Visa Perversity
This is a bit regrettably Friedmanish of me, but last night I wound up randomly meeting a young South Korean guy at a bar who’s in Stockholm as an exchange student and I asked him why he wanted to come to Sweden. He said Swedish people speak English very well and he wanted to improve his language skills. So I asked why he didn’t come to America where we speak better English than the Swedes (no offense) and don’t share Sweden’s perverse aversion to spicy food. He said it was too hard to get a visa to study in the USA.
You hear more and more stories like this in recent years and it’s just very hard for me to see the percentage in adopting visa policies that deter young, educated Asians from coming to the United States. From the very beginning our country has always derived powerful benefits from “brain drain” effects in which a healthy proportion of smart people from all around the world want to come here. There’s no good reason to throw that away.
88 Responses to “Visa Perversity”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
October 4th, 2009 at 8:57 am
Is there a stated reason for reducing the number of visas that are granted for educational purposes?
October 4th, 2009 at 9:13 am
Is there a stated reason for reducing the number of visas that are granted for educational purposes?
GWOT.
October 4th, 2009 at 9:13 am
When I first read the title I saw “Viva Perversity.”
October 4th, 2009 at 9:16 am
Another reason why he might have decided on Sweden instead of maybe Great Britain or Canada, is that just like regular students exchange students don’t have to pay any tuition. The current government is set to change that tough.
October 4th, 2009 at 9:23 am
Apparently, this visa acquisition difficulty also played a roll in eliminating Chicago as host for the 2016 Olympics.
October 4th, 2009 at 9:25 am
There are South Korean terrorists?
I haven’t seen too many gimmick posters on Matt’s blog.
October 4th, 2009 at 9:35 am
GWOT + PC.
Political correctness makes us unwilling to say that having more Indians and Koreans is fine, but Saudis and Pakistanis are not.
We won’t even admit to wanting to search young Saudi men more than others on an airplane. When you are that removed from reality, a lot of stupid stuff happens.
October 4th, 2009 at 9:35 am
My understanding is that the problem isn’t the NUMBER of visas, but the ridiculous amount of paperwork required, and the fact that if there is even a tiny error (on either side), you have to start all over again.
The real problem for students is that there is no “apply for visa by this date and you will get your visa in time for you to start school in September.” All it takes is some horror stories of people not getting their visa in time for the start of classes to make the choice to go to school in Europe rather than risk losing a year to come to the US.
Meanwhile, there seems to be no delay or problem when the visas are needed because some US company wants to fire their entire IT department and bring in people from elsewhere.
October 4th, 2009 at 9:36 am
Jose’s right. The visa laws have gotten a lot more restrictive as a result of the GWOT. This isn’t solely restricted to nations in the Middle East, although trying to get a visa as a Saudi is definitely a lot harder today than it was 10 years ago. My undergrad institution had fewer international students post-9/11 because student visas become much more cumbersome to get.
October 4th, 2009 at 9:36 am
It’s mostly due to the fact that our current immigration policies favor unskilled immigrants from nearby over skilled immigrants from anywhere – you can thank well intentioned (but ultimately counter productive) policies that started in 1964.
This has bred a larger anti-immigrant frenzy than is good for us – one that wouldn’t exist in sizeable numbers if we had a more sane policy of screening immigrants based on useful skills.
Until the open borders types on the left and right figure this out, nothing will change in this regard.
October 4th, 2009 at 9:39 am
In my experience, many swedish people speak good english.
Some speak american. If you want to become fluent in english, I’d recommend going to England, not America.
There, you’d learn a different language.
October 4th, 2009 at 9:42 am
Having worked at a language school in Indianapolis, where roughly half the students were Korean, many of them said that they had to overcome a lot of pressure from their parents to go to a ’safer’ country, especially after 9/11. 9/11, both the perception of vulnerability to terror and the enhanced visa restrictions, caused a huge decline in the number of students.
In South Korea and Japan, there’s a perception of the US as a crazy, dangerous place to be. Basically, they think the entire country is Detroit. Not to mention the Japanese kid who got shot during Halloween some years ago in Texas. That’s all that anyone ever brings up when I ask them why they go to Vancouver instead of the USA.
Our country has pretty much told the world, “You can’t come in.” and the world replied, “Why would we want to? You’re a bunch of crazy, gun-happy nutbags.” At least the Chinese and the Indians still come, though that’s because they can’t get into universities back home (well, the Indians, at least).
October 4th, 2009 at 9:51 am
America where we speak better English than the Swedes
I’m not entirely sure this is true (even apart from the UK/US issue).
October 4th, 2009 at 9:52 am
Our country has pretty much told the world, “You can’t come in.” and the world replied, “Why would we want to? You’re a bunch of crazy, gun-happy nutbags.
Think of it as applied Darwinism. Only the dedicated, the ones who really want to come, survive all the bureaucratic obstacles, jump through all the hoops, still come. Only the fearless, the ones willing to be looked upon as presumptive mass murderers and laugh, willing to risk being drilled by a paranoid home-owner while trick or treating, still come.
That way, when they overstay their student visas, we’ve already selected for the hardiest immigrant stock, ready to make this country grow!
October 4th, 2009 at 9:55 am
Obama is really to be commended for dispelling the climate of fear about foreigners and terrorism that was deliberately engendered by Bush. But I would have expected him to move to clear up this visa nonsense, as well.
October 4th, 2009 at 9:59 am
Re Matthew’s comment “From the very beginning our country has always derived powerful benefits from “brain drain” effects in which a healthy proportion of smart people from all around the world want to come here.”
————
That’s one view. The other view is that 25 percent of the seats in our taxpayer-supported engineering schools are taken up by foreign students –who return home and transfer technology back to China and India so that they can kick the shit out of us in economic competition.
