Thousands of adoptees thought they were US citizens but learned they are not
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The story ( as far as I can remember ) is that a family of Germans moved to the U.S. with their 1 year old child. 24 years later the child graduated university and ... needs to apply for a green card or permanent VISA.
US government refused, so she had to come back to Germany.
I've never understood why U.S. is so protective in terms of citizenship. In most of the EU countries you get naturalized ( receive citizenship ) if you spend certain amount of time in the country and pass a test ( Germany I think it's 7 yrs ).
[1] https://www.uscis.gov/us-citizenship/citizenship-through-nat...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalization#.C2.A0United_St...
A green card is what establishes permanent residency. (I don't think we have permanent visas, but I could be wrong.)
I can only speculate how your friend was allowed to live in this country that long without ever obtaining permanent residency, but regardless, it's an example of the system failing, and that's a really terrible thing to happen to someone.
I don't know the ins and outs of immigration but that's because I'm a citizen. If I wasn't, I'd sure as hell know what I needed to do in order to stay in the only country I'd ever known as home.
According drinchev, I can assume that when his/her friend turned 18 she would have had to go through the process to apply for green card just as if she never lived in the US.
I know someone who was in a similar situation, grew up in America, his parents were diplomats, when he turned 21 he could not longer be a dependent of his parents' status, and the amount of time he lived legally had no benefit in giving him eligibility to apply for a green card.
Why are we so quick to blame the USA, or blame our own country when these things actually aren't all that difficult. There are forms for everything. And where there are challenges, there are lawyers. Can't afford a lawyer or figure it out yourself? Guess what you just proved you're not prepared to bring over an immigrant regardless of their age.
Sucks for some yes because they don't take care of business. But it also sucks when we don't have protective measures in place. And it's both unfair and extremely difficult to have exceptions for everything subjectively.
Are we also expected to pass with an A+ everyone who had good faith that they knew course material? Are we supposed to loosen up all regulation as well because we 'trust' a company will handle things fine because somebody's cousin owns the company?
You know when somebody leaves the scene of an accident, they sometimes do it because they don't realize they are supposed to stay, sometimes they don't even realize they knocked a cyclist down nearly killing them. Guess what, they still get charged with leaving the scene of an accident even if they were completely oblivious.
You do have some points, but your examples aren't so good.
1. In your test example, the students didn't know the course material, they just thought they did. They don't actually qualify for an A+. 2. In the scene of the accident, the rule there is in place because there is an incentive to leave the scene of the accident. Ideally, someone who didn't know the law would get a less harsh penalty than someone who did (so intent matters).
In the case above, there is something special happening. The rights of citizenship are on a much higher more protected plane than other rights (as other fundamental rights, voting, residency, amongst others are derived from them). We are allowed to use strict liability for leaving the scene of an accident because it's a shitty thing to do regardless of the law and because while it does affect the fundamental rights of liberty, it is based on something that the person did to deserve a punishment.
In the case of citizenship, if they technically qualify and act as though they do, that should be enough to at least give them the option of taking it retroactively. It's too fundamental for the most simplistic interpretation of bureaucratic rules to suffice.
And sometimes, these sentiments are easy to say when you are 30, but not so easy to see these things when one is 18, not so easy during the next 4 years as they are in college... and suddenly, crisis.
This stuff is common sense for most agencies to deal with. Lived over 24 years here, born a baby - lets solve this.
Its tragic to be honest. More than anything else, seeing that crumble is disheartening. More than wars, more than Trump.
We've got a lot of racist assholes, basically. Particularly ironic for a country that was founded on immigration. These laws, and their heavy-handed enforcement, are mainly targeted at keeping out Mexicans. European and Asian immigrants are collateral damage, essentially.
Europe, unfortunately, is starting to go the same way. I think it was Switzerland that denied citizenship to a couple of teenage Muslim girls because they didn't want to swim with boys in mandatory co-ed swim class. They've also banned minarets on mosques, apparently--I have no clue how they pretend to justify that. Xenophobia makes people do ridiculous things.
Wanting to keep national character is respecting culture. Switzerland is right to defend equality
As of the story breaking at the end of June, they had not yet been expelled from Switzerland, but we both know what "denied citizenship" means.
So, TL;DR: a family, actively, defiantly, on purpose, failed one of citizenship tests and were not granted citizenship.
Citizenship is not something that guests are entitled to. It's practically an award by the host. Mind you, I am not a Swiss, nor US citizen, nor an EU citizen. I would like to be, since it would benefit my situation considerably, but I was born in another country. So, why any of these countries would be obligated to grant me their citizenship?
It was a decision of the girls ( or their father ) [1] not to be naturalized. They could've just did the swim with the boys and they would've got their citizenship.
