Luz shares her apartment with her husband, also from Mexico and also undocumented. They met in America. He works in a bar. They have a young daughter who was born in America and is therefore a US citizen.
You have absolutely no idea how legal immigration to the US works. My family immigrated from Iraq nearly a decade and a half ago. We had NOTHING. We had no property, no savings, no investments, and no money for anything like lawyers or the like. Yet despite our struggles, we kept being patient and did everything necessary to enter the country legally.
If you unironically think that the only way to immigrate to this country is by being extraordinarily rich or by sneaking illegally, then you’re too ignorant for this conversation. This applies doubly so if you can’t even comprehend why illegal immigration is wrong on both a legal and moral level. Not only is it a breach of national security when you have this many people enter the country without documentation or vetting, but it’s also a slap in the face for all the people like my family who went through a lot to get in the country the right way AND to all the people and families out there who are still waiting their turn to get in. Why should they be shafted in favor of people who choose to cut the line, intentionally circumnavigate immigration laws, and still feel entitled to receive the same treatment as legal immigrants?
Immigration is a privilege, always has been and always will be. It is not right and never was. Nobody is entitled to be here or any other country they are not citizens of. My family had the privilege of moving here and so did yours. If people want to move to another country, great, but they have to do it through the legal channels. If they reject you then you have to respect it, and if their system takes a long time then you just have to wait. You can’t just skip immigration laws just because you don’t feel like it. By doing so, you automatically forfeit any sympathy for your immigration case (the only exceptions being genuine asylum cases from either Mexico or Canada). Why should sympathy go to you instead of someone who is going through similar circumstances by immigrated legally or is waiting their turn legally? The answer is it shouldn’t
Uh, yes I do. I helped a very close friend of mine immigrate to America. She came here from Venezuela illegally, then immediately started the process.
Don’t tell me that it isn’t expensive, and doesn’t take lawyers, because I lent her several thousand dollars to cover the costs. Even though she was working hard to resolve her situation, she was still technically illegal while the process played out.
That was about 10 years ago, and she just became a legal citizen in December.
Your family was from Iraq, a country that we deliberately broke. So while your family didn’t have much, it’s likely that your family had special treatment because of America’s special relationship with Iraq at the time. I doubt your situation was the same as the person who just slips in from some random country.
What are you even on about lmao? Ever since the Persian Gulf war back in the 1990s, Iraq was heavily sanctioned by the US and immigration was very difficult, and this was doubly so after 9/11 and the 2003 invasion. The US ever since then has had ADDITIONAL layers of mandatory screening, background checks, paperwork, and interviews compared to other countries. The heightened scrutiny that Iraqis had to go through when applying to immigration to the US is iconic. That’s the “special treatment” my family went through. Not to mention that we were Iraqi citizens living in Syria at the time when we did our immigration process so even if there was any of that elusive special treatment, it didn’t cover us. But that’s the thing, you literally know nothing about me, my family, or the immigration process to get here. You’re just making up assumptions to rationalize your ignorance.
Also, If we assume that your story about Venezuelan friend is true, it directly contradicts the very point you made in your previous comment. The OC specifically pointed out how he gets annoyed when illegal immigrants get more entitled than his family, who has struggled greatly to get into this country legally. You immediately accused him and his family of being privileged, wealthy, and having the right background even though you know nothing about OC, his family, what they went through, or what’s required to immigrate here legally. Right after saying this, you go ahead and provide this anecdote where you talk about how your friend ILLEGALLY immigrated here, PAID her way through the system by hiring American lawyers using thousands of dollars of her own money as well as money you lent her, and then had the right background to get accepted in the end. That’s literally the privilege you were accusing the OC’s family of having.
If you have no idea of legal immigration actually works, why are you talking so confidently about it to people who have actually gone through it? It seems your only experience with immigration is a single indirect case of illegal immigration, and your knowledge doesn’t extend past that. Where do you get off telling us what our experiences were like when you don’t even know what you’re talking about? That’s just arrogance.