But our elites love the fuck the people who actually DO WORK — doctors,engineers, manufacturing workers, farmers. It is the cheapshit, amoral con artists in politics, on Wall Street and in the News Media who get all the rewards.
October 4th, 2009 at 10:02 am
Amy Chua’s Days of Empire looks at the dozen or so powers that have achieved hyper hegemonic status over the millennia, and asks why they rose and fell. Her thesis is that openness and toleration characterized these great imperial powers in their heyday, and it was intolerance and exclusiveness that led to their decline.
October 4th, 2009 at 10:10 am
Oh darn, maybe now some more Americans can get an education and other countries can learn to educate their own people. This perverse desire to educate and indoctrinate the world while not offering our own people a decent shot at higher education is always going to be a sore point. Whining about xenophobia in order to distract from the class issues involved is just plain pathetic.
October 4th, 2009 at 10:14 am
It’s all a matter of degree. For the past few decades the influx of scientists from around the world who are willing to accept lower wages, etc. has depressed the number of native Americans going into the Sciences, to the extent that the percentage now is very low. Since Science is Science (there is no Korean Physics, there is only Physics) we don’t see a comparable influx of, for example, lawyers. Does it matter? I think it does. We don’t want to keep out people who can make a contribution, but I don’t think it is a good thing to have no native Americans who are Scientists or Engineers (we are close to that than you imagine).
October 4th, 2009 at 10:16 am
“Why would we want to? You’re a bunch of crazy, gun-happy nutbags.” At least the Chinese…
The Chinese think we are all a bunch of crazy, gun-happy nutbags even more than the Koreans or Japanese think that. They still come anyway (in declining numbers, however) because….well, you live in China for a while.
Also, for the sake of..accuracy, you should change “come to the US to study” to “come to the US to live permanently.” Because 90+% of those that “come to study” never leave. The 10% who don’t stay couldn’t get green cards. That is only a slight exaggeration.
I have dealt with the immigration system in the US for many years, and I can say without reservation that it sucks goat balls.
October 4th, 2009 at 10:25 am
US….
October 4th, 2009 at 10:32 am
Related, but off topic.
In addition to foreign students coming to the US, exchange programs have apparently diminished. I had a discussion with the local high school principal who said that prior to 9/11 the school had an active AFS program and an AFS club. After 9/11 it disappeared and hasn’t recovered.
I don’t have further documentation, but I’m confident this story is representative. My daughter went on a student exchange as a high school sophomore and had irreplaceable, incomparable experiences. I agree with posters above. This is something that could be encouraged at a national level — in addition to getting rid of the paperwork of visa applications.
October 4th, 2009 at 10:34 am
From a translation of the history of China’s development of the nuclear bomb:
“At the same time, China also helped the research center to recruit the scientists and technologists. Within one year, all the best scientist in China came forth to the research institute to work.
What came forth were famous experts in the world :
Famous physicist, Peng Huanwu 彭桓武 – he obtained two PhDs in UK and was the first chinese professor in the UK
Famous Physicist, Wang Ganchang 王淦昌
Famous Aerodynamism Expert, Guo Yonghua 郭永怀
Head of China Science Institute, Zhou Guangcao 周光召
Others are Zhu Guangya 朱光亚, Chen Nengkuan 陈能宽, Chen Kaijia 程开甲
They have abandoned the various good income abroad and came back to China to work on the nuclear research to build China’s first atomic bomb.
At that time, the vice department chief of nuclear industry, Qian Sanqiang 钱三强, who had once in the French Marie Curie laboratory 1949 discovered through nuclear emulsion technology the phenomenon of “tri-partition” (ternary fission), “quo-partition” and caused a great influence in the world. He also came back to China and participated in various academic seminar and gave much view on that.”
See http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?showtopic=3311
I like the note at the bottom:
“This post has been edited by General_Zhaoyun: 05 April 2005 – 11:00 AM “
October 4th, 2009 at 10:37 am
To understand why the USA is intentionally driving away foreign students, one must remember to take into account the Republican Party’s core root of extreme racism and xenophobia (for those educated in US public schools that have had their curriculum excised by far-right extremists over the 75 years, xenophobia means the unmotivated fear of everyone that isn’t exactly identical to you).
The Bush Administration, representing the farthest right-wing extremists in America, used the September 11 tragedy as an excuse to implement the most xenophobic policies that those far-right constituencies have been demanding ever since they lost the Civil War.
In fact, right now this very second, one of the most-cherished artificial divisions is being constructed as we speak. The Obama Administration is constructing a new ‘Berlin Wall’ right through the middle of the tiny town of Derby Line/Stanstead on the Vermont – Canada border. For hundreds of years this one town that straddles the border has lived together as a symbol of peace between two nations. Indeed, the town’s library / concert house straddles the border. This was intentional as a symbol of freedom for both nations.
It used to be that the US Customs agents lived in the areas they served, they knew everyone, as is the nature of a small town. These Customs agents could spot people that were trying to cross into the US and they successfully protected America for decades.
But then the Bush Administration came in with their insatiable desire to militarize everything. They replaced the local Customs Agents with Border Patrol agents from the Mexico border. The Border Patrol agents knew no one and were used to treating everyone as guilty illegal immigrants. They immediately began harassing long time residents for no logical reason (other than to abuse their authority). The Border agents took to arresting everyone that simply walked across the street (from the Canada side to the US side) because they didn’t go 70 miles out of their way to the nearest checkpoint!
Obama has not stopped any Bush program, no matter how inhumane, unreasonable and illogical. And therefore we have this tiny town being artificially divided by a huge Berlin Wall for no good reason, other than to create a new militarized border between the US and Canada.
The US – Canada border used to be a symbol for an enlightened world, one where borders were not military DMZs but open for routine passage by citizens of both nations. Now, just as US imperialism has created terrorists, America is eagerly destroying every symbol that we one held up to other nations as a Beacon of Freedom.
