A lot of other countries have as bad or worse leadership & not enough jobs to keep food on the table. This isn't a defense of Trump. Non-European immigrants know what they're in for, but they still believe they have a better shot at improving their lives by coming here.
I never get tired of hearing “my family came here legally.” Yeah, when your great grandparents arrived here legally that meant they got on a boat and then off a boat.
In fact, the Framers' Original Intent was the open borders this nation had in 1789, which is why the words "immigration" and "border" do not exist in the US Constitution.
it's a farce. I've watched so many brilliant former students of mine who want to stay here, want to teach, help build communities...and they are just entirely stymied, every step of the way.
My ( French/ PhD ) roommate after grad school wanted to stay here and the hospital or university fucked some paperwork & didn’t renew a visa or work permit or something and he found out too late and had to leave for some number of years on a few weeks notice
John Oliver! I like to tell his story. He's a rich, famous native English-speaker from Northern Europe married to a US Army veteran. It took him ten years to become a citizen.
My fave part is where you get shuttled to the same section if you are fleeing because *you* were persecuting people, or if you were horribly persecuted but don't have a "designated nonprofit sponsor"
Having gone through my own (refugee) and my partner's (k1 visa) immigration, figuring out how you might qualify is not remotely the hard part. It takes years and SO much work to just get entry. BUT once you're in, the path to citizenship is easy and you really do feel "American", at least in CA.
I agree that white Americans who want today’s immigrants to come “the right way, like we did” should know how easy the US made it for their family. And part of that is learning that it was easy for them because of laws maintain a white super-majority.
My ancestors showed up on a boat and walked off of it with no questions asked. That’s where I’m hard-coded. I think turning away disabled people is abominable.
Mine stood in line, had their last names randomly shortened (and in one case straight up changed to “Smith”) and then were let loose in New York City. Feels like the way to go (though we should leave people’s last names alone now, FFS).
In this case, I'd say instead of replicating the full chart, the alt text should just say it's a "horrendously, cruelly complicated flowchart". Maybe quote a few of the worst bits as examples, like the bit about being born in India.
Sorry, that wasn’t meant to be a direct question to you, but more of a . . .
I tried to figure out how to alt text this flowchart & my brain kinda short circuited in trying to decide how to convey all of this info in a way that makes sense with a screen reader
Like, there has to be a standard way that flow charts are expressed efficiently, but I have no clue where to start in that… & I feel like it’s messed up that that isn’t something I know, that accessibility is such an afterthought that that isn’t common knowledge…
Yup. The whole thing is a mess. I didn't even have to do all the work but had to watch my parents stress and struggle. Don't know how many times I was told we may have to leave and sold belongings/prepared to do so. We were able to get citizenship after living in the US for 18 years.
Took my friend from Canada 17 years and she was married to a US citizen that she eventually had two children with. She was told they were dragging their feet because she paid taxes in the interim. She also knew more about the Founding Fathers than anybody I took civics with.
I'm working with a group of Afghan women's rights activists in hiding in Pakistan and our immigration system is so bad I have to encourage everyone to find somewhere else to go if at all possible.
Jeez, gotta love the "if you weren't forcefully sterilized by the country you're escaping you can move on to the next section, otherwise we're gonna have to ask you some questions" section.
It’s pretty important to note, as the current infighting over h1bs shows, that they *also don’t want people to immigrate legally*. Their worldview is fascist, racist nationalism, and the “legality” argument is just the wedge to get democrats to argue about the wrong thing
I read an essay by an Immigration & Naturalization Service employee. The older workers had told him "get out while you still have your soul". Thought it was a joke.
Soon found out: Poor, persecuted refugees get the boot. Wealthy criminals and evil regime thugs get the red carpet.
My BFF’s husband was a business owner with 3 kids married to an American and was deported to Canada for committing fraud on his green card forms after following the advice of counsel on how to list the ownership of his business. He was denied all appeals.
Girlfriend just missed her second Semester of study cause her passport was stolen. Absolutly shame how unflexible that System is. She owns a Stipendiate and just left for holidays. No return possible
Immigrated my wife through this system, as an attorney! That’s the easiest version of immigration with someone who can theoretically handle it straghit-forwardly. I still leaned on our Congressman to help push it along!
It's a crazyass system. I have a very good friend of 20 years came to US as a young child with her family; parents never applied for citizenship for her. As an adult she applied; took OVER 10 YEARS to get a green card; then she had to wait several more years for her citizenship test. 15 years total.