My friend also arrived with nothing, got a job and worked her ass off, using nearly every penny to pay for the process. Like many, she started illegal, but became a citizen. That’s the point.
Good for her, but your friend still came here illegally. She jumped ahead of a lot of people who are waiting to come here legally. The point is that not liking the system, even if it’s not great, is not an excuse to come illegally anyway. If you choose to do so regardless, you should do so with the understanding that you’re not going to be afforded the same opportunities or sympathy as people who want to immigrate here legally. The opinion that OC expressed is that people who came here illegally, like your friend, who also complain and whine get under his nerves because they literally cut the line and chose to circumnavigate the laws in front of people like his very own family who had to struggle to get here and still have the audacity to act entitled. It’s an understandable sense of frustration.
Nobody " jumped the line," there is no “line.” It’s dumb concepts like that that keep this nonsense going. There isn’t one line, there are immigration offices all over the country, and she went through the process locally, in an area with a much higher rate of immigration than most places, with the facilities to handle it. Nobody had to wait longer, or was refused because of how my friend came here. Stop using that ignorant reason to excuse your bigotry.
She was from Venezuela, which is occupied by an authoritarian government. It wouldn’t have been possible for her to navigate the situation from Venezuela. In the absence of the ability to emigrate legally out of Venezuela, the people cobbled together a system to come to America in a technically illegal manner, but immediately get into the legal asylum system. My friend was introduced to this “system” through her church, which had helped other people do the same thing.
Many, many people came here like she did, and when she arrived, she stayed in an apartment with three other Venezuelans, all of whom were going through the same asylum process, and my friend used their lawyer.
The US government even had a special program for Venezuelans and other oppressed nations. Trump cancelled that program, and instantly declared all those that were here under the protection of that law, over 200,000 people, to be criminals. Luckily my friend became a US citizen last December, just before Trump took office. The only thing that was standing between being a law-abiding American citizen, and being a vicious Venezuelan gang member, was a few short weeks of time.
You have absolutely no idea how legal immigration to the US works. My family immigrated from Iraq nearly a decade and a half ago. We had NOTHING. We had no property, no savings, no investments, and no money for anything like lawyers or the like. Yet despite our struggles, we kept being patient and did everything necessary to enter the country legally.
If you unironically think that the only way to immigrate to this country is by being extraordinarily rich or by sneaking illegally, then you’re too ignorant for this conversation. This applies doubly so if you can’t even comprehend why illegal immigration is wrong on both a legal and moral level. Not only is it a breach of national security when you have this many people enter the country without documentation or vetting, but it’s also a slap in the face for all the people like my family who went through a lot to get in the country the right way AND to all the people and families out there who are still waiting their turn to get in. Why should they be shafted in favor of people who choose to cut the line, intentionally circumnavigate immigration laws, and still feel entitled to receive the same treatment as legal immigrants?
Immigration is a privilege, always has been and always will be. It is not right and never was. Nobody is entitled to be here or any other country they are not citizens of. My family had the privilege of moving here and so did yours. If people want to move to another country, great, but they have to do it through the legal channels. If they reject you then you have to respect it, and if their system takes a long time then you just have to wait. You can’t just skip immigration laws just because you don’t feel like it. By doing so, you automatically forfeit any sympathy for your immigration case (the only exceptions being genuine asylum cases from either Mexico or Canada). Why should sympathy go to you instead of someone who is going through similar circumstances by immigrated legally or is waiting their turn legally? The answer is it shouldn’t
Uh, yes I do. I helped a very close friend of mine immigrate to America. She came here from Venezuela illegally, then immediately started the process.
Don’t tell me that it isn’t expensive, and doesn’t take lawyers, because I lent her several thousand dollars to cover the costs. Even though she was working hard to resolve her situation, she was still technically illegal while the process played out.
That was about 10 years ago, and she just became a legal citizen in December.