October 4th, 2009 at 10:40 am
He neglected to mention the absence of tuition fees in Sweden. Plenty of people from East Asia study in Sweden for this simple reason. But that’s about to change with the introduction of tuition fees (can’t remember when but it will happen soon).
As a Swede I am glad your taking a closer look at our country. Let me suggest you take a trip Botkyrka, Tensta or Rosengård in Malmö. Or take a look at youth unemployment statistics. This is the country of hidden mass unenmployment. A good place indeed (and I’m no Friedmanite) but it has its flaws. Do take a closer look before you leave as I’m beginning to think that you think you’re in paradise. Sadly not the case I’m afraid.
October 4th, 2009 at 10:41 am
Because 90+% of those that “come to study” never leave. The 10% who don’t stay couldn’t get green cards.
I don’t think it’s true. I personally have a Chinese friend who lived in the US for many years and then moved, permanently, back to China.
October 4th, 2009 at 10:42 am
Sobriquet said, “people speak good english.”
Obviously Sobriquet does NOT ’speak good english”!!!
The Swedes would know to say that sentence in ‘good english’ and say it correctly: “people speak English well.”
No wonder the Korean wanted to learn English in Sweden, where they speak English well, instead of America where they ’speak good english.”
October 4th, 2009 at 10:46 am
Years ago I had friends who were considering studying in Sweden. Why? Because the University calendar stated, “Casual sex is extremely common in Sweden.”
October 4th, 2009 at 10:55 am
I don’t think it’s true. I personally have a Chinese friend who lived in the US for many years and then moved, permanently, back to China.
He couldn’t get a green card, but then announced that it was his plan all along to go back. I’ve seen that about 5 times. Obviously, there are a small number who do go back and have no intention of staying. Like I said, that amounts to about 10%, — if you look at the numbers instead of anecdotes.
October 4th, 2009 at 10:58 am
Political correctness gone wrong. A student from the ROK is no better than a Saudi. Go figure why it is difficult to come to the States.
October 4th, 2009 at 11:10 am
@29, no, actually he’s a US citizen. He came to the US when he was 14 or 15, graduated from a private school in Maryland (that invited him), got his bachelor’s somewhere (I don’t remember where) and master’s in Stanford. He then worked (with me) in Massachusetts for 5-6 years or so, and now he’s in Beijing and is planning to stay there. The last I heard, he was a CIO of some dot-com in Beijing.
Why do you find it so unbelievable? You think China is a terrible place to live? Well, it’s not; or, rather, it depends on who you are, just like the US.
October 4th, 2009 at 11:15 am
Part of the role of the foreign engineers is to coerce native American engineers into working for the Defense Department , especially the intelligence community.
Many US engineers would NOT want to work for DOD and Intel –because of classified work is a form of slavery. The government uses “national security” as justification for laying a blanket of coercion and control over defense workers.
You have to fill long forms laying out every personal secret –past drug use for the past several decades, any undetected crimes (e.g, not reporting income on your taxes), adultery (I’m not kidding), etc. So that the government then has you over a barrel if you ever resist questionable activities or think about talking to a reporter or Member of COngress. Not all the questionaires come out in the first year — it is a gradual process. Because after you’ve worked in the classified world for a few years, you’ve no longer have the experience or expertise to move back into the commerical world. At that point , you have to answer any question they ask if you want to be able to support your family.
Lots of engineers would resist that demeaning process, if they had a choice. So the government imports low-paid foreign engineers to take jobs in order to force Americans into working for the classified world.
October 4th, 2009 at 11:22 am
Note that once you have submitted a written signed confession of any crime (past drug use, tax evasion,etc) as part of the security clearance process then the government can prosecute you for those crimes at any time if it wants.
Oh — and you also have to sign a waiver giving the government the right to bug you up the wazoo for all eternity if it wants.
Although the waiver is vague on the time frame — the government has lots of good lawyers who designed those forms carefully so that you sign your life away. For the promise of a paycheck that can be withheld at any time.
October 4th, 2009 at 11:27 am
As a frequent border crosser myself, I found comrade R’s #24 sad and compelling reading. Though not in a position to trace the connection in any kind of detail, I can’t help but wonder what those of my fellow Am. citizens who regard people like me–of Irish and English stock, as they used to say, but born and raised in Massachusetts!–as not real Americans make of recent visitors/immigrants, and whether the xenophobia which is such a large part of the Republican party’s appeal doesn’t have something to do with the present idiocy.
Disagree with #27, however. There is nothing wrong with “People speak good English”. Rules of word order in English lead us to treat “good” as an adj. modifying “English.” It would be wrong to say “People speak English good”, where good is read as and adv. just as it would be wrong to say “People speak well English”.
Obviously Sobriquet does NOT ’speak good english”!!
October 4th, 2009 at 11:27 am
I don’t see anything wrong with this sentence… people (subject) speak (verb) good (adjective modifying english) english (direct object).
I think you’re confusing “speak good english” with “speak english good” and thus imagining that “good” is being used incorrectly as an adverb. That is not the case.
I always cringe when this happens. It’s really shameful to be a grammar-correcting douche on the internet and not even know HOW to do it.
October 4th, 2009 at 11:29 am
… it’s just very hard for me to see the percentage in adopting visa policies that deter young, educated Asians from coming to the United States. …
7 has the explanation. There is a big percentage in keeping suicide bombers out of the country but the PC crowd won’t allow profiling so we have to keep everybody out.
October 4th, 2009 at 11:32 am
The Swedes don’t speak English better than we do? For shame, Sweden.
October 4th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Yes, Mr. Williams, the SF-86 is a nefarious plot by the military industrial complex to enlsave americans.
October 4th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhu_Guangya
“Zhu Guangya (Chinese: 朱光亚; December 25, 1924 – ) is a renowned nuclear physicist of China, and an academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences. He served as the vice chairman of 8th and 9th Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).
