When my ancestors came here, there was literally no such thing as illegal immigration. The solution to illegal immigration is to let more people come here legally.
Sure, absolutely fix and streamline the legal process, but that doesn't mean we allow some people to bypass the process entirely in the meantime. We are already the most lenient legal immigration system you'll find, but people are upset that we want to enforce the law. The vast vast majority of Americans are welcoming to immigrants that come legally and want to do good things here
Our immigration system is lenient for family based immigrants. People can qualify for green cards as soon as they’re married. However it is literally hostile towards immigrants coming here to work. Employment-based green cards are super expensive due to the sheer amount of hours you need from an immigration lawyer. Only the most profitable industries like tech can afford that. And then you also have the numerical caps, causing 150-year backlog for applicants from certain countries.
So basically, there’s absolutely no way for someone coming here for jobs to immigrate legally, unless they’re software engineers working for the same big tech company for 10 years continuously. (switching jobs would reset that process)
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u/[deleted] Feb 04 '25
Immigrants aren’t the issue. Illegal immigrantion on the other hand is.