Your family was from Iraq, a country that we deliberately broke. So while your family didn’t have much, it’s likely that your family had special treatment because of America’s special relationship with Iraq at the time. I doubt your situation was the same as the person who just slips in from some random country.
What are you even on about lmao? Ever since the Persian Gulf war back in the 1990s, Iraq was heavily sanctioned by the US and immigration was very difficult, and this was doubly so after 9/11 and the 2003 invasion. The US ever since then has had ADDITIONAL layers of mandatory screening, background checks, paperwork, and interviews compared to other countries. The heightened scrutiny that Iraqis had to go through when applying to immigration to the US is iconic. That’s the “special treatment” my family went through. Not to mention that we were Iraqi citizens living in Syria at the time when we did our immigration process so even if there was any of that elusive special treatment, it didn’t cover us. But that’s the thing, you literally know nothing about me, my family, or the immigration process to get here. You’re just making up assumptions to rationalize your ignorance.
Also, If we assume that your story about Venezuelan friend is true, it directly contradicts the very point you made in your previous comment. The OC specifically pointed out how he gets annoyed when illegal immigrants get more entitled than his family, who has struggled greatly to get into this country legally. You immediately accused him and his family of being privileged, wealthy, and having the right background even though you know nothing about OC, his family, what they went through, or what’s required to immigrate here legally. Right after saying this, you go ahead and provide this anecdote where you talk about how your friend ILLEGALLY immigrated here, PAID her way through the system by hiring American lawyers using thousands of dollars of her own money as well as money you lent her, and then had the right background to get accepted in the end. That’s literally the privilege you were accusing the OC’s family of having.
If you have no idea of legal immigration actually works, why are you talking so confidently about it to people who have actually gone through it? It seems your only experience with immigration is a single indirect case of illegal immigration, and your knowledge doesn’t extend past that. Where do you get off telling us what our experiences were like when you don’t even know what you’re talking about? That’s just arrogance.
My friend also arrived with nothing, got a job and worked her ass off, using nearly every penny to pay for the process. Like many, she started illegal, but became a citizen. That’s the point.
Good for her, but your friend still came here illegally. She jumped ahead of a lot of people who are waiting to come here legally. The point is that not liking the system, even if it’s not great, is not an excuse to come illegally anyway. If you choose to do so regardless, you should do so with the understanding that you’re not going to be afforded the same opportunities or sympathy as people who want to immigrate here legally. The opinion that OC expressed is that people who came here illegally, like your friend, who also complain and whine get under his nerves because they literally cut the line and chose to circumnavigate the laws in front of people like his very own family who had to struggle to get here and still have the audacity to act entitled. It’s an understandable sense of frustration.
Nobody " jumped the line," there is no “line.” It’s dumb concepts like that that keep this nonsense going. There isn’t one line, there are immigration offices all over the country, and she went through the process locally, in an area with a much higher rate of immigration than most places, with the facilities to handle it. Nobody had to wait longer, or was refused because of how my friend came here. Stop using that ignorant reason to excuse your bigotry.
She was from Venezuela, which is occupied by an authoritarian government. It wouldn’t have been possible for her to navigate the situation from Venezuela. In the absence of the ability to emigrate legally out of Venezuela, the people cobbled together a system to come to America in a technically illegal manner, but immediately get into the legal asylum system. My friend was introduced to this “system” through her church, which had helped other people do the same thing.
Many, many people came here like she did, and when she arrived, she stayed in an apartment with three other Venezuelans, all of whom were going through the same asylum process, and my friend used their lawyer.
The US government even had a special program for Venezuelans and other oppressed nations. Trump cancelled that program, and instantly declared all those that were here under the protection of that law, over 200,000 people, to be criminals. Luckily my friend became a US citizen last December, just before Trump took office. The only thing that was standing between being a law-abiding American citizen, and being a vicious Venezuelan gang member, was a few short weeks of time.