Zhu graduated from department of physics of National Southwestern Associated University in 1945, and obtained a doctorate degree in physics at University of Michigan in the United States. He returned to China in spring of 1950. After 1957, he was involved in research of nuclear reactor. Together with Deng Jiaxian and others, Zhu led the development of atomic bomb and hydrogen bomb of China.”
———–
That battle cry of “WOLVERINES!” in Red Dawn was a sick joke.
That’s Michigan’s athletic team.
October 4th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
May be unrepresentative, but Swedish hockey players speak much, MUCH better English than Canadian and American hockey players. Seriously, listen to an interview with any north american player, then listen to one with Lidstrom. Tell me who speaks better English.
October 4th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Not only are many detered from coming, but many who could stay are reconsidering their options. I work at a tech firm with more foreign born workers than locall ones, and many of these foreigners (who have citizenship now), are considering going back. They just see the future quality of life in the US as questionable. And even in China, engineers are paid quite well. So even for those who have been working for several years, the grass back home is looking greener than it used to.
Of course we have the perennial argument about competition for good jobs. Do high skilled foreign workers take more good jobs than they create? I have long thought the answer is no. Those native born who have had trouble securing a decent career think otherwise. Clearly from the standpoint of a corporation, the ability to recruit talent from a world-wide pool, versus a more restricted pool of nationals is a big competitive advantage. Whether having high tech firms that are more competitive worldwide creates more job opportunities for locals than it denies via competition for positions is not immediately obvious.
If you look at this from the standpoint of the republicans, why would the party of anti-intellectualism, want to add foreign born intellectuals to the country? From their standpoint, they’d rather drive the ones we have out.
October 4th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
7 has the explanation. There is a big percentage in keeping suicide bombers out of the country but the PC crowd won’t allow profiling so we have to keep everybody out.
Then why hasn’t the visa waiver program for tourists from countries such as South Korea (and Japan and European countries and rich white former British colonies) been suspended? It’s not like you need to be in the U.S. for more than 90 days to launch a 9/11-scale attack, and even if you did, I doubt that terrorists are going to have any compunctions about overstaying their tourist visa for a bit.
October 4th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Um, MattY: perhaps you should try, yanno, “reporting”?
1) There is no “visa policy” regarding students which discriminates against people from Korea, or for that matter any place else. If you get accepted at an American college or university, you can pretty much get a visa to study here. The “pretty much” covers efforts to keep out bad guys, like the 9-11 killers who got student visas to learn how to fly airplanes (without learning how to land ‘em). Since perhaps the most spectacular failure in the lead up to 9-11 was the cruel joke of admitting “students’ to the likes of Joe’s Typing Emporium and Flight School, maybe you might want to think twice before dissing the idea of screening foreign students.
Or, if you like, perhaps you could go talk to the NYC firefighters union about how stupid it is to screen foreign students.
2) There WAS a significant problem with FBI background checks. Perhaps if you’d shown a little curiosity about the facts, you could have learned if this was the problem your Korean student in Sweden had. Basically, Korea and China in particular are characterized by relatively few surnames (China is famous for 老 百 姓”, a hundred surnames for 1.4 billion people; something like 85% of Koreans are surnamed Kim, Han, Yun, etc.) This is compounded by various transliterations of Chinese and Korean words — so that any file opened anywhere on some burglar named Yoo can pose a problem for smart kids admitted to MIT named Yu, Yo, Yoo or You. The FBI isn’t in the business of CLEARING people of suspicion, so once a file was opened, it stayed open (they’d only investigate somebody if they thought ‘em suspicious, which is a Catch-22 for folks who needed to be cleared to get a visa).
Of course, you don’t know anything about it, cuz you didn’t bother to ask why the guy found it “too hard” to get a visa to come to the US. His complaint was enough for you to “form” an “opinion”. After all, you’ve heard stories, right?
3) There ARE several live legislative issues relating to foreign students (like STEM): perhaps you’d like to, yanno, learn about ‘em?
October 4th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
I can see Canada from my house!
Seriously. I live in Buffalo. I used to cross the border once or twice a week, just for the hell of it. Canada’s pretty cool. Lots to do there. I would estimate that I have spent close to three of my forty-nine years in Canada.
But I gave up border jumping about four years ago, and I haven’t been to Canada since. It is just is not worth trying to cross the border.
October 4th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
May be unrepresentative, but Swedish hockey players speak much, MUCH better English than Canadian and American hockey players. Seriously, listen to an interview with any north american player, then listen to one with Lidstrom. Tell me who speaks better English.
Completely OT, but I wonder whether an inarticulateness in some contexts is culturally premiumed among non-professional men in North America. Something like: a real man doesn’t have to have fancy diction and complex sentences–that stuff’s for pencil-necked city boys who use moisturizer.
Even more OT, I recently had some remodeling done in my home and the workers were Polish immigrants rather than Americans. Construction is probably one of the most masculine jobs anywhere, but I noticed that the workers didn’t have the bluff, mannish manner I’ve seen from American construction workers.
To get back on topic, there’s probably also a selection bias. Poorly educated native English speakers speak English but they speak it uneducatedly. Poorly educated non-native English speakers just don’t speak English at all (well, maybe speaking English (poorly) is something they *can* do, but speaking English is not something they *do* do).
October 4th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
One of the big issues that the News Media never discusses is that there is a Yin-Yang to “Homeland Security”.
All the means you develop to torture foreigners can also be applied to Americans.
All of the video surveillance, Internet surveillance, telephone surveillance etc systems that you develop to detect Al Qaeda largely watch Americans.
The walls at the borders designed to keep foreigners OUT will also serve to keep Americans IN. Pretty soon you will be a non-person –unable to get a job or see a doctor — if you do not have a US-issued passport.
As of now, you will be stopped at the border if you do not have a passport. And the burden of proving you are an American in order to get back into your own country is now on you.