On the other hand my friend had NO CHOICE in her 24 year stay in the U.S. to get a citizenship ( although she followed all the rules / laws of the country ).
[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/switzerland-c...
If the patriarchy family understood the idea of education better, maybe they would've thought their children that the law > father word.
If they do understand that idea, but don't like it. Well they should vote on their next election for someone that doesn't support it.
What they should not do is go against the law and do something on their own. Because that's what makes us all citizens.
No-one does irony as well as the Brits.
> http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-37190357 "In such a febrile atmosphere Whitehall is likely to recruit some negotiators from other countries."
Ping me when Saudi Arabia allows Jews to become citizens.
The American electorate believes unemployment is caused by an improper ratio of people to jobs, and it can be solved both by increasing the number of jobs and decreasing the number of people.
In this theory, your friend's expulsion was a victory for the American who took over her job, and for the unemployed person who entered the labor market (if not directly, then via a domino effect).
We are comparatively loose with immigration statuses that don't permit work. Tourist, student, etc. visas are relatively trivial to obtain. We have programs that allow work which doesn't compete with Americans, such as international performing arts groups on tour. We even have programs to fill jobs that Americans aren't available to fill (H1B for highly skilled labor, seasonal farm workers, etc).
The moat is built around statuses that permit competition with Americans for jobs in general. It remains this way because Americans do not generally consider or believe Econ 101 ideas like that trade necessarily benefits both sides of the exchange (or they would not make it), more workers also means more consumers, cheaper labor => cheaper goods and services => higher standard of living, etc.
I really wish everyone could be as enlightened as yourself.
It's not at all clear this violates "Econ 101". Supply and demand set prices, and wages are basically the price for labor. Increasing the supply of labor should necessarily decrease wages, and vice versa.
Imagine the extreme, worst case scenario. If the US opened it's borders completely, and imported every poor worker in the entire world into its borders. Do you really believe that average American worker would be better off? That they could compete with that, and be able to demand a decent wage?
>trade necessarily benefits both sides of the exchange
True, but extremely misleading. E.g. f you move factories overseas for cheaper labor, the local workers lose out, even though other classes may gain. The benefits of trade are not distributed among the entire population.
>cheaper labor => cheaper goods and services
Sure, but if everyone is making proportionally less money, they can't afford the cheaper services, and on net they are poorer.
This assumes everyone is taking jobs and noone is creating them. America has a strong tradition of immigrants building businesses.
Increasing the supply of labor also increases the demand for other goods. Workers have to eat! If you kick someone out of the country, you reduce demand for food, clothes, etc., eliminating the local jobs that would have gone towards satisfying that worker's needs.
Not that I'm arguing against the possibility of more workers lowering wages. They might, to some degree (studies are unclear on to what degree they do), but it's not a zero-sum game, here.
Analogies to the enclosure movement come to mind.
That's a weird statement, I feel like you lack wider context. As an Australian, pretty much the only place in the western world where I need a visa /at all/ to be a tourist is the USA. In something like 50% of the the world, I can just show up at the border whenevs and they'll let me in on the promise that I'm going to leave in a few weeks.
Your standards are actually pretty anal compared to almost everywhere else. China and Russia are really the only comparable places.
In some ways it isn't: merely being born here grants citizenship. That's no longer the case in any EU country: Ireland repealed birthright citizenship years ago.
It means that simply flying to the US on a tourist visa before your baby is born will grant it citizenship. But living in the US on a work visa for 18 years after your baby is born? That doesn't grant anything.
I think it's more complicated than that. My gf has lived more than 10 years in France now and she has to renew her visa every year, they never granted her the 10 years visa, let alone citizenship (she was discouraged to apply for it...).
On the other hand, I have a bunch of friends that obtained their US nationality quite easily. They started as illegal immigrants, got married, which gave them a green card and after a few years they obtained their citizenship.
These are just anecdotes, just to say that it's not so clear that it's harder to get US citizenship.
Ironically, my situation is a little less tenuous because I am the biological child of naturalized immigrants rather than the adopted child of natural-born citizens. Like so many things about this story, that seems so wrong.
I read an article recently that says he's more of an American version of Italy's Berlusconi, and that seems more reasonable to me.
Putting up warning signs, even contentious ones, at the top of the slope is reasonable.
(I read the same article and it is worth noting that a decade ago, every Italian I spoke to began conversations with "I am sorry about Berlusconi ...")
I am not advocating ignoring all discussion of issues raised by Trump or (trumping?!) all his issues with the Nazi card, but it is a part of his background and appeal and should be calmly assessed along with other issues of protectionism, labor rights and more.
Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy invaded, proceeded to rounded and murder and otherwise caused the death of up to 3.1 million Vietnamese in the Vietnamese Resistance War against America.
Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and Kennedy are literally Hitler.
