People shouldn’t be protesting against immigration reform for illegal aliens. They should be protesting against the immigration laws and system as a whole. For a country founded on immigration, America has some of the most complex, unforgiving, expensive and xenophobic immigration laws of any developed country. The entire system is in dire need of major reform.
Illegal immigration is an attractive option when you consider how hard it is to move here legally. Legal immigration involves ridiculously long wait times, stacks of complicated paperwork, a lot of money and an equally large amount of red tape. I had to go through the process myself and it took 10 painfully slow, frustrating months and several thousand dollars to receive my visa. I was stuck in London apart from my fiance the entire time. I compulsively checked my e-mail to see if I’d received notification of my case finally moving on to the next processing center. Immigration cases can be postponed for up to a year, and not knowing just how long I would have to wait was the worst aspect of the process.
I visited America on a tourist visa to surprise my fiance on his birthday during those 10 months apart. I was almost tempted to give up on the legal route and just disappear somewhere into rural America with my fiance and become an illegal alien. However, I knew as an illegal immigrant, I wouldn’t be able to work or travel out of the U.S. without trouble, so I flew back to England with an indefinite wait looming ahead of me. After several more agonizing months, I received the visa. I then had to pay a small forutune for vaccinations, a full medical exam including HIV testing and background checks. When I was finally reunited with my fiance in Florida, I had to wait five months for my work permit to come in the mail, and I watched my savings dwindle away. And there are thousands of others going through the same ordeal, waiting apart from their family and loved ones for the overburdened case workers at immigration to finally get to their file and approve them.
A comprehensive reform should include a program for migrant workers and their families to earn legal permanent residency and eventual citizenship, a new worker visa program that protects the rights of American and foreign workers, and a reform of the family-based immigration system and restoring due process protections for immigrants. The system needs to be revamped with less complex paperwork and more caseworkers. When legal immigration isn’t such an onerous prospect, perhaps illegal immigration wont be such a tempting alternative.
Gaura McLeod is a UF staff employee.
Editor's note: This letter refers to this article.