In the coming decades, it will be easy to twist the legal powers, funding and capabilities created in the “War on Terror” into the means to wage “War on American Citizens”.
Especially if those citizens get upset at being plunged into poverty.
October 4th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
This is paranoid nonsense.
Nothing on the standard SF-86 used for submitting background information required for a security clearance requires the sort of detail necessary for a proper indictment. It just asks how many times you’ve used drugs (or, yes, committed other crimes) in the past. Who, what, where, when, may be asked during a personal interview and notes taken, but you won’t sign anything confirming those details, and they aren’t acquired to prosecute you in the future.
These questions are asked to see if you’re lying and to see if you’ll make the government’s job easier to exclude you by disclosing something they couldn’t otherwise find out about. If you don’t disclose a crime that the government finds records of, you’re probably out. If you say you never smoked pot and they do friends and family interviews for a TS/SCI clearance and your college roommate says you experimented a few times with him, you’re probably out, whereas if you disclosed it, you aren’t. (On the other hand, if you disclose your past out of control binge drinking or moderate to heavy drug habit that you’ve since given up, you’re out for a Secret clearance even though they wouldn’t have performed the interviews necessary to find out otherwise.)
Not, of course that the government publicizes any of this. Fear and paranoia and bullshit like Mr. Williams does a lot of the government’s work for them keeping people with marginal backgrounds away who might have otherwise hidden it.
Finally: statute of limitations. Honestly, how much of this shit is prosecutable even at the time of disclosure? After working there three years?
October 4th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Re: Meanwhile, there seems to be no delay or problem when the visas are needed because some US company wants to fire their entire IT department and bring in people from elsewhere.
Actually there’s plenty of trouble and hassle there too. The company I work for has given up on sponsoring H1B immigrants because of the troubles. A British citizen who already worked for the corporation in London went through eight months of red tape to get permission to enter the US to transfer to our Baltimore office.
October 4th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Re Dylan at 47: “It just asks how many times you’ve used drugs (or, yes, committed other crimes) in the past. Who, what, where, when, may be asked during a personal interview and notes taken, but you won’t sign anything confirming those details, and they aren’t acquired to prosecute you in the future.”
———–
Bullshit. You are directed to fill out a signed, written statement of who , what when,where etc re past drug use. Although this may vary depending upon whether you are just getting a DOD Top Secret clearance vice a SCI clearance.
And the government does require you sign away your Fifth Amendment rights — by signing a statement that you understand that the government can use any information you reveal to prosecute you for any crimes you reveal.
The question of whether polygraph interviews are videotaped and archived is left as an exercise for the reader.
The question of whether your daily work in the SCIF is also videotaped without your knowledge is also left an exercise for the reader.
October 4th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
I work in a group where I am the only native-born American out of six employees (hello, Operations Research!). My colleagues occasionally have visa issues, so I have a little experience with this, at least anecdotally.
One thing I have not seen mentioned here, but that I have heard from multiple coworkers, is that the length of visa granted is characteristically different in the US than in European countries. Apparently it is common in the Euro countries to get visas for a few weeks or six months, while the US either grants them for years at a pop or not at all. I have no idea why this is; perhaps it is a security thing. But given that time scale, I can see why screening might be more rigorous, and why visa holders might be selected to be those more inclined to stay for life.
October 4th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Re Dylan at 47: “Finally: statute of limitations. Honestly, how much of this shit is prosecutable even at the time of disclosure? After working there three years?”
————
Again, bullshit.
And people here don’t have to take my word for it.
Look at how those Fallujah Marines got nailed because one of them spilled the beans in a polygraph prep YEARS later.
From http://www.startribune.com/nation/62623387.html?page=2&c=y
“During Weemer’s one-week court-martial at Camp Pendleton, the defense argued that the government could not prove Weemer was guilty of murder because there were no bodies, no relatives complaining of a lost loved one and no forensic evidence.
The case came to light long after the battle.
In 2006, after he left the Marine Corps, Weemer applied for a job in the Secret Service. During a background interview before a polygraph test as part of the application, he was asked about the most serious crime he ever committed.
“We went into this house, there happened to be four or five guys in the house,” Weemer said in a recording of the interview played during his trial. “We ended up shooting them, we had to.”
The squad had been ordered to clear the house immediately after one of its members, Lance Cpl. Juan Segura, was killed by a sniper.
Weemer’s account triggered an investigation that led to the charges.”
October 4th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
“The US – Canada border used to be a symbol for an enlightened world, one where borders were not military DMZs”
What’s a military DMZ? I thought that the point of a DMZ was to not have military stuff in it?
October 4th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Um, yes, murder has no statute of limitations and lesser violent crimes have long ones. Drug use, tax fraud, and other stuff, however, don’t.
If your point is that the government is going to fuck you later for imposing a requirement that you tell the truth about which people you’ve executed or raped in the past I’m not sure why you’re bothering.
October 4th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
a larger anti-immigrant frenzy than is good for us
So J-Rob believes that a slightly smaller amount of anti-immigrant frenzy would be just peachy?
American politics is based on sufficiently dumb misperceptions that the concept of foreigners being in the US legally doesn’t really register: you’re either a born-in-the-USAian or an illegal Mexican with leprosy.
In South Korea and Japan, there’s a perception of the US as a crazy, dangerous place to be. Basically, they think the entire country is Detroit.
This is no less true of most of Europe, though the misperception that you’ll be shot as soon as you step off the plane is generally held by people who have no intention of travelling to the US. Those that do consider it then run into the wonderful world of Kafkaesque visa bureaucracy. (On that note, I wonder if Brazil will still be photographing and fingerprinting Americans in 2016, given that they do so now in response to the American treatment of Brazilians.)
Oh darn, maybe now some more Americans can get an education and other countries can learn to educate their own people.
