Third World Lifeboats

[laklak]

Marry them, worked for Mrs. Lak.

[Bella Fortuna]

Marry them, worked for Mrs. Lak.

Ah, but what a price to pay...

[camoguard]

I'm looking into the IRC. I might help with English as a second language tutoring while I'm trying to figure out the answers.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I'm looking into the IRC. I might help with English as a second language tutoring while I'm trying to figure out the answers.

I volunteered to tutor English For New Arrivals in San Diego for a year or so. Great way to meet women.

[Santa_Claus]

Marry them, worked for Mrs. Lak.

Didn't work for Mrs Santa.

Perhaps she should not have put down her occupation as killing people. and favourite hobby: killing people. I blame the parents

[camoguard]

I'm looking into the IRC. I might help with English as a second language tutoring while I'm trying to figure out the answers.

I volunteered to tutor English For New Arrivals in San Diego for a year or so. Great way to meet women.

I've met some good ones already. But I've never turned down meeting more without good reason. I'm gregarious.

[Coito ergo sum]

To first world countries. Immigration is a hassle. And in some countries, frankly, I feel like we should help volunteers leave if they want to leave. I'm wondering if there's a way I could speed up someone's legal entry into the U.S.

The immigration process to the US is pretty simple.

The easiest way to come here is for temporary visits for pleasure or business. From most countries, it just involves a visa application and a travel itinerary. From some, it requires some evidence that you intend to return to your home country. From others, it doesn't even require a visa (visa waiver countries).

The next easiest way, I think, is with a student visa. All you have to do there is apply to a school and then the school admissions department helps with the student visa application. As long as you go to school, the person can stay here, and a work permit can be obtained too. Also, while on the student visa, one can work towards a different visa category.

Another way is through employment - H-1B professionals with job offers in the US can get here fairly easily, for example.

Another way is to apply for a green card, and wait out the processing time and background checks.

There is also an annual "green card lottery" which one can just enter and hope to win.

[Coito ergo sum]

To first world countries. Immigration is a hassle. And in some countries, frankly, I feel like we should help volunteers leave if they want to leave. I'm wondering if there's a way I could speed up someone's legal entry into the U.S.

You could sponsor exchange students.

[Coito ergo sum]

Doesn't it seem like as a citizen of a country, I should be able to invite people at a modest rate?

No.

Even if you invite family members of yours, you have to sign an affidavit agreeing to be financially responsible for them. On what basis do you take it upon yourself to be the arbiter of who should enter the country?

[Coito ergo sum]

Doesn't it seem like as a citizen of a country, I should be able to invite people at a modest rate?

Unfortunately such a system would be open to massive abuse.

Which way do you see the abuse happening? Immigrants are vulnerable but they are already trying to get here. I want to help.

Immigrants aren't necessarily vulnerable. I know about 50 immigrants personally. They're no more vulnerable than anyone else, including those from third world countries in South America and otherwise.

How would you help? Putting them up in your home, and guaranteeing their food, clothing and shelter? Or, just "inviting" them?

[Coito ergo sum]

Doesn't it seem like as a citizen of a country, I should be able to invite people at a modest rate?

Unfortunately such a system would be open to massive abuse.

Which way do you see the abuse happening? Immigrants are vulnerable but they are already trying to get here. I want to help.

Immigrants may want to move somewhere else, but somewhere else may not want / need / have the resources to cope with them. Any system that allowed existing citizens to preferentially "import" foreign nationals would be abused one way or another, and potentially leave the receiving nation with a major population problem locally or nationally.

The US already admits 1,000,000 new US citizens per year, and another 1,000,000 per year become permanent residents every year. And, on top of that are millions of work visa holders, and millions more visitors for business/pleasure, as well as student visa holders. There may be other countries that need to open their doors a little wider, but I fail to see how many more immigrants the US must admit before it is acknowledged as actually being somewhat of a welcoming nation....

[camoguard]

Doesn't it seem like as a citizen of a country, I should be able to invite people at a modest rate?

Unfortunately such a system would be open to massive abuse.

Which way do you see the abuse happening? Immigrants are vulnerable but they are already trying to get here. I want to help.

Immigrants aren't necessarily vulnerable. I know about 50 immigrants personally. They're no more vulnerable than anyone else, including those from third world countries in South America and otherwise.

