How an Undocumented Immigrant from Mexico Became a Star at Goldman Sachs
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Also, now that she came out, can her citizenship be revoked? She was in the country illegally for more than a decade, worked illegally, and apparently had tax issues. Don't you have to certify that you've complied with laws and paid your taxes when you apply for permanent residency or citizenship? Don't you have to supply police records for all the places that you've lived when applying for permanent residency? So she must have lied or not supplied all the information that was required. Or did the government just let it slide?
She also admits to marrying her boyfriend in large part because it would legalize her status. That's awfully close to admitting marriage fraud.
Edit: The whole thing sounds a bit like "Look how successful I was, therefore I deserved to live in the US, and I was justified in breaking immigration law." It's a slap in the face to all honest immigrants.
"If you are a foreign citizen who is in the United States without permission, having overstayed your visa, you can indeed cure the problem if you enter into a bona fide (real) marriage with a U.S. citizen and then apply for adjustment of status (a green card)."
You are correct that for most visas and green cards, any violation of immigration law means that your application will be denied.
[1]http://www.alllaw.com/articles/nolo/us-immigration/visa-over...
The authorities have often given leniency in these cases as well.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/501/t...
And I guess the same reasoning can be applied to minors that were brought to the US by their parents. They weren't asked. They had no choice.
So I shouldn't be too sore about her story because she just tried to make the best of the bad situation that her parents got her into. But somehow the article rubs me the wrong way.
It seems odd to me too that Texas and maybe other states would allow illegal immigrants to attend college but give them no perspective on what to do afterwards with their degrees. Maybe they should have petitioned the federal government to go along with: "Alright, you came here illegally as a minor. We're going to ignore that and let you start over now that you're 18. So here's your F1 student visa if you want to stay."
> “There is still the stigma that what we did is shameful,” she says. “I’m tired of being ashamed for pursuing my dream, for climbing up the ladder, and for having success.”
She should be ashamed: she appears to have violated immigration, pension and tax laws. 'I'm pursuing my dreams and being successful' is not a valid counter-argument to 'you're breaking the law.' She's a criminal; she's literally a shameless criminal.
[1] http://americasvoice.org/blog/fox-news-poll-confirms-path-to...
Should Uber be ashamed that by violating taxi regulations, women have been raped/stalked because of how they operate?
Does following taxi regulations prevent these events from occurring? If no, then of course not.
The separate question is, can a corporation experience shame?
But even on less extremist topics, we can find similar examples. How about the prohibition of alcohol? Gay marriage? Marijuana? Where would we be today if the government, enjoying powers of perfect surveillance and enforcement, had -- entirely within the law -- rounded up, imprisoned, and shamed all of these lawbreakers?
Ultimately, if people lose their willingness to recognize that there are times in our history when legality becomes distinct from morality, we aren't just ceding control of our rights to government, but our agency in determining our futures."
...
"In such times, we'd do well to remember that at the end of the day, the law doesn't defend us; we defend the law. And when it becomes contrary to our morals, we have both the right and the responsibility to rebalance it toward just ends."
-- Edward Snowden
[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2wwdep/we_are_edward_...
We all know that this is true of startups; if a startup grows too quickly, it risks losing the culture which enabled it to succeed in the first place. Risk-takers are slowly drowned out by risk-avoiders, and eventually the startup loses its drive. Is it so crazy that the same would be true of states?
I posit that there's nothing unjust about regulating the rate of influx into a society, and plenty unjust about flouting those regulations and cutting one's place in line.
Incidentally, Edward Snowden should be hanged by the neck until dead; quoting him is hardly compelling.
Hopefully we can continue to marginalize people with such an opinion. Exposing government corruption should never be a capital offense.
Betraying one's country should always be a capital offense. Snowden violated his NDA; he betrayed his colleagues and his fellow citizens; he fled into the hands of China and Russia; he revealed legitimate and legal operations which he had no business revealing. He's a traitor.
If I want someone hung or burned at the stake, its those who trample the civil rights of myself and my fellow citizen for the illusion of safety when none can be guaranteed.
It has not done that. It may or may not have violated what you (and possibly I) might like those rights to be. But wanting doesn't make something so. I would love to restrict subpoena power solely to defendants compelling testimony in their defense, but until it has been so restricted, anyone can be forced to provide evidence to the state. I would love for the Fourth Amendment to apply at border crossings, but the courts—to include the Supreme Court—have repeatedly held that it does not.
The law is not what we want, but what it is. So far as I am aware, NSA has consistently acted within the limits of the law, as interpreted by the courts for decades and centuries. Acting within the limits of the law, incidentally, is precisely what neither Mr. Snowden nor Miss Arce did.