Oh, soullite, you silly Trot: while tuition fees might be high now, they’d be even higher if institutions couldn’t use foreign students to subsidise the Americans.
October 4th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
The statute of limitations doesn’t apply to murder. Nevertheless I wouldn’t want to work for the defense industry because it’s a corrupt, gravy-sucking pig.
October 4th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Yes, Mr Williams, if I put in my EPSQ ‘I got a speeding ticket last year, and btw, fyi, the bodies are under the floorboards in the kitchen’, why yes, it will trigger an investigation.
And they will probably perform the investigation* not by simply using my statement, but interviewing the neighbors I put on the form and asking them ‘Hey, did you see him bringing a bunch of lye into the house?’
*you understand what ‘investigation’ means right? It doesn’t mean ’send someone to trial using their written statements only’ You also understand that civil servants, being what they are, just want to go home at the end of the day and are not going to out of their way if you put trivial shit
October 4th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Ask2 sez: “it is common in the Euro countries to get visas for a few weeks or six months, while the US either grants them for years at a pop or not at all. I have no idea why this is…”
It’s cuz “temporary” visas in America aren’t often temporary at all — more like preliminary. It’s a big mistake with a long history.
Basically, in 1990 the Congress tried to fix the green card system for employERs. It succeeded in tripling the #, while the Democratic House tried to wholly deregulate the process, essentially allowing employers to buy green cards for particular workers, thus relying on market forces rather than the Department of Labor to protect US workers. The idea was that an employer wouldn’t pay $5k, $10k or $15k to get a green card for a guy they didn’t really need, and since he’d have a green card he’d be able to quit for a higher salary and better conditions, subject only to the contractual obligations the guy had entered into to get the green card in the first place, thus eliminating the indentured servant aspect of the current law. But the Republican Senate didn’t buy it — and the result was an outrageous reliance on the H-1B system of “indefinitely temporary” indentured servitude, instead of green cards.
The thing is, folks like MattY blur all the differences that matter in immigration: between legal and illegal (note the word “undocumented” for folks who have fistfuls of fake or forged documents), permanent and temporary, etc.
But you won’t make distinctions, you can’t make sense.
It’s simple enough to figure out: granting “temporary” visas to folks who are filling permanent jobs never works.
October 4th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Re Dylan at 53: “If your point is that the government is going to fuck you later for imposing a requirement that you tell the truth about which people you’ve executed or raped in the past I’m not sure why you’re bothering.”
————–
Er… the government can also fuck you badly if you tell the truth about people it’s officers have executed or raped.
Look at what happened to Abu Ghraib whistleblower Samuel Provance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Provance
And Provance would have been screwed even worse if he had not had the sense to yell loudly to the news media so that those attacking him hesitated in the spotlight.
October 4th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Is it legal to have a test so we can only grant visas to well, smart successful people who might stay?
October 4th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
From the wiki link above:
“On July 6, 2006 the New York Times reported that the House Committee on Government Reform issued a subpoena to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld because he hadn’t responded to a March 7, 2006 request for information relating to and regarding Provance’s case. [16] 4 months later, Rumsfeld resigned citing Abu Ghraib as his darkest hour, and the subpoena and its inquiries still remain a mystery. ”
Our current President’s response? Let’s forget about all that.
MOVE ON!
October 4th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
And where is Sgt Provance today? Well, as of 2007, out of the Army.
From http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/27031
“Sam Provance exposed the torture in Abu Ghraib and as thanks had his career ruined, was threatened with prison, has had his wife leave him, and is now barely scraping by. He said Thursday evening that on a personal level his choice to speak out was not worth it. “But,” he said, “this is not about me.” And everyone in the auditorium where he was speaking knew exactly what he meant, because we had just heard Dan Ellsberg, Ann Wright, Larry Johnson, Coleen Rowley, Bob Parry, Akbar Ahmed, Peter Kuznick, Max Friedman, and Ray McGovern lay out the gravity of the situation this nation and the world are now in.”
October 4th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Re Kolohe at 56: “You also understand that civil servants, being what they are, just want to go home at the end of the day and are not going to out of their way if you put trivial shit”
———–
well, not so long as you don’t rock any boats. Get with the program. Be a team player.
October 4th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
MNPundit asks a smart question in a dumb way:
LOL — it’s legal to have ANY test we want for whom we admit to the US. It’s OUR country, remember? If We, the People decided we wanted to admit only 7′ tall left-handed lesbian law professors, we get to DO that — and, ya know what? foreigners who want to sue because their “Constitutional” rights have been violated, have ny standing: the US Constitution doesn’t apply to them.
The question to ask is, would it be SMART to only grant visas to “well, smart successful people who might stay?”
Unpack that (I know, actually thinking about a subj. is new to you):
1) “well” Why exactly would it be in our national interest to welcome foreigners who are ill? I mean, a cold is one thing, but a new version of the 1918 flu doesn’t seem like a great idea, does it? SARS? Even leaving aside contagion, there’s the not insignificant issue of cost — are you asking if we should let a foreigner who needs a kidney transplant come to the US and get one at our expense?
2) “smart” — makes sense to me. First admission, then graduation from an accredited school with a STEM degree seems to work.
3) “successful” — see #2. But the real question is:
4) “a test so we can only grant visas…”
What KIND of visas? Like I said, if one of the distinctions you will NOT make is between “temporary” and “permanent”, you can’t make sense about anything.
Put it this way, three examples: U2 goes on tour, and The Edge brings his guitar tech with him. The guy has an encyclopaedic knowledge of guitars, but also knows The Edge’s techniques, his ear, the way his playing differs on each instrument AND he knows all the venues U2 is going to play on the tour, each of which has different acoustic characteristics which will affect the choices of instruments and settings (maybe, I dunno, 11.5?) The Edge is gonna want to use. So he gets a temporary visa, right — for the duration of the tour?
