Suzette and I have an appointment with the USCIS (formerly INS) in Memphis on Thursday. Since she got here in October of 2003 we have worked tirelessly to legally get her status as a resident alien formalized. I have spent over a thousand dollars in pursuit of this goal, as well as spent hundreds of hours filling out paperwork, standing in line and performing other tasks.
Now, after a US Citizen has gone through all that trouble to get his wife’s status in the US permanent, can you understand why he might be a little pissed off that somewhere near eleven million people in the US might get the same result by simply breaking the law by illegally crossing the boarder?
Yep. I can. In fact, every place where I’ve advocated any kind of partial amnesty I’ve said that any plan should involve remuneration for folks like yourself.
I went through the legal immigration hell in 1997-2003 (yes, five years) at the cost of well over $5,000 in travel, lost wages, fees that had to be paid over and over again due to lost paperwork etc. The government has never appropriated sufficient funds to run the USCIS even with the existing caseload (I think the case backlog is several years even in straightforward cases), and none of the “immigration reform” bills contain any additional funding for the USCIS, either. Read this article about the corruption and mismanagement in the USCIS. Anyone who thinks there’d be a chance of “remuneration” to legal immigrants is smoking crack.