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?
I think that the frictions of applying to immigrate should be shown somewhere. As someone who immigrated to Canada I can tell you that I spent way way more than what this game simulates. I can only imagine that real immigration to the US is much more expensive. Nevertheless, you amke a good point in that the way it's done in the game might detract from the intended objective of the game.
I don't know how it is in other countries, but in Sweden I can simply request an English version of the document and I'll get that – at least for things that might be relevant for foreign authorities, like the Swedish analogue of a birth certificate or proof of vaccination etc. My passport is already in both English and Swedish.
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.
Very good point, and it leads into an even bigger one.
Why does democracy work? Not perfectly, but pretty well, comparatively, all things considered. After all, one of the first lessons of public choice theory is that voters are rationally ignorant.
Answer: While voters *as voters* have no incentive to learn enough about public policy to make decisions that are remotely close to adequately informed, voters *as subjects of the law* have an incentive to learn what the law is, in order to benefit from and especially to avoid running afoul of it. Democracy is about people having a say in the laws that govern them. And that tends to make for smarter laws.
But US citizens will never have to run the gamut of the US immigration system. So they have no reason to learn about it. So their input about immigration law is extremely ill-informed. And politicians who pander to that make really stupid laws.
Immigration law is very stupid because it is very undemocratic. It is, in fact, that mathematical limiting case of undemocratic law, since the people who are subject to it is the exact inverse of the set of people who have a saying in determining what it is.
Kudos to Cato for trying to educate Americans about the immigration regime that has been stood up in our name and is politically answerable to our votes, though in fact its operations are totally inept and contrary to all the values that made America great.
I'm sort of ambivalent about it, but it seems like a large number of people successfully navigate the system over time. Are limits moral? Is making the process difficult a moral way to impose limits? Are we selecting for immigrants that are good at navigating bureaucracy?
>>Are we selecting for immigrants that are good at navigating bureaucracy?
Excellent question! I fear we are, and will have a less creative, more obedient population as a result.
If we *must* have limits, just decide how many immigrants we want, and auction off the places to the highest bidders. Potential employers and families are welcome to chip in on bids.
First: set an income level - say, 150% of the median household income, adjusted annually - and anyone who can either a) demonstrate at least a 3-year history of generating that much income prior to applying or b) demonstrate a job offer in the United States committing to at least 1 year at that income to get a temporary residency, and pay income tax on at least that much income for the next 3 years to get permanent residency. We can adjust immigration levels by adjusting the required income level for new applicants.
Second recommendation: allow any qualifying employer or individual to sponsor an immigrant, meaning they agree to ensure that the person will not become a public charge for at least N years. This second option, by the way, is already a requirement for the current green card by marriage, and N is essentially 10 years, with the US spouse providing the guarantee - we just don't allow anyone other than a spouse to be the guarantor, although I don't really see why not: it's a very large commitment, so people would only do it for people they had a lot of confidence in, which means the guarantors would be doing the immigrant vetting for us.
Just to add, the 150% income threshold would increase high-income customers and taxpayers, benefiting people at the low end of the income scale, while increasing competition for high-income jobs and thus - for both reasons - reduce income inequality while increasing national wealth.
Your scheme, like any reasonable sane scheme, would be vastly better than the status quo.
But there's a lot to be said for keeping it simple - with an auction the only thing there is to argue over is how many places will be put on offer. Your scheme has lots of divisive numbers to pick (150%, 3 years, 1 year, 3, years, N, 10... etc.) And amounts to the same thing in the end.
Because the ability to earn above-median income, avoid becoming a public charge, etc. is strongly correlated with being able to bid high in the auction. (Even if the candidate doesn't have money, their US employers do. And there will be lenders willing to bet on immigrant success.)
The auction also has the nice property that it brings in money, which eases the politics, since the money can be spent on buying off opponents and offsetting the perceived "costs" of immigration (in other words, buying off opponents).
The only downside I see to a simple auction is that it favors immigrants from wealthy countries (where it's easier to get money). If that's a concern, we could bias the bids with a correction factor based on the wealth of the source country.