Then again, supposing some university has a new Electronic Media center, which they had a couple high-bandwidth guys design to be the most acoustically-perfect space on Earth. The walls and ceiling as high-tech flexible materials which can actually be tuned for any artist — possibly The Edge (or Yo Yo Ma) might want to play there. And just possibly the high bandwidth F/H-1B guys who designed it might want to hang around and listen. So do these “temporary” guys get to stay? and… how?
Last example: maybe the digital recording system that Webcasts performances at the Electronic Media center is run by a contractor, who in turn has a subcontractor that debugs the feed. So they bring in a mediocre contractor on a temporary visa cuz he will work for 50% less than anybody with a green card, much less a US citizen, would require to do this technician’s job: The job is only a month. But does HE get to stay permanently?
Well?
October 4th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
You’ve got to love the deliriously nonsensical narrative on immigration from self-hating American lefties: No one wants to come here any more, because America is basically viewed by the rest of the world as “a bunch of crazy, gun-happy nutbags.” And isn’t it just awful that we make it so hard for all these people who don’t want to come here to get visas?
October 4th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
I am an immigration attorney and many of my clients have been told by consular personnel that there are too many (insert particular Asian group) in our country already.
Doubt it’s official policy but it is happening.
October 4th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Actually, it’s true that many people see Americans as a bunch of crazy, gun-happy nutbags. It’s also true that many people want to come – for different reasons, economic reasons, mostly. There is no contradiction. And a lot of people want to come to places like Saudi Arabia as well.
October 4th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
SJB, if your reading comprehension were better than that of a third-grader, you’d have noticed that the point of the original post and the lion’s share of the subsequent discussion is that part of the reason many people are dissuaded from coming to America is that we make it so hard for all these people to get visas. The “gun-happy nutbags” bit is a caricatured version of the very real hits that the American brand has taken since 9/11 and Bush’s response to it. When the brand is weakened, it’s much easier for those who would want in on it anyway to go sour grapes when they can’t get in. I know most righties will never understand this, but most of the time we lefties criticize something about America it’s because we think our country can be even greater. Matt’s trip to Europe has resulted mainly in discussions on how the experiences of other countries tells us what the U.S. is doing right or wrong, rather than vice versa. This is because Matt is mainly concerned with improving America.
Think about it in baseball or football terms. What team are you the hardest on? That’s right, the team you’re a fan of. When you curse your team’s receiver for dropping a pass, you’re not taunting him; you’re lamenting that your team screwed up and missed a chance to do well. That’s what we’re doing with regard to our country.
Bill Clinton said, “There’s nothing wrong with America that can’t be fixed by what’s right with America”. Righties today evidently can’t deal with comprehending sentences of that length, so they just stop after the word “America”.
October 4th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
Anybody that thinks we don’t allow enough student visas, should visit the North Campus at the University of Michigan (or any other top tier engineering university). Foreigners far outpopulate US-born students.
And yes, most are Asian.
October 4th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
You’ve got to love SJB for either showing a basic lack of reading comprehension or a hackishly deliberate misunderstanding of the thread. Wingnuts make life so much easier for us.
October 4th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
Helping “America” is idiotic and discriminatory, and disgusts me. America is nothing but an administrative entity. If you live in America, you are subject to Federal law, and if you don’t live in America, you aren’t. That is the only difference, and even then, the United States Federal government has a significant amount of power over the world outside its borders. You might as well take jobs away from left handed people to give jobs to right handed people.
Now, because it is an administrative border there are times when our help cannot realistically leave those borders. But when you are suggesting actively playing foreigners against Americans, that is just mindless discrimination.
October 4th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
“…and don’t share Sweden’s perverse aversion to spicy food.”
Funny all my Swedish friends in Stockholm LOVE spicy food. Why do you make such stupid blanket statements about things you do not know?
October 4th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
Completely OT, but I wonder whether an inarticulateness in some contexts is culturally premiumed among non-professional men in North America. Something like: a real man doesn’t have to have fancy diction and complex sentences–that stuff’s for pencil-necked city boys who use moisturizer.
It depends– certainly you see middle class kids who just “don’t have what it takes” to stay middle class into adulthood adopted inarticulate speech patterns as a means of differentiating themselves from the people they can’t academically and professionally compete with, but you see anyone actually raised in that environment shedding those sort of affectations as soon as it becomes economically and socially advantageous for them to do so.
Even more OT, I recently had some remodeling done in my home and the workers were Polish immigrants rather than Americans. Construction is probably one of the most masculine jobs anywhere, but I noticed that the workers didn’t have the bluff, mannish manner I’ve seen from American construction workers.
Those Polish construction workers may well have a background in science or engineering and possibly have graduate degrees.
I’d really like to see MattY talk about Swedish universities in general: they’re decent, but their academic reputation is far lower than the major universities in Germany, the UK, France, and even Ireland.
This perverse desire to educate and indoctrinate the world while not offering our own people a decent shot at higher education is always going to be a sore point.
soullite, you’d never stand a chance of getting a college education in any country other than the USA and possibly Canada.
October 4th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Re Usergoogol at 70: “Helping “America” is idiotic and discriminatory, and disgusts me. America is nothing but an administrative entity. If you live in America, you are subject to Federal law, and if you don’t live in America, you aren’t. That is the only difference, and even then, the United States Federal government has a significant amount of power over the world outside its borders. ”
———–
Yeah — when a foreign enemy threatens Usergoogol’s ass, his Congressman drafts foreigners into the Marines and Army combat units. Is that how it works?
And I suppose it is foreigners who are on the hook to pay off that $12 TRILLION in federal debt?
And if I go outside the US borders, American law no longer applies to me? I don’t have to file a tax return? Is that it?
Usergoogol owes loyalty to his fellow countrymen. If he can see that, then his fellow countrymen should strip him of US citizenship in return.
