Immigration, part 2: impressions

I will briefly describe some of my impressions of the immigration process.

First. The vast majority of those who wish to immigrate admire America, and wish to become Americans. However, they are frequently frustrated by a system that seems arbitrary and haphazard.

1. It begins with the visa application. Good luck getting a straight answer from the consulate which documents you'll need for the embassy interview! Consular officials can deny a visa for any reason at all; Russians who interview at the Moscow embassy say only half-jokingly that the decision depends on how the official's wife treated him the night before the interview. If an applicant does not bring certain documents, the visa is denied even if s/he was never told they were necessary. Applicants do receive a letter describing documents they will need, but the interviewer can request other documents without prior notice. Some applicants receive a visa despite bringing fewer documents than applicants who are told they don't have enough documents.

Many applicants travel a long distance for this interview, at great personal expense. A number have concluded that American bureacracy is no less capricious than Russian bureacracy.

2. Consider the border crossing. It is not uncommon for legal immigrants to wait hours while CIS deals with people who attempt to cross the border illegally, or who have already done so. Many of them miss connecting flights, while someone who arrived after they did explains why he couldn't be bothered to obtain advance parole before leaving the country. Along with the latter fellow, 20 others have arrived, all of them angry, impatient, higher priority than you — because they tried to enter improperly.

(This may not be the case. Many legal immigrants acquire this impression nevertheless. When I brought my wife, we observed this situation personally for two hours. I wasn't much offended at the time, but I am now that I've have heard some of the recent rhetoric.)

3. Finally, the green card. A rumor among Russian immigrants claims that certain regions of the country receive special treatement. Immigrants who reside in these regions benefit from a streamlined application process whose privileges include not having to appear for the green card interview. This rumor is supported by the reports of some Russians that they received their green card without having the interview.

Thus: our laws have clearly defined a process for immigration and residency. However, the actual process and the defined differ considerably.

Second. It's depressing that those who rightly insist on the need for a living wage in this country consistently turn their backs on this issue and support the very policies that lead to lower wages.

Many Catholics give their lives in working with immigrants. I saw one such Catholic address a meeting I attended. She claimed that many businesses seek out and knowingly hire illegal immigrants in order to cut costs by paying wages that would be illegal. In addition, they have fewer qualms about safe working environments. An illegal worker is not likely to put himself at risk of deportation just to report an unsafe working environment, assuming he recognizes the environment as unsafe.

This woman cannot report these violations without losing her ability to minister to the immigrants' religious needs. She can't even report the common abuse of these workers. Asking the government to intervene results in the company's deporting all its illegal employees, seeking out new ones, and prevent her from ministering to the new employees.

Such Catholics have the ears of our bishops; I am sure that they have described the situation. Yet the bishops I have read pass over the completely. They speak of the "positive contributions" that "immigrants" make to the economy, conflating legal and illegal immigrants.

From a consumer's perspective, illegal immigrants do contribute to the economy by lowering prices. It is bizarre that the American bishops should appeal to such capitalist principles, however. Besides the fact that it is uncommon for them to do so, the lower prices are a direct consequence of lower wages — criminally low, in many circumstances. The failure of wages in certain sectors to keep pace with the economy is a direct consequence of the increased pool of low-skilled labor. This increase contributes to the gap between rich and poor, to the lack of adequate employer-sponsored health care, and a number of other difficulties faced by those who work in low-skilled labor. I cannot imagine how Catholic bishops can consider these contributions to be positive.

Expanding the temporary worker program may alleviate this somewhat; I certainly don't oppose it. Contrary to the implications of much of the rhetoric, such a program already exists and provides for low-skilled as well as high-skilled labor. Why we need a new program is beyond me, but I'm not a lawyer, either. I suspect that most employers who actively recruit illegal immigrants from abroad would rather seek out new batches of illegal immigrants than comply with such a program.