U.S. Immigration

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I understand this. My parents actually started applying for green cards (for me too) when I was less than 18 years old.

And I'm not about to marry anyone anytime soon.

Immigration nowadays are getting more stupid. to many from other countries come in and steal our companies. jobs that are there were taken..

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Just like Germany the motherland has had it's time of suffering.

And I'm not about to marry anyone anytime soon.

Aw darn. There goes my hopes *grin*

A job is not property (which can be stolen). It is a voluntary contractual relation between someone willing to offer his time a labor and someone willing to pay an agreed up amount of money for them.

ruveyn

but if the work is not there, then how is a person suppose be able to make a living? everyone in America should be able to find a job and get somewhere. but now it's foreigners and not Americans that can work sometimes.

That is a mistaken belief. No one owes a living to anyone else with the exception of their dependent children.

Illegal immigrants can go to heck. This newfound disdain of them happened because I just recently was denied a tourist visa for an important conference in the US to which I was invited with plane tickets and all just because I spent more time in college than other people (and thus I have no future and of course the whole thing was a scheme of me to illegally stay in the US and become an immigrant, sure!).

It sounds like you overstayed on a student visa. The U.S. is quite strict about this; if you overstay and then return home for any reason, you will very likely be banned from re-entry. And a lot of people DO overstay with the idea of illegally immigrating.

It sounds like you overstayed on a student visa.

Now usually I don't get entangled in political matters, but this one has affected me personally, and I feel the need to speak out about it.

The U.S. only permits a certain number of people from each country to get green cards (permanent residency status) each year. So for people born in China and India, where the population is huge, the wait for a U.S. green card can take many years, sometimes even up to 20 years. H.R. 3012, if passed, will give high-skilled immigrants faster access to a green card, shortening the wait and diminishing the negative consequences of not having a green card for many years. If this had passed earlier, none of the setbacks I'm going to describe below would have happened.

So here's a bit about me. I'm 18, and I've just graduated high school. I was born in China (with the rest of my family), and immigrated to Canada when I was 7. My parents and I became Canadian citizens five years later, and we were able to live in the U.S. after they got new jobs there. Six years after that, it was time for me to apply to college, and that was where the troubles began for me. Having gone to high school in the U.S. for all four years, I was convinced that I was just like the other kids - scholarships, financial aid, and the admissions process would be the same, and I would sail through it smoothly. But then I found out that without a green card, I was an international student - considered a foreigner and locked out of many standard procedures, even though I was essentially an American. Only a small percentage of each college's students is international, and the admission rate for international students is FAR lower than for domestic students (students who have at least a U.S. green card). For example, MIT's overall admission rate is about 10%, but its international admission rate is only 3-5%. Also, financial aid for international applicants are extremely limited, and this partially accounts for the low admission rate. I asked my parents fervently about when we were going to get our green cards. After a bunch of paperwork, they had their answer - we're not going to get our green cards until at least December 2012.

I was heartbroken. Not only could I not apply early action to MIT, my dream school, I also couldn't apply for financial aid, or they will certainly reject me. I was suddenly thrown into the colosseum with all the other international applicants, and the brutal battle would be a bloodbath. I would never survive, not unless I'd made some groundbreaking discovery or invention, or won some huge international award, which I could only dream of doing. I was also a semifinalist for the National Merit scholarship based on my PSAT scores, but alas, I didn't have the required immigration documents even for that. I called NMS, talked to my school counselor, even spoke to a state senator... nothing worked. I was locked out of an iron gate yet again.

In the end, I'm happy to say that I was admitted to MIT - for what reason, I still don't know, but it came as a surprise beyond my wildest dreams. I was rejected from all five of the Ivy League colleges I applied to, and I was even waitlisted at Rice. I was also denied a $20,000 scholarship at Case Western because I was "international".

Now, there are three options for me: make outrageous student loans, force my parents into bankruptcy, or some combination of the two. But no matter what, I am planning to stay in the US, and the only way I'd be able to do that is by working ridiculously hard and not depending on perks and benefits - it's not like I would get them anyways.

So, hate on immigration all you want. By seeing what my parents and I have gone through, I only have this to say: If you don't want the immigrants to take your jobs, you'd better stop whining, get off your lazy bums, and start working. Because this isn't the 1960s, and we've had to work so much harder to get the same benefits as yours.