How would you help? Putting them up in your home, and guaranteeing their food, clothing and shelter? Or, just "inviting" them?

I don't remember opening up a debate. I'm simply looking for techniques that can speed up the immigration process. If sponsoring an immigrant accomplishes that, it counts. Marriage kind of counts but it's limited to one at a time for some years.

I mentioned working closer with the IRC. I'm curious to know how they are going to do it too.

I'm going to ignore your other questions because I think you're setting up to dispute my position but my goal doesn't involve that conversation. It involves knowing what choices I can make.

[camoguard]

By the way coming into a conversation with 5 separate rebuttals to posts that came before you is a dick move. If you don't think my idea is great, that's fine, but you can communicate that without hogging the thread.

[Coito ergo sum]

Doesn't it seem like as a citizen of a country, I should be able to invite people at a modest rate?

Unfortunately such a system would be open to massive abuse.

Which way do you see the abuse happening? Immigrants are vulnerable but they are already trying to get here. I want to help.

Immigrants aren't necessarily vulnerable. I know about 50 immigrants personally. They're no more vulnerable than anyone else, including those from third world countries in South America and otherwise.

How would you help? Putting them up in your home, and guaranteeing their food, clothing and shelter? Or, just "inviting" them?

I don't remember opening up a debate. I'm simply looking for techniques that can speed up the immigration process. If sponsoring an immigrant accomplishes that, it counts. Marriage kind of counts but it's limited to one at a time for some years.

I mentioned working closer with the IRC. I'm curious to know how they are going to do it too.

I'm going to ignore your other questions because I think you're setting up to dispute my position but my goal doesn't involve that conversation. It involves knowing what choices I can make.

That's easy. In reference to the US you can speed the immigration process by sponsoring relatives, or sponsoring employees. You can also marry them, as noted, although the US immigration service does some fair bit of investigating to make sure marriages are legit. It's still not impossible to fake a marriage, but you have to live together, share expenses, act like you're married, have friends attest that you're really married and not just for immigration purposes, and all that sort of thing.

I was just taking issue with your presumption that immigrants were "vulnerable." You're right, it's not central to your discussion either way, which is why I was surprised you mentioned it.

Given the high numbers of immigrants and non-immigrant residents of the US every year, it does raise a question in my mind why you think there needs to be more immigration, but it's up to you whether you entertain that discussion.

The problem with your basic question is about this "speeding up" of the immigration process. There really is little, if anything, you can do to speed up the process once it's started. You can facilitate immigration, like by sponsoring an employee or a family member, but that's not exactly "speeding up" anything, it's just giving someone a basis for applying. The process still takes the same amount of time.

There used to be a common way of speeding up the process - one could write one's congressman on behalf of a green card applicant and sometimes get the congressman to attach a special bill in Congress and have Congress vote to give the person a green card. That used to happen more in the 1980s and maybe early 90s, but I don't think that happens much anymore. Every Congressman has a person who helps field immigration related calls, and the Congressional offices will write letters to the immigration service on behalf of applicants to try to speed things up, or get things addressed. They're not as effective as they used to be, though. But, you could start by calling your Congressman and finding out how to get that sort of job - in that case, you could act as a go-between between applicants and the immigration service, writing letters, making phone calls to numbers within the immigration service to convince them to approve certain applications or take action faster.

The immigration service doesn't take as kindly to requests to speed up the process as they used to. It's not really fair anyway to speed up one immigrants process. If his or her process is speeded up, then it means that some other poor jamoke is handled later than he otherwise would be. There is a queue, and processing and investigation must be done, or the immigration service would be shirking its responsibility to do basic background checks on people coming into the country.

[Coito ergo sum]

By the way coming into a conversation with 5 separate rebuttals to posts that came before you is a dick move. If you don't think my idea is great, that's fine, but you can communicate that without hogging the thread.

Hmmm...well, you asked for information on how you could help immigrants - I explained the major ways immigrants come here, and then suggested you sponsor exchange students.

I then responded to Thinking Aloud, not you.

And, you asked specific questions, including this: "Doesn't it seem like as a citizen of a country, I should be able to invite people at a modest rate?" ...which I answered.

So, I answered your questions, I took issue with your characterization of immigrants as necessarily vulnerable, and I addressed what Thinking Aloud posted. My apologies.