We're clearly thinking along similar lines. As you note, the wage-level proposal doesn't extract any unusual payment from the immigrant, merely normal taxes on income, but an auction would mean that some percentage of immigrants at the margin would wind up in financial distress by virtue of having had to "reach" to make the visa payment, which would be hard on them (and possibly on their families back home, who might have borrowed the money) and would result in more immigrants actually becoming public charges, which would not be good for them nor for acceptance of immigration.
I have a problem with the 2nd method of playing...I don't know of any immigrant ancestors. AFAICT, all of my ancestors were colonists (or possibly native), none were immigrants. Its weird, the result surprised me when my Mom was doing the research, but it looks like I am the result of about 7 generations of inbreeding in south central KY without any immigrant influence.
There may be an immigrant in the mix somewhere down some lines that arent fully clear, but there just wasn't much 19th century immigration to the area.
The last major amnesty was 37 years ago, other than a handful of very specific people. I think I just identified another myth to bust in an updated version based on your question, thanks!
Amnesty gave citizenship to 3M people. All those people could the chain migration more people. What is the total impact of that amnesty over time. Exponential.
And of course those immigrants had kids, who through birthright citizenship get a pass and can be chain migration anchors.
According to the link most people come here through family re-unification. Birthright citizenship (a disgusting practice that should be abolished) is not even counted.
The bottom line is that immigration has caused fundamental demographic change in a generation. That’s not easy! If it were hard there would be no demographic change like Singapore.
If I am not assuming too much, YOU have your citizenship through birthright citizenship, do you not?
Or would you propose that you should have to find an immigration path that you, too, should have to follow before becoming a citizen?
For this question, you may assume that you can stay illegally (with all it entails) and use a) amnesty every half-century or so b) marriage to someone who has citizenship through a valid path.
Note, having a kid in the USA does NOT immediately qualify you for citizenship. Your kid can sponsor you, but that's a long, slow process. In the meantime you are eligible for deportation.
I have my citizenship since my parents were citizens.
Birthright citizenship is were non citizens can get their kid citizenship by slipping over the border and squeezing a kid out.
Most countries don’t have birthright citizenship.
For all the talk of long and difficult, there are 62 million Hispanics in this country. Most have come here through this birthright citizenship/family reunification policy or are descendenets of someone that did. That doesn’t seem all that difficult.
Or is your argument that people should become citizens before their children would be eligible? Would that really impact the number of immigrants much?
Yes, family unification is pretty much the only viable means for most people to migrate to the U.S. It's essentially the path you used.
I argue that, for the good of us all, we should open a path based on ability to contribute, instead (or as well). Technically, there is one; as a practical matter, it's so small as to be unusable for almost everyone.
My family has been in America for generations as legal citizens.
Chain immigration is when one person in a family gets citizenship and then they sponsor another who sponsors another etc. A “chain” such that letting in one immigrant lets in many more.
So when you admit one person based on whatever your criteria is you aren’t just accepting them but in the long run their relations and the relations of relations, etc.
I'm sorry, but if we eliminate birthright citizenship, then you are literally describing your own situation: without birthright citizenship you have to claim citizenship through your parents, who claimed it from theirs, and so on. Without birthright citizenship the place of birth no longer matters, so someone who moves to the US because their parents have become citizens is in exactly the same legal situation as you are: they claim citizenship not because they were born here, but because their parents are citizens.
When the US admitted your ancestors, it admitted you - a "relation of a relation" as you put it.
I'm struggling to distinguish between your situation and the one you disapprove of.
Whether my parents (or ancestors) became citizens in the first place should be based on whether they're becoming citizens is good for the country. That is the case with all immigration. Such policy should consider whether the offspring of the admitted citizen will be good for the country as well.
My parents were European. They were good for the country. Generally speaking, immigration of their type (1800s) was a positive for America.
But its not clear that immigration of brown third worlders today is similarly good.
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?
I think that the frictions of applying to immigrate should be shown somewhere. As someone who immigrated to Canada I can tell you that I spent way way more than what this game simulates. I can only imagine that real immigration to the US is much more expensive. Nevertheless, you amke a good point in that the way it's done in the game might detract from the intended objective of the game.
You'd have to pay for a translator because all documents you submit must be either in English or translated into English by a certified translator.
The game is significantly tweaked to make it easier than reality along several margins. For instance, we don’t repeat questions.
