[MENTION=16165]alan1[/MENTION]
If you go to the Secretary of State website, take a little time, and digest the system by which visas are granted you will see the problem. You have to understand the system but once you do, you can see how long it takes people from each country to become eligible for a visa. Right now, a person in Mexico will wait 10 or more years, sometimes even 15 years, to get a work visa while the person from India will not wait very long at all. There is a system of quotas for each country which do not match the numbers of jobs the immigrants can get once they are here. That is part of the problem.
But every undocumented alien who is here didn't jump the river. Many of them came here on legal work visas and just did not return home. Should they return home with the expired visa, it would trigger a 10 year bar of them returning to the US. So they are not motivated to comply. I have a cousin who bought a house from an Indian couple who got caught up in that 10 year bar thingy. They got a mega beautiful house for a little of nothing because the people had to unload it.
Immigration law is not at all straight forward. But the bottom line is if you come here on a visa and stay after it expires you have committed no crime. If you jump the river, that is illegal entry which is a misdemeanor.
See if you can get a handle on the Secretary of State website, quota, wait times, etc. and that will help you immensely.
[MENTION=21954]Sunshine[/MENTION]
As for the part in
blue, I would like to point out that I said nothing of the sort. I understand that many illegals exist that came about through work visa's, college study programs, and even passports where the person never returned home.
Your statement about an expiring visa not being a crime is a little misleading. If one continues to work in this country after their work visa has expired, that is a crime. If they aren't working, then no crime is committed.
As a matter of fact, the company I work for has contracted with another company that provides labor to write computer code for us. The vast majority of that companies employees are Indian and working here on visa's. If one of their employees visa's expires, they won't let that person work in the US and they force them to return to India if they want to keep their job.
You do make a good point about it taking different amounts of waiting time to acquire a visa depending upon which country one is from. Is any of that based on job skills, or specific job skills needed in the US labor force? I ask because I don't know. But... you brought up India and Mexico... I do know that as a nation, India has been very proactive about educating their citizenry in high demand and high education fields such as computer development and medicine, Mexico has not.
[MENTION=16165]alan1[/MENTION]
I didn't say you said that. I merely made a point.
No particular job skills are required. But when they come they have to declare a particular place they are going. However, they don't have to even go there let alone stay there. It's a free country. Just like the rest of us they can go where they please.
Mexicans are well trained in the trades. They do a really good job with construction related work. A contractor I bought a house from in TN used Mexicans, and they did an excellent job on the house. They are skilled painters, tile workers, carpenters, etc. But no demand in Mexico. When I had my rotator cuff surgery in TN the physical therapy place had just moved to a new building and all areas of it were not completed. Mexicans were in there painting. They were doing an excellent job, they were quiet and respectful, and whispered rather than talking aloud when patients were present. There are a lot who do menial jobs too, though. I saw one, a woman, out sweeping the water off the parking lot here where I'm staying. She was really going at it. Before I came back home from TN, the home inspector found my roof had hail damage. We had a big hail storm that year with golf ball size hail. I had to have a new roof put on before I could sell it. The contractor brought out a crew of Mexicans and they finished that puppy in a day, did a good job, and the clean up was perfect.
I don't know if they who were working there were legal or not. But I do know from my Immigration Law study that 'documents' (forged) are not hard to come buy. And it is not the employers duty to prove the documents are real, only to take them and record them. Even the SS system will not challenge a number that is not a valid number. SS just takes the money on that number and that's the end of it.
Basically they are the new slave class in the US.
I can also tell you that a business that is using illegals can often catch the attention of the IRS if they turn in labor expenses and has not paid in any SS or taxes on their employees. So a business that uses them will not get the tax break that businesses get on that particular expense because they can't really claim it. If they are claiming other expenses related to a labor intensive company, and not labor, it also runs up a red flag to the IRS. Our system is not completely stupid. It just behaves that way at times.
Our government has several avenues to know where the undocumented workers are and who is employing them. The ones above are the best. This country is all about commerce. We have lost so much to other countries in terms of jobs I'm sure the government doesn't want to lose more. Even though it is not Americans doing the work, they are paying into the system in a big way and not getting what they pay for.
He belongs to a big club. As the debate over Social Security heats up, the estimated seven million or so illegal immigrant workers in the United States are now providing the system with a subsidy of as much as $7 billion a year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/business/05immigration.html?_r=0