October 4th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Correction to 73: If he can NOT see that, then…
October 4th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
Mudge and #5 FTW!
October 4th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
UserGoogol is butt-ugly ignorant, but DonW is wrong: We, the People have absolutely no right to take his (presumptively) US citizenship away.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that to ensure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”
UserG doesn’t know what any of that means. He mocks those who guard him while he sleeps, because they do.
October 4th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
Don Williams, The SF-86 is not that bad. I’ve known hundreds of people who have gone through the single-scope background investigations, dozens of whom have disclosed drug use, DUIs, thefts, and assaults. If the only examples of prosecution you can come up with involve murder, then frankly I’m not too worried about it.
I don’t know if it’s a violation of the 5th amendment right to avoid self-incrimination, either. Nearly every step of the way – when applying for the clearance, when conducting the interview, and when conducting the polygraph examination, the applicant is informed that he/she does not have to participate if he does not want to; but that failure to participate will result in not being granted a clearance (or merely access to certain stuff). Nobody is being forced to disclose anything – it’s just the cost of getting that job.
In any case, I’m the child of 2 Asian immigrants who came over on student visas when the U.S. started opening up access to Asians. They later got green cards and ultimately, citizenship, sometime before I was born. Now I’m a federal employee working in the national security community for severely below-market wages. My parents and my sister are in high tax brackets, so yes – in my family’s case, yes, liberalizing student visa policy DID serve the national interest in the long term.
October 4th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Referring to my comment at 11, and the comments referring to it at 27, 34, 35, might I point out that the sobriquet I used is soubriquet?
Whether or not I speak good english, or whether I speak english well, is something of which none of the responders can be sure, as they only have knowledge of sentences I have written. Not ones I have spoken.
However, I can confim I speak excellent english, having been trained in that language from birth. Even dogs and parrots understand me.
I’m sufficiently proficient to have been paid to teach english to swedish students. And to finnish ones. I speak bad finnish, and mumble poor swedish.
Sometimes swedish dogs and parrots understand me. But they prefer me to speak to them in english.
October 4th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
I’ve had conversations in English about American history with the one Swedish homeless guy.
And don’t think Asians haven’t heard about the joys of having border control stuff you in a room for days for having the audacity to be non-white at the border.
October 4th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
For the purposes of learning proper English, rather than a particular local conversational dialect, the Swedes an exchange student would be likely to run into (assuming college students) speak better (or at least more useful) English than Americans. They’re probably easier to understand for a novice speaker as well. On top of that, Sweden has generously subsidized programs for the purpose of foreigners learning Swedish that someone could probably exploit to improve their English.
October 4th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
I’ve had some great South Asian food in Sweden. And some I had in East London was cooked by a Bangladeshi who lived in Sweden for 25 years. I asked him why he had a picture of Pippi on his wall and got the whole story.
But Matt’s right that Swedish home cooking isn’t spicy. It is good though; I have a dill-shaped hole in my heart.
October 4th, 2009 at 11:28 pm
I worked in the software industry for many years with – literally – hundreds of Asian colleagues. They were all very good because people without ability simply could not survive in our market. (Too many real smart Asians, you know.)
May I venture the humble suggestion that this guy knew what his competition would be like, knew he could not cut the mustard and decided to go for a smaller country? (No offense meant to Sweden of course.)
October 5th, 2009 at 4:13 am
The “gun-happy nutbag” description was meant as a caricature, but people have to understand that that is actually how we’re seen in some places. How is it that all the right-wingers who go on about the free market and business simply cannot understand the simplest bit of marketing? Jason L. at #67 has it spot on: We’ve damaged our brand, and despite many people’s best efforts to repair it, some people see nothing wrong with being the bully on the block.
One of the best things about having so many people come here to study/work temporarily is that when they go home, they carry back a good opinion of the USA and work for us to sell it to their friends and families. Assuming that is, they haven’t been arrested at immigration for being brown/yellow (I’m sure Indians are still pissed about that actor getting arrested) and nobody’s shouted at them to “go back where they belong” (something that seemed to happen at Purdue to Korean-American friends).
These people do so much for our international good will that it’s insane the behave this way towards them. Not to mention, the more conservative muslims we get over here and corrupt to our decadent ways, the better off we’ll be as well. I taught several Saudis, many of whom knew they were better off here, loved living here and had no desire to go back home, though they probably had to for family reasons at some point. THAT’s how we dominate the world, not by having the biggest military.
October 5th, 2009 at 8:37 am
Amen.
October 5th, 2009 at 11:02 am
Re: Helping “America” is idiotic and discriminatory, and disgusts me. America is nothing but an administrative entity. If you live in America, you are subject to Federal law, and if you don’t live in America, you aren’t. That is the only difference, and even then, the United States Federal government has a significant amount of power over the world outside its borders. You might as well take jobs away from left handed people to give jobs to right handed people.
Hipster trash.
October 5th, 2009 at 11:19 am
Three Americans won this year’s Nobel prize in Medicine. Two of them were born outside the U.S. Just an interesting datapoint.
October 5th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
“Three Americans won this year’s Nobel prize in Medicine. Two of them were born outside the U.S. Just an interesting datapoint.”
52% of the start-ups in Silly-Con Valley were started by immigrants. Draining brains from other countries is part of our core national strengths.
October 5th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Re: some claims of Don Williams. To my experience, his claims in this thread are a bit over the top.
I have in the past and continue to work with a lot of immigrant engineers, all naturalized. One had been a teen Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution, immigrated to HK and points east, and became a conservative Christian.
9/11-ish considerations aside, I’d feel a lot better about immigration, and encourage high-valued added individuals, if our economic situation weren’t quite so social-Darwinian. In the meantime, as long as employers continue to use H1B visas to facilitate out-sourcing, I’m quite comfortable with a selfish policy of fuck ‘em.