I haven’t been following the immigration “reform” debate too closely. But I know a lot of immigrants. One guy has been here for about 10 years. He spent his first two as an MBA student. He has split his time for the remaining 8 years working for Goldman Sachs and for a health care technology company. His two employers have probably paid close to $50,000 in legal fees to keep him on the green card track, but he has not yet received a green card and is thus nowhere close to citizenship. Let’s assume the government has paid public employees $25,000 to look at the paperwork that his employers have filed, scrutinize his paperwork every time he comes and goes, etc. “The quotas were set up in the 1960s,” he explained. “And Iceland would be given the same quota as India, despite the disparity in population. So the waiting time for a green card is much longer if you come from India or China compared to other countries.”
Right now we’re getting a great deal from having this guy here. He is paying staggering amounts of tax every year, much of it to support obligations incurred prior to his arrival, e.g., pensions for public employees who retired in the 1980s. He is paying into Medicare and Social Security but if we deport him before he reaches 65 he won’t be able to collect any benefits from these programs (which may, in any case, be restricted to folks with lower incomes than his by the time he reaches 65).
On the other hand, if he were a citizen he might add a bit to the property bubble that America’s successful cities are enjoying. “I have the money to buy a condo or house,” noted the immigrant, “but if I were to lose my job I would have to leave the country within 10 days. So I keep renting.” (probably he is happier as a result!) If he goes into the property market that might inflate the prices available to existing owners of residential property (but maybe not; his demand for rental should also work).
I’m wondering what happens if immigration reform goes through. My friend’s immigration should consume at least $100,000 in private and public paperwork and bureaucracy costs by the time he becomes a citizen. Supposedly if the laws are tweaked there will be 10 million new citizens. If each of these new citizens consumes the same $100,000 that’s $1 trillion that will be added to the officially calculated GDP.
[Whether or not this kind of paper-shuffling should be calculated separately from, say, maintenance of machine tools in factories and other more obviously productive activities, is a separate issue.]
Maybe this is the answer to Detroit’s woes. Everyone there can become an immigration lawyer or a federal government worker reading paperwork filed by immigration lawyers…
Not sure where the $50K came from. Typically, green card fees, including attorney’s fees, come in closer to the 10K mark. Back in the nineties when I got my green card through a big name Boston law firm, I recall the total bill being somewhere in the range of $6-7K, including the usurious photocopy charges. With inflation and fee increases, today’s costs are about $10K.
I can tell you from memory that the paperwork requirements were copious. And they’ve only probably increased since then. Plus, every lawyer worth his degree insists on sending all documents via FedEx. Xerox and FedEx are good stocks to own if immigration reform comes to pass.
I’m not an immigrant, but as an engineer I work with a lot of them. I believe that most companies that sponsor high tech immigrants deliberately drag their feet on the green card process. As long as an immigrant’s visa is dependent on their employer they become in effect indentured servants, with absolutely no options and no power to negotiate salary or working conditions, and corporate employers take full advantage of this, so the employer has no incentive to streamline the green card process.
I think steve makes a good point.
The last place I was working 9-5 had many H1B visa *contractors* and while these guys were good, it was also clear a) they were paid very low, b) would prefer to be working in a different city doing different work, and c) somewhat enslaved to their contracting company that managed their visa sponsorship.
And it was also clear to me that regardless of how good they were, there was nothing they were doing that couldn’t be done by the thousands of US citizen java developers looking for work in the local area and who were probably collecting unemployment. Thus in many ways, we all are subsidizing the profits of companies that use H1B visa employees fraudulently (because the same talent is available locally at higher wages.)
Your friend probably needs to be here illegally such that he can gain amnesty when reform passes. Attempting to become a citizen legally will probably entail just as much work under reform. Will the bureaucrats at the immigration office suddenly become more efficient under reform or will they be inundated with yet more work from people applying?
When my brother moved to Tennessee they gave him a hard time when applying for a driver’s license since he didn’t have a electrical bill (or equivalent) with his name and address on it (he moved in with his future wife, under who’s name the bill and house was under) to prove residence. Tennessee allows illegals to get driver’s licenses with little to no documentation, so my brother asked for one of those drivers licenses instead. Of course they wouldn’t give him one and he left without a license. It often pays to be here illegally.
As an Indian PhD student at a reputed US university, I am facing similar issues. The funny thing about the immigration reform is that post immigration reform, anyone who entered the USA illegally prior to 2010 gets to stay, take a job, open a business etc.
While inspite of having paid over 50,000$ in tuition, a Master’s degree, 10,000$ in taxes and legally entering in 2009, I won’t be getting any of those benefits until god knows when.
Democrats have been adamant in lumping illegal and legal immigration together, which ensures that no bill can pass.
Akshay, what does paying tuition and taxes have to do with becoming a resident/citizen? You paid tuition, you got a degree. You paid taxes, you benefited from what the state provides (or perhaps you didn’t use roads, public utilities, etc?).
Three models:
Immigrant as guest
Immigrant as customer
Immigrant as petitioner
Which most closely resembles the naturalization process? Which most resembles the tone of this post?
The people who land in an airport, enter the US legally, and then overstay their visas don’t threaten the safety of ranchers in Arizona. Yet, the public discussion always degenerates to suggestions about moats, alligators, and electric fences to stop millions of hikers trying to reach “El Norte” in order to “salir adelante”.
At the other end of the spectrum, if we offered every H-1B a green card instead, the only people who would lose would be the employers and the lawyers.
Meh. If he wasn’t making those salaries, someone else would be. I would rather he go home.
$100,000 to become a US citizen sounds like too much. Not sure how much my employer at the time paid to get me a green card but probably much less. And the process of applying for citizenship is very simple and one can do it on its own (no layers need to get involved other than those who may be working for the government) and for about $500 or less if I remember correctly from about 8 years ago.