I love to post this exact paper. Not just because it's very well researched and written. But because the cato institute is a libertarian think tank and even they suggest better policies for legal immigration in the US. Which says a lot.
Immigration is one of the few things that I and my CATO-donating dad agree on. (He is, in fact, an immigrant from Canada. H1B at first. Green card holder for 40 years, finally naturalized last year.)
What drives me insane about the "immigrate legally" crowd is their inability to understand that it's not the same as 40 - 50 years ago. I have family members that immigrated back then that are conservative and and say that. Their excuse is "they can do it like we did" not realizing how hard it is.
Notice how, in the first section, everything eventually goes through "Detrimental to the US according to the president." Wonder how that's gonna go in the next few years.
the "just immigrate legally (by which we mean no anchor babies, no serving military, no work visas etc)" people and the "if you don't like our country, just move to a different one" people is a circle.
Who else tried this? Right, Nazi Germany. And when deporting didn't work....
OMG! I thought you were trying to make me look… it’s there! Are you kidding me???? This should have been all over the news prior to the election… Ugh!! I guess it doesn’t matter. These folks drank the proverbial Koolaid.
That’s why we have a border crisis that will never be solved. Because the people running the show don’t WANT it to be solved. Legal immigration has been made next to impossible and illegal immigrants are being made into the scapegoats.
Now imagine that 20% of the engine code flow chart were also broad, open ended questions labeled "Government action" and took between months and years for answers to come back... and it would be illegal to explore more than one branch of diagnosis at a time while you waited...
It's stuff like this, and the testing they need to pass. That I will always state that an immigrant who has earned citizenship, knows more about America than born Americans.
My grandfather literally just stowed away on a boat from Spain with his best friend/cousin, and they made their way to Ellis Island somehow and basically got waived in
Now people whose ancestors did that not long ago are slamming the doors on everyone else :(
It's especially hard watching Florida do it. My friends - you lived through wet feet dry feet. I get it you hate communism and Castro. But wtf? Nobody's flying the hammer and sickle in DC. Why are you voting for the guy that would have left you to drown at sea because he thought you were losers?
*nods really hard* To the Indian and how I needed to protect my white wife from my parents because she really was not expecting the racism to go the other direction. My parents disapproved of any 1st gen immigrants and I was like "WTF! I am a 1st gen immigrant!"
Also I can't believe of all out Gov. reps, Pramila Jayapal is one of the few I'm proud of. What is it with these people trying super hard to associate with white power to literally white wash themselves after they immigrate? Bobby Jindal (not Bobby), Nikki Haley (not Nikki), Kash Patel (not Kash).
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Then get turned away at the border or arrested by ICE who can arbitrarily invalidate all your documents on a whim anyway.
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/visa-bulletin/2025/visa-bulletin-for-january-2025.html
Of course he went home & never came back
You can't just show up at the US Embassy in your country, or another country to claim asylum.
I agree that white Americans who want today’s immigrants to come “the right way, like we did” should know how easy the US made it for their family. And part of that is learning that it was easy for them because of laws maintain a white super-majority.
(Which is also what some of the smarter countries did for all travelers in 2020)
And that's just allowed?
Could be streamlined with this simple trick
Like, would you repeat the prompt for each y/n?
Or maybe last bit of the criteria?
Any which way the text alone is more than the allotted character limit for alt text
This will have to be multiple alt text descriptions together to get it all
Herculean task
I tried to figure out how to alt text this flowchart & my brain kinda short circuited in trying to decide how to convey all of this info in a way that makes sense with a screen reader
1/3
Ya know what I mean?
2/3
“WHAT IS THAT SENSE INSIDE YOUR HEAD OF WISTFUL REGRET THAT THINGS ARE THE WAY THEY APPARENTLY ARE?”
“Sadness, master. I think. Now—”
“I AM SADNESS.”
3/3
Won’t work on the bad guys cus they like see people suffer
I'm very supportive of opening up opportunities for immigrants and expanding their rights
Soon found out: Poor, persecuted refugees get the boot. Wealthy criminals and evil regime thugs get the red carpet.
Boomers being boomers.
Who else tried this? Right, Nazi Germany. And when deporting didn't work....
Now people whose ancestors did that not long ago are slamming the doors on everyone else :(
My grandfather and many other Spaniards in his community were weirdly xenophobic and particularly opposed to Mexican immigrants
I know way too many first generation immigrants who are anti-immigration
My sister works with someone who came here from China when she was a kid and the same
It's so weirdly common