Clearly not. But neither are they the unambiguously virtuous "good guys" that Americans like to imagine that they are.
Let's stop taking everything to extremes. Will a Trump presidency lead to mass executions of civilians in gas chambers? Probably not. Will it lead to innocent people -- mainly Muslims and people with dark skin -- being deported, separated from their families, tortured, and killed? Very likely. Trump has explicitly promised to do all of these things, and I see no reason to doubt him on this. Do I think it will happen to me? Probably not, but that's only because I'm a rich white guy. But I take little comfort from that because once xenophobia takes root it tends to grow like kudzu. I'm a rich white guy, but I'm also Jewish, so there are absolutely some Trump supporters who would like to see me go back to where I came from along with the Muslims, the Mexicans, and the niggers. The best way to keep those people out of power is to keep Trump out of power. And if pointing out the parallels between Trump and Hitler helps to do that then Godwin be damned. Sometimes the Nazi shoe fits.
[UPDATE:] FWIW, it's not just me making this argument:
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/trumps-mass-deportatio...
Besides, many people like to believe they are the “good guys”.
"Sending people back who came illegally [is OK]" is a thinly disguised argument of that same form because we are the ones who decide what is legal. In that respect we are like the Nazis. They thought that what they were doing was OK because it was "legal", because they were "just following orders." Well, no, it was not OK. And deporting people who grew up here "illegally" through no fault of their own but rather because their adoptive parents didn't fill out the right paperwork and xenophobia happens to be running amok is likewise not OK no matter what the law says.
That is certainly true, but Trump has said much more than just calling for law-and-order (which, by the way, is a very loaded term in American politics: the phrase was first used by Richard Nixon as a deliberate code phrase intended to signify solidarity with southern white racists in the 60's). He has also, for example, called out Mexicans for being "rapists" and called for a "total ban on Muslims entering the U.S." Comments like those are xenophobic. The combination of xenophobia and law-and-order is very reminiscent of early Nazi rhetoric. That doesn't necessarily make Trump a Nazi, but it does make it not entirely unreasonable to raise the question.
http://www.npr.org/2016/07/28/487560886/is-trumps-call-for-l...
Trump probably did not intend "law and order" to be a coded racist message. His profound ignorance almost certainly does extend to this branch of American political history. But that's irrelevant. A loaded term is loaded whether or not the speaker intends it to be. Nixon denied it too:
"Nixon publicly denied that the phrase was a code for racism — the very accusation implied a "reverse racism," he said, as if the critics were suggesting that "the Negroes" didn't want law and order, too. But the message was clear enough in Nixon's references to a "city jungle" that threatened to swallow the affluent suburbs. His TV ads showed a middle-aged white woman walking nervously down a city street at night, where the assailants who might be lurking in the shadows presumably weren't hippies or demonstrators."
That is certainly true, except for two things. First, the phrase "law and order" is a loaded term in American politics. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_and_order_(politics) And second, Trump has made many xenophobic statements, both implicit and explicit. He called out Mexicans for being rapists. He called for a "total ban on Muslims entering the U.S." He failed to distance himself from endorsements by white supremacists. These things do not make Trump a Nazi, but they do make it fair to draw attention to the similarities.
> "Trumps policy is...."
No. Trump has said time and again, we have immigration laws and we need to follow them. That includes having more reinforced border fences or walls. Already law. The end of sanctuary cities, which are basically localized laws breaking federal law.
That's true, but that's not all he has said. He has also said that Mexicans are rapists, that Muslims should be banned from the U.S., and that he "doesn't know" about white supremacists. Among many, many other examples that I could cite.
Trump is not an idiot. He's not going to grow a little mustache and call for a "final solution to the Muslim problem." But it is definitely fair to compare him to the Nazis because the Nazis provide a data point of what can happen when you give political power to xenophobes, which Trump most certainly is.
Trump is also concerned with radical islamic terrorism. There is a case for banning immigration from specific countries. We already do it, we also already prohibit U.S. businesses from doing business in specific countries. You can say his take on islamic terrorism / and islamic immigration is too hardline. I don't agree. There are clearly trends of actual radicalization within even second generation muslim immigrnts that require vigilance.
Also the "doesn't know" statement regarding supremist groups was him partially hearing in his ear piece in a remote interview Tapper talking about disavowing "groups" Why would Trump "not know" when his daughter is married to a Jewish man? I noticed how you didn't bring up David Duke either and that's because you know full and well Trump in 2000 said disparaging things about Duke not that some 'disavowal' was needed. He has no association with any of them.
So you're saying it's fair to compare him to Nazi's when his daughter is married to a Jewish man and he has many muslims living and staying in his buildings and that he has repeatedly said he holds in high regard. Time to face facts.
