"The Law Is Enforced Against Those Who Obey The Law"
01/29/2009
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Robert Stacy McCain writes in the American Spectator:
"There is a passage in Peter Brimelow's Alien Nation where a foreign-born friend talks about the difficulty of bringing over his mother, and Brimelow advises: "Just get her a tourist visa and let her overstay." It's very practical advice. The enforcement mechanism is broken and, even if La Migra came for Mum, the appeals process can delay deportation almost infinitely. It's easier to break the law than to obey it. "

That's not quite correct, The Other McCain is quoting from memory. On Page 81 of Alien Nation, Peter Brimelow wrote:

Some country queues are astonishingly long. Applicants now receiving permission to enter the United States have waited in some cases for as long as sixteen years.

Obviously, from these countries, no skilled would-be immigrant without family connections need apply.

But even immigrants who do apply with family connections have trouble, because of those country queues. Talking about immigration on David Newman's KXYT Detroit-area radio show, I once had the heart-rending experience of a call from an elderly European widow in great distress because she couldn't bring her sister, also widowed and her only family in the world, to America to live with her. How could this possibly be, when the borders plainly were out of control?

Ever since, I have regretted that I flinched from saying on air what I believe immigration lawyers say in private: bring her in as a tourist and overstay, no one will do any thing. It's the Great American Immigration Paradox again–the law is enforced against those who obey the law.

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