Excellent point. If anything they should tweak it to understate the real difficulties.
But I think it's fair for the website to at least *mention* those obstacles that do apply to many people (even if not in every case).
That does make more sense.
However:
> your documents are going to be in non-English
I don't know how it is in other countries, but in Sweden I can simply request an English version of the document and I'll get that – at least for things that might be relevant for foreign authorities, like the Swedish analogue of a birth certificate or proof of vaccination etc. My passport is already in both English and Swedish.
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.
Very good point, and it leads into an even bigger one.
Why does democracy work? Not perfectly, but pretty well, comparatively, all things considered. After all, one of the first lessons of public choice theory is that voters are rationally ignorant.
Answer: While voters *as voters* have no incentive to learn enough about public policy to make decisions that are remotely close to adequately informed, voters *as subjects of the law* have an incentive to learn what the law is, in order to benefit from and especially to avoid running afoul of it. Democracy is about people having a say in the laws that govern them. And that tends to make for smarter laws.
But US citizens will never have to run the gamut of the US immigration system. So they have no reason to learn about it. So their input about immigration law is extremely ill-informed. And politicians who pander to that make really stupid laws.
Immigration law is very stupid because it is very undemocratic. It is, in fact, that mathematical limiting case of undemocratic law, since the people who are subject to it is the exact inverse of the set of people who have a saying in determining what it is.
Kudos to Cato for trying to educate Americans about the immigration regime that has been stood up in our name and is politically answerable to our votes, though in fact its operations are totally inept and contrary to all the values that made America great.
I'm sort of ambivalent about it, but it seems like a large number of people successfully navigate the system over time. Are limits moral? Is making the process difficult a moral way to impose limits? Are we selecting for immigrants that are good at navigating bureaucracy?
>>Are we selecting for immigrants that are good at navigating bureaucracy?
Excellent question! I fear we are, and will have a less creative, more obedient population as a result.
If we *must* have limits, just decide how many immigrants we want, and auction off the places to the highest bidders. Potential employers and families are welcome to chip in on bids.
Not unlike my own recommendations. I have two.
First: set an income level - say, 150% of the median household income, adjusted annually - and anyone who can either a) demonstrate at least a 3-year history of generating that much income prior to applying or b) demonstrate a job offer in the United States committing to at least 1 year at that income to get a temporary residency, and pay income tax on at least that much income for the next 3 years to get permanent residency. We can adjust immigration levels by adjusting the required income level for new applicants.
Second recommendation: allow any qualifying employer or individual to sponsor an immigrant, meaning they agree to ensure that the person will not become a public charge for at least N years. This second option, by the way, is already a requirement for the current green card by marriage, and N is essentially 10 years, with the US spouse providing the guarantee - we just don't allow anyone other than a spouse to be the guarantor, although I don't really see why not: it's a very large commitment, so people would only do it for people they had a lot of confidence in, which means the guarantors would be doing the immigrant vetting for us.
Just open the gates...
Just to add, the 150% income threshold would increase high-income customers and taxpayers, benefiting people at the low end of the income scale, while increasing competition for high-income jobs and thus - for both reasons - reduce income inequality while increasing national wealth.
Your scheme, like any reasonable sane scheme, would be vastly better than the status quo.
But there's a lot to be said for keeping it simple - with an auction the only thing there is to argue over is how many places will be put on offer. Your scheme has lots of divisive numbers to pick (150%, 3 years, 1 year, 3, years, N, 10... etc.) And amounts to the same thing in the end.
Because the ability to earn above-median income, avoid becoming a public charge, etc. is strongly correlated with being able to bid high in the auction. (Even if the candidate doesn't have money, their US employers do. And there will be lenders willing to bet on immigrant success.)
The auction also has the nice property that it brings in money, which eases the politics, since the money can be spent on buying off opponents and offsetting the perceived "costs" of immigration (in other words, buying off opponents).
The only downside I see to a simple auction is that it favors immigrants from wealthy countries (where it's easier to get money). If that's a concern, we could bias the bids with a correction factor based on the wealth of the source country.