> There is a case for banning immigration from specific countries
But that is not what Trump has proposed. He has proposed a ban on Muslims. Muslim is a religion, not a nationality.
> partially hearing
That excuse has be thoroughly debunked.
> his daughter is married to a Jewish man
Jews are not the targets this time, Muslims are.
> he has many muslims living and staying in his buildings
Because he is not legally allowed to discriminate against them. Yet.
Trump's policies are eerily reminiscent of Hitler's. Seriously, go look up some transcripts of Hitler's speeches, especially the early ones, and substitute "Muslim" for "Jew" and compare the results to Trump's rhetoric. Better yet, show the results to some Trump supporters and ask them if they agree with the sentiments.
But I don't really care what color their shirts are. What I care about is: by what process do we decide who gets thrown out and who gets to stay. Trump's policy is: throw out everyone who can't prove they're here legally. Well, if a passport isn't good enough proof (and it manifestly is not) then I'm not sure I can prove I'm here legally.
Will it be "that bad?" Maybe, maybe not. But if history teaches us anything it is that the time to speak up is before the answer becomes apparent.
[NOTE: I posted this comment in the wrong place in the comment tree, but someone posted a reply before I noticed so now I can't delete it. I re-posted it in the right place: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12418441]
I have read arguments of the form “It is [the current year]. We should be past this by now.” a lot lately, but I do not understand how referring to time provides a useful starting point for an argument about morality. Can anyone tell me?
I think if someone has paid, say, 20% of their total lifetime earnings, with a minimum of $50K over ten years, in taxes to the US government, and they have not committed any crime, they should be given citizenship. This gives the USG ten years to find anyone they'd rather not have in the country, and let them leave before they contribute more than their fair share to a country that rejects them.
My brother has been in the US for nearly 20 years. Started out as a grad student, then as a H1-B. Took him more than 10 years just to get a green card, then 5 years more to be eligible for citizenship.
All this while, he must have paid several hundred thousand dollars in taxes (6+ figure income over 15 years)
Why should another immigrant get the same benefits as him faster than he could by paying even less in taxes?
Because it's not a zero-sum game.
One person's right to citizenship does not erode another person's right to citizenship.
In this hypothetical scenario would your brother not have paid $50k and been granted citizenship much sooner than the other?
How does another person receiving a benefit penalize your brother?
By the same logic, we should all insist on vicious assaults on new military recruits, because that's how it was done years ago.
As a society we should seek to improve the way we treat people, maximizing practical utility (tax-paying illegal immigrants are benefiting society) and seeking fairness. Chasing fairness as a primary goal is a fruitless endeavor.
I think it's awful for both your brother and society that he was required to wait so long to get his citizenship. Should we repeat the same mistakes out of a misguided attempt at fairness?
There has remained a great deal of ambiguity about who is entitled to American citizenship by birth. Although the constitution as amended grants certain rights only to national citizens, the amendments that made national citizenship a part of the constitution failed to describe comprehensively who is entitled to citizenship. As a consequence, the question of who is and who is not a citizen, rather than being been decided on constitutional grounds, has been left to Congress. The odd result is that ordinary federal law, not the constitution itself, decides who is entitled to many fundamental constitutional rights and protections, including the basic rights to live in the United States and vote in national elections.
An interesting series of changes to the federal laws governing national citizenship occurred in the years after World War II. Because thousands of American soldiers and sailors were for the first time being permanently stationed abroad, there arose the question of whether their children born abroad had a right to citizenship. Federal law had previously granted citizenship to all children of American citizens, but during this period the laws were re-written to exclude the illegitimate children of military men with foreign women from citizenship in most cases. Today the law deciding the citizenship of children born abroad to a single American parent is a tangle of considerations of the marital status of the parents, when the child first visits American territory, how long he or she stays, etc.
I've sometimes wondered what the world might have been like in another several generations if those exclusions hadn't been made; by that time, due to the wonders of sexual reproduction, it's likely that tens or hundreds of millions of people outside the United States would be able to find an American in their ancestry, and therefore to claim American citizenship. Eventually, almost everyone would be an American. What would the world be like if everyone were entitled to vote in American elections (and obligated to pay American taxes)?
Interestingly, there is a special law to expedite naturalization for those who "made an extraordinary contribution to the national security of the United States or to the conduct of United States intelligence activities". But even there it's a 5 person per year maximum.
https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2011-title8/html/USCODE...
Congress can change the laws obviously, wonder what the turnaround there could be.
The reason the law was that way is to prevent loopholes like someone adopting a 30 year old person and then using this law to naturalize them.
Usually though good faith and bureaucracy don't mix. It is dangerous to have faith in bureaucracy. In a way that is what the parents did, how the girl at the end said her parent just believed common sense would prevail and even if there is a missing paper here and there, someone sitting across the desk will understand and fix the error eventually.