The Cato Institute has created a new videogame to simulate the U.S. immigration process. As a fan of creative pedagogy, I strongly approve. Summary of “The Green Card Game,” via Alex Nowrasteh:
The Green Card Game is an unusual product for the Cato Institute, but we decided to take a chance and make it for several reasons. First, we hypothesize that many people oppose immigration liberalization because they don’t know how complex and restrictive the immigration system is. Many years ago, I spoke to a conservative audience in Arizona about immigration. Afterward, an elderly woman asked, “I understand the benefits of immigration, but why don’t the illegals just go to the Post Office to register and become legal? What are they hiding?”
Those questions are reasonable if you know nothing about the legal immigration system. Her question was spurned by ignorance, not by malice. As a result, we’ve identified ignorance of the actual laws as a significant problem in liberalizing immigration. Just imagine how hard it would be to talk about tax policy with someone who doesn’t know that the U.S. has an income tax or even what it is. That’s about where we are in terms of the immigration debate. Our game will teach people some of the basic facts so we can then have a better discussion.
A few game options:
For American players, I recommend starting by playing as yourself. Create a character with your age, education level, occupation, income, savings, and family with one critical change: Choose to be from another country. Many of us won the birth lottery by being born in the United States. See if you could have come here legally if you lost that lottery, but all else remained the same.
Another way to play is to enter the name of an ancestor. Pick a relative when they immigrated to the United States and choose their level of education, occupation, and country of origin. If they’re from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, you’ve got a choice of countries. See if your ancestor could come to the United States legally today.
You could also play as a living immigrant family member or friend. Enter their biographical information best as possible and get a sense of what they went through to come here. At a minimum, it will give you a new respect for what they went through to become an American. You could even share the game with them to see if you could conjure any memories in them.
A few years ago, I went to Australia’s immigration website to see how Australia’s point system would work for a Princeton Ph.D. like myself. Result: Australia doesn’t want my kind! Even if I were in my twenties, I’d still be below the bar. Call me biased, but what a draconian system.
It's unfortunate that the game – like most other similar interactive games – slightly but obviously overplays its hand, which throws doubt on the other very real points it makes.
For example, it stated that since I was not from a country where English is the official language, I'd have to pay for a translator (I don't need one!), pay to travel to the embassy (no matter if you live nearby and it'd be a fifteen minute bus ride at most), or pay $200 for a local passport and birth certificate (I already have that, and it was free).
Most of that isn't really the point, which is that it's really hard to immigrate to the US, and it makes one suspicious that the other issues are similarly tweaked to seem harder than they really are; e.g. perhaps employers know a bunch of tricks that make the issues in the "employer-sponsored green card" section not as difficult in practice?
Mr. Henderson,
Whoever made this videogame had a good idea. How about some more videogames? They could make an updated version of Monopoly where you are a landlord or landlady who has to put up with the impossible rules that local governments impose on you, like unrealistic rent control laws and unreasonable restrictions on evictions of tenants. Or they could make a game where you are the owner of a small business and have to survive all the harassments that governments can think of.