The Immigration Iliad | Hacker News Reader

The Immigration Iliad

medium.com

34 pointsbenbreen34 comments

>But I have many feelings, not all of them charitable, about those who scream that undocumented immigrants are not law-abiding. I challenge these screamers to fill out the same paperwork I’ve had to fill out for the past few years and experience the same anxieties and fears I’ve felt. I’m sure they would wilt under the pressure

With all due respect, the author's case is unique. The screamers are not talking about people like the author. Also, a perfectly legal immigrant from India/China goes to ivy league schools, does the same amount of paperwork and waits for the same time, all the while paying taxes like a citizen. You don't hear anybody helping their case.

How is it unique? It's the situation the DREAM act was supposed to address and plenty of screamers are about that.

It is unique because his parents over-stayed a visa and not jump a fence. It is unique because the author actively tried to rectify his situation instead of just expecting to be handed a citizenship. Also, AFAIK, a lot more people are opposed to giving citizenship to every illegal immigrant than to giving it to people who qualify for the DREAMer act.

A significant percentage of undocumented residents over-stayed a visa - perhaps 40%. You think the people spending years campaigning for the DREAM Act are just 'expecting to be handed a citizenship'? They're more involved politically than almost any American citizens are. There are a lot of people who've made huge efforts to get themselves legalized, and I think your comments are made out of complete ignorance and you should spend more time researching and less time spreading uninformed opinions.

How is that possible - living in the country for years and even enrolling in a prominent institution of higher education, all the while being effectively non-existent as far as the legal system is concerned? I can't get my head around it.

You are not non-existent, you are just taking another path where some things are "easier"(from locals perspective, it's usually easier to get a spot at a good school) to achieve they are actually much harder to hold because you are out of the safety net. Other things are incredibly laborious and some things are effectively out of your reach.

From techie perspective, think of it as dirty and quick hack. You are basically quick fix at the system, you don't conform to predefined interfaces and you do not fell in any of the object categories but you still can interact with other objects. Because you don't go from all the checks, some things are easier to you and you can run faster but at the same time you are out of any error checking mechanism. If you fail, you fail dirty and you can't recover.

So when you are an illegal in a country, you usually have access to some things like education and healthcare(sometimes easier than the locals) but you may have incredibly hard time to open a bank account and anything that depends on you having a bank account(the things that are easy and hard depend on the country). It all depends on what paperwork is needed, sometimes you hack your way to obtain certain paperwork(I know a guy who is taking the metro for free, so he would be fined and they will send him a mail with the fine and he will use that mail as proof of address to open a bank account).

Being illegal in a country is very interesting beast. Some people, like the person with the most upvoted comment make it look lşke it's a privilege but it's not. Do you fancy to be an illegal? Burn your documents and pretend that you are somebody else.

Interesting metaphor but I still don't fully understand. I imagine it is easy to go around doing ordinary cash transactions, hard but possible to find a place to live and work (you have to find landlords and employers who are willing to engage in sketchy things). But going to public school? enrolling in Princeton? Do these institutions seriously not care who you are?

Also, if illegal immigrants are not non-existent to the state, why are they tolerated and not getting deported?

studying is probably one of the easier tasks for an illegal immigrant.

states don't want to have much illiterate and skilless people around and don't want to block those who want to get educated so usually they have all kind of exemptions to enable people get education. also, because the education on the planet is not uniform things like maths tests can go long way instead of paper work.

> The attorney patiently explained to me that returning to Santo Domingo was far too risky. Because I’d overstayed my tourist visa as a child, I’d be subject to a ban on reentry; it was also extremely likely that I’d be denied a student visa.

Well, why can't we just fix that, instead of completely ignoring the law for 20 million people (while in the meantime, millions more wait in line the legal way without the privileges that this guy's family took illegitimately)?

It should be Iliad with one 'l', as the author spelled it in the post.

Ugh. Hate missing those. Thanks.

Not being offensive here -- but how about imagine if the author is a terrorist, and this terrorist is studying in an Ivy and pretending to be a student.

There are a lot of things to say about this (for instance, I'm not sure policies should be constructed based on the worst thing that could happen instead of the thing that probably will happen), but this leaps out at me:

Why would a terrorist _pretend_ to be a student. Why not be an actual student? They aren't mutually exclusive, and it doesn't even feel like pretending would save a lot of time.

You could ask the same question of any student, immigrant or not.

Imagine the commenter is a reactionary, pretending to not be offensive.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com