It seems like we hear almost weekly some news about our immigration problem here in the US. The politicians keep promising to fix the "problem", with the democrats wanting to allow current illegal immigrants amnesty, and some on the right want to stop immigration all together. Both sides seem to focus on the people coming here, not why they are coming or even why immigration is considered a problem. Nobody is talking about the real problem. It is not who is coming here, or how they got here. The real problem is our immigration policy. We make it incredibly hard to become a law abiding American citizen. In this global economy, where China, India, Japan are out performing the American educational system in science and math, and Finland, South Korea, Canada, Japan, Switzerland and New Zealand continue to outpace the U.S. in reading as well, why are we not encouraging these people to come here? Would that not make America stronger to compete globally? We have approximatively 1.2 million college educated immigrants living in the United States. Some are doctors, pharmacists, lawyers, some even worked with and for our military helping our soldiers during war times. Yet these people can not get jobs in their field because our immigration policy puts too many road blocks in their way. Think about the fact that it can take up to seven years to fulfill our requirements to be a citizen. Just to get a Visa interview
you must go through a multi stage process consisting of : submitting a petition to USCIS, then if approved your petition is sent to the Department of State's National Visa Center where it sits until a Visa number becomes available. These highly educated and talented people can't get hired until in their profession until they become citizens. Then our employers look at their work history and tell them they don't have enough experience working in the US. For doctors they must pass a series of tests (some costing $1000) then re-do their two year residency, just to practice the same healthcare they have been doing for years-only not here in the US. I know of a Russian pharmacist who came here to marry an American citizen, spoke fluent English but had to go back to college and re-earn her pharmacy degree. As for the not so highly educated immigrants, why does our system make it so hard to become a legal citizen. If our system was fair, less bureaucratic, allowing these people an opportunity to come here, work hard, pay taxes, would we have so many coming here illegally?
They do not come to the US to steal our jobs or bring their ideology to the US. These people come here cause they believe the United States is the land of opportunity, the place where our own history shows that immigrants can come and become productive citizens. If America always had these stifling immigration laws would we have had people like Albert Einstein, Madeline Albright, Joesph Pulitzer, Subranhmanyan Chandrasekhar (Nobel laureate for Physics) or even Mother Cabrini?
