May 28, 2002

Thanks to Iain Murray and

Thanks to Iain Murray and the other kind folks who expressed sympathy and encouragement regarding the INS experience. There's always one more river to cross, but it appears that we made it over this one at least.

I'm sure whatever reforms will follow on the decision to overhaul the INS won't kick in till long after it ceases to be an issue for us. Everyone who has been through the experience seems to believe it couldn't possibly be worse. I'm not so sure about that: things can always be worse.

Is it possible to crack down on illegal immigration without putting legal immigrants through a harrowing experience? I wouldn't mind the experience being slightly less harrowing, but I doubt it. There are little things they could do to make it less confusing, such as making sure the instructions match the forms. I've always assumed that they deliberately make it as complicated and difficult as possible so that illegitimate applicants have less chance of falling through the cracks. I suppose I feel about INS practices the same way I feel about airport security: I'd be a lot more patient with being subjected to idiotic, time-wasting procedures if I had any confidence that they might occasionally succeed in preventing some danger or abuse of the law. There's not much evidence that they do, in both cases. They confiscate little old ladies' nail clippers, yet somehow a guy with a shotgun gets through. Did any al Qaeda agents slip by while they were scrutinizing my 27-year-old British wife just to make sure she hadn't been an official of the German government in 1933, or shuffling through 300+ pages of photocopies of my financial records? Probably not. But the INS hasn't been doing such a great job of keeping tabs on al Qaeda operatives. Some of them did in fact manipulate the system through sham marriages. I'm all for making us all jump through a few hoops in aid of sorting the sham marriages from the real ones. But maybe they should focus less on the nail-clipper level of danger and more on the shotgun level, if you take my meaning. Just a suggestion.

Don't get me wrong, though: I'm not complaining. We weren't tortured. We didn't have to bribe anybody (unless you count the exorbitant filing fees.) You might have to spend a lot of time standing around waiting, but legitimacy works. Eventually.

Posted by Dr. Frank at May 28, 2002 04:02 PM | TrackBack