that I'm sad to see such things happen and I'll be the first to cheer if the USA can restore what…

What it used to be when? When black people couldn't vote? When the US was propping up various dictators by virtue of them being "not communists"? There have always been ugly things about the country - just like pretty much every other country, if you dig some. Not to say people shouldn't point out the defects and work to improve them, just that hand-waviness isn't part of the solution, IMO.

There is one sense in which the US has noticably regressed. Back In The Day we wrote on the Statue of Liberty "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." Then in the had a big panic about foreign terrorists in the early 1920s[1], which ended up with the US cutting back on immigration by more than an order of magnitude. The recent panic about foreign terrorism certainly isn't helping, either.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Red_Scare

Re: Immigrant entrepreneur arrested to meet quotas

#78

Post by GFischer » Thu, Oct 20, 2011, 1:47 PM UTC

tomgruner wrote: post #54

chalst wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your conclusion, but the violation of article 15 is not perfectly clear: the tricky word in clause (2) is the adverb "arbitrarily" - I think it is generally taken to mean that, in the context of the article 15 being about statelessness, nations are obliged to offer a citizenship path to refugees, but otherwise are not obliged to offer a citizenship path to anyone else. I got this impression from an artic…

Your probably right about that, I don't have any legal expertise. It seems that Article 15 states that each person has a right to a nationality, not to the nationality of the country they are in.

It's fairly common for children of illegal immigrants to be in such "gray areas" where they don't have any nationality.

One of my half-sisters was in such case, she was born in Austria but neither of her parents were Austrian, so she was ruled not to have the right for Austrian citizenship, fortunately Uruguay is not so strict and recognizes foreign-born children of Uruguayans as Uruguayan and finally gave her the nationality.

Re: Immigrant entrepreneur arrested to meet quotas

#79

Post by drieddust » Thu, Oct 20, 2011, 1:53 PM UTC

gujk wrote: post #64

drieddust wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever since Obama came to power American Visa system got fucked up. I work for a consulting firm and people are denied Visa on arbitrary grounds such as "we are not satisfied with your purpose of visit", "why you need to meet your customer face to face" etc. Even that is fine but funny thing is that same person is allowed visa for the same purpose when he applied next time :) American under Obama have started some kin…

Do you really think it is related to Obama's administration, or just a general trend of official xenophobia and terrorist mumbo jumbo over the past decade?

Not sure but there is a correlation because this trend has escalated ever since he has planned for a re-contest.

Re: Immigrant entrepreneur arrested to meet quotas

#80

Post by mmatants » Thu, Oct 20, 2011, 1:55 PM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #55

huhtenberg wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be a substantial amount, but it is a legal way to live in the US. So your factoid while interesting is not exactly accurate. Also, to put the $50K in perspective - Canadian permanent resident visa has a requirement of showing $10K in available funds, and there is a metric ton of such visas getting granted every year. $50K is not far off.

So is marrying a citizen or getting an H-1. They are legal. Read my comment, I mean someone from any part of the world, just getting enough money for a plane ticket, getting on a plane or boat, landing in NY and eventually becoming a citizen of US. No need to marry anyone, getting any company to sponsor you, no "gifted" abilities, no need for $50K, no need to have been raped and mutilated by militias and so on. That…

I suppose the expectation is that unless you are escaping imminent danger (refugee status) or joining a loved one (marriage), your decision to change your home is a calculated move - and the gov't gives a similarly calculated go-ahead. In other words, you are describing a niche of "I am OK now, and would like to join you", and the government responds with "we are OK now, so what will you bring along?".

Not making a judgment about the ethical conclusions of that, though.