Please consider the situation with empathy. A real person, who by all appearances would make a good citizen, is unable to live in the country of his choice because of a single clerical error. Perfection is too high a bar to hold anyone to.
I understand this guy's problem, and i'm sad for him. but looking at it from the perspective of everybody else who's ever gone through the immigration process, or the people working on the immigration process, i can also understand why this situation couldn't really have any other end result.
No, this is not true. Mistakes happen all the time, everywhere. This guy had no motivation to lie on a simple form.
If you want to see how this works, check with your bank. Mistakes are made all the time processing money, and usually things can be fixed.
Form I-9 is primarily an employment document, not an immigration document.
The form is a requirement to be able to immigrate to the US. No form, no imigration.
On the other hand, a US citizen who never leaves the country might fill out dozens over the course of a career, depending on how often they switch jobs.
That's not how things work. You don't have a right to pick and choose which countries you enter, let alone live. Emigrating is a privilege that's granted by the host nation. If a nation asks a prospective imigrant to not commit fraud or misrepresent himself while applying for a privilege, no one should be surprised if they reject your application when you are caught providing false information.
And is it his fault some idiot ticked the wrong box?
he signed his name to a blank section of the form. that signature is an attestation that the blank section immediately above it was filled in truthfully. it can't be both blank and filled in truthfully. that somebody ticked off a box in that section later on is beside the point (all the other options appear to require additional information, which was also not provided, so whoever ticked off that box made a decent assumption).
it's a mistake in the same way as signing a blank check is a mistake
Actually he doesn't, because one of the very basic requirements is to not commit perjury in the application by providing a document claiming he was an US citizen when he was not.
And I find it highly unlikely that an employee not only forgets to fill in the box attesting his legal status in the US but also an anonymous third party happens to fill it, and fills it the wrongest (and most convenient) way possible.