Up until the 1960s, blacks were not allowed basic rights and access to many thing, and doing so was considered "criminal". Ditto with gays until recently.
So, anyone fighting against unjust laws are "criminals?
Actually this law made it easier for her to attend college as an undocumented immigrant. But then what ? what are undocumented immigrants that graduate from college supposed to do ? go back to working as cooks and maids ?
Her parents brought her in on a tourist visa at 11, which expired when she was 14. She was only here for three years legally; her family could—and should—have returned to Mexico. Mexico is not some third-world hellhole; it's a developed and civilised country (yes, there's drug violence in some parts; it's still one of the nicer countries in the world). It's hardly like they were refugees from the Sudan.
But whatever her parents did or could do, she had little choice in it as a minor.
She is an illegal immigrant, and a shameless criminal, but why should she be ashamed? Braking a law does not necessarily imply anything shameful, and sometimes it is shameful to obey unjust laws. I hope everyone can think of some laws (at least from history) that you'd be proud to break.
As usual, the people who abide by the rules get screwed, while those who break them, not only thrive, but get written about as some kind of heroes.
My argument somewhere else in this thread is that the system has become an insane one.
Did she steal, defraud, or harm anyone?
If she contributed something of economic value, why are you so against her staying?
Maybe you should blame the immigration process instead.
Well, she was creating and selling derivatives, for Goldman Sachs, prior to 2008.
This option is not available to everyone. I don't think you should have to spend that much in order to come to the U.S. But I also wouldn't blame someone without those resources trying to better themselves in any way possible.
In her case, she was 14, and she had already broken the law. There were no other alternatives. And it wasn't easy. She got luck and did it in ~10 years.
I don't agree with that. Just that don't be so quick to judge without understanding her own situation.
I am going to criticize her approach a little first. She was a minor when coming over, but she did knowingly throw her employer under the bus as an adult who did not appropriately check her status for employment. The fact that this article exists seems a little self-serving and thankless to GS. If you are going under the radar and your employer had a slip up, the least you can do is keep quiet and keep working. You just embarrassed GS for nothing (not that the banking industry cares).
That being said, let's go back to the issue: why was this qualified person not easily allowed to apply for preferential status under the immigration rules? She has a college degree in a select field where we need resources, a job offer from a company more than willing to employ her, yet she was still considered in the same bucket as millions of others? That kind of sucks and it would be the same situation as in high tech.
Again, I know she should have stood in the line as millions of others and waited. However, today that is an unreasonable proposition as for many countries the line that is being considered is for those folks who applied in the 1990s.
There is another conversation to be had about the millions of other people who simply skip the line, and whether we in America try to have it both ways by "not wanting them" but "wanting the cheap tomatoes at the supermarket." That is for another thread.
But she was already in a gray area, because she came at 14 and had obtained and used false documents. I guess once you cross that line, the whole thing becomes highly complicated.
Increased security at the border is keeping people in the USA. They would return to their families if they could, but they have to stay here because crossing back and forth is too dangerous. They should be able to come to the farms in the USA seasonally, help and go back to their families in Mexico. The money they bring to their rural communities will be highly beneficial to those communities. These are hardworking people that are desperate in need of work.
I was referring to both sides of the argument: people simply skip the line too, which screws people who stood in an orderly line. So with both sides screwed up (people skipping the line and Americans going "I dont want them but I want the cheap produce and the cheap nanny"), no wonder it is a free for all.
Basically the current mess will continue because there is too much money to be made out of it.
In fact, Jose Antonio Vargas (who is mentioned in the article) actually once called up ICE directly to ask them why they were not trying to deport him after he had come out publicly about his status and received a lot of attention in the press about it. ICE never got back to him.
"Stole client money & fled the country" isn't exactly common, but it is a thing that happens.
I'm also a little surprised that you can work and pay payroll taxes to an invalid SSN. Shouldn't that raise a red flag when someone pays payroll taxes to an invalid SSN, or when the name of the employee doesn't match the name on the SSN? Doesn't the social security administration notice that and notify ADP / the employer? Not just to combat fraud but also to uncover and fix honest mistakes when someone flips a digit in an SSN?
There are BILLIONS of dollars collected by the IRS into accounts not for the original beneficiary. The Federal Government is the last entity who will complain about those Billions of Dollars extra.
I am sure there is no RED FLAG for, "hey, look, you PAID US MORE" nor for "YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE PAID US THIS."
That is one requirement that would have immediately been deleted from the spec.
Also for those veiled "illegal alien" racist I hope your smug attempt to caste a group of people as beneath you gives you the complacency you so crave.
"But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought."
― Orwell, "1984"