I am a naturalized American citizen. I jumped the line to get my citizenship. My sister was a Pelosi intern at the time, and they wanted to make her a staffer, so they twisted arms to expedite her application process so she’d become American.
After that was successful, my mom made my sister ask them to do the same for me, and they did.
Konstantin Kissin is spouting some economically illiterate nonsense on immigration.
He said illegal immigrants are the people we don’t want, don’t have the skills we need, so that’s why they have to break in. That’s just dumb. Generally speaking, people come because there are jobs waiting for them, and there are jobs waiting for them because people want to hire them.
As for skills, US’s H1B visa system works much better than Canada’s silly point system precisely because it’s market driven. They’re mostly people who graduated from American universities, and they’re employer-sponsored. Again, the market does the work. You don’t need some point system–employers know what they need. (See the Leah Boustani interview with Bill Kristol).
Another thing he said was, “Would you want someone who the first thing he does upon coming in is breaking the law? Would he be a taxpaying member of society?” [Paraphrase]
Your taxes are taken out of your paycheck, genius. Furthermore, generalizing about a person based on one thing–crossing the border out of economic necessity–is asinine.
He also said, we don’t know if illegal immigrants commit more crimes than citizens. Well, that’s mostly true, we only know for Texas, and the answer is no.