We're clearly thinking along similar lines. As you note, the wage-level proposal doesn't extract any unusual payment from the immigrant, merely normal taxes on income, but an auction would mean that some percentage of immigrants at the margin would wind up in financial distress by virtue of having had to "reach" to make the visa payment, which would be hard on them (and possibly on their families back home, who might have borrowed the money) and would result in more immigrants actually becoming public charges, which would not be good for them nor for acceptance of immigration.
I have a problem with the 2nd method of playing...I don't know of any immigrant ancestors. AFAICT, all of my ancestors were colonists (or possibly native), none were immigrants. Its weird, the result surprised me when my Mom was doing the research, but it looks like I am the result of about 7 generations of inbreeding in south central KY without any immigrant influence.
There may be an immigrant in the mix somewhere down some lines that arent fully clear, but there just wasn't much 19th century immigration to the area.
>Her question was spurned by ignorance
That should be 'spurred.'
Sounds as a very pedagogical game. Have to try it out
1) Immigrate illegally.
2) Wait for amnesty, find someone to marry, or have a kid in the USA.
3) Chain migrate yourself and your family.
Doesn't seem that hard. If it was hard you wouldn't have seen wholesale population replacement in a single generation.
Birthright citizenship and chain migration are big loopholes people exploit.
The last major amnesty was 37 years ago, other than a handful of very specific people. I think I just identified another myth to bust in an updated version based on your question, thanks!
No doubt you would do it again if you could.
Amnesty gave citizenship to 3M people. All those people could the chain migration more people. What is the total impact of that amnesty over time. Exponential.
And of course those immigrants had kids, who through birthright citizenship get a pass and can be chain migration anchors.
According to the link most people come here through family re-unification. Birthright citizenship (a disgusting practice that should be abolished) is not even counted.
The bottom line is that immigration has caused fundamental demographic change in a generation. That’s not easy! If it were hard there would be no demographic change like Singapore.
If I am not assuming too much, YOU have your citizenship through birthright citizenship, do you not?
Or would you propose that you should have to find an immigration path that you, too, should have to follow before becoming a citizen?
For this question, you may assume that you can stay illegally (with all it entails) and use a) amnesty every half-century or so b) marriage to someone who has citizenship through a valid path.
Note, having a kid in the USA does NOT immediately qualify you for citizenship. Your kid can sponsor you, but that's a long, slow process. In the meantime you are eligible for deportation.
I have my citizenship since my parents were citizens.
Birthright citizenship is were non citizens can get their kid citizenship by slipping over the border and squeezing a kid out.
Most countries don’t have birthright citizenship.
For all the talk of long and difficult, there are 62 million Hispanics in this country. Most have come here through this birthright citizenship/family reunification policy or are descendenets of someone that did. That doesn’t seem all that difficult.
So, you're a chain immigrant?
Or is your argument that people should become citizens before their children would be eligible? Would that really impact the number of immigrants much?
Yes, family unification is pretty much the only viable means for most people to migrate to the U.S. It's essentially the path you used.
I argue that, for the good of us all, we should open a path based on ability to contribute, instead (or as well). Technically, there is one; as a practical matter, it's so small as to be unusable for almost everyone.
My family has been in America for generations as legal citizens.
Chain immigration is when one person in a family gets citizenship and then they sponsor another who sponsors another etc. A “chain” such that letting in one immigrant lets in many more.
So when you admit one person based on whatever your criteria is you aren’t just accepting them but in the long run their relations and the relations of relations, etc.
I'm sorry, but if we eliminate birthright citizenship, then you are literally describing your own situation: without birthright citizenship you have to claim citizenship through your parents, who claimed it from theirs, and so on. Without birthright citizenship the place of birth no longer matters, so someone who moves to the US because their parents have become citizens is in exactly the same legal situation as you are: they claim citizenship not because they were born here, but because their parents are citizens.
When the US admitted your ancestors, it admitted you - a "relation of a relation" as you put it.
I'm struggling to distinguish between your situation and the one you disapprove of.
If your parents are citizens, you are a citizen.
Whether my parents (or ancestors) became citizens in the first place should be based on whether they're becoming citizens is good for the country. That is the case with all immigration. Such policy should consider whether the offspring of the admitted citizen will be good for the country as well.
My parents were European. They were good for the country. Generally speaking, immigration of their type (1800s) was a positive for America.
But its not clear that immigration of brown third worlders today is similarly good.