Why Some Legal Immigrants think the Open Border is Unfair

Conversations at a legal Vietnamese Refugee Owned Nail Shop

NOTE: This is outside my normal subject matter but may be pertinent in the current climate. As always, I am not an attorney, this is not legal advice and only my understanding at this time, always open to corrections and updates.

Every few weeks I take my mother to have a Mani/Pedi with a delightful woman named Kim.

As my mother is also delightful, she is quite popular there.

The owner of the business, a legal Vietnamese refugee, struck up a conversation with me this last visit.

She showed me a picture of her father, standing in front of an American Flag flying in front of their house, holding a heart shaped American Flag helium balloon.

With her accent, “He really love America. He always say, “America the best country in the world. I am so happy they let us come here”

She then related the journey, or more the ordeal, they experienced to get here.

Legal immigration can be subject to quotas and / or lotteries, requires multiple visits to the consulate or embassy in their home country, legally certified translations of documents from their native language to English, (birth certificates, etc.), medical exams, background checks, the submission of fingerprints, etc.

Identity Vetting

The family spent a year in a camp in Hong Kong to verify their identity and status, as her father was a military and government official.

After that another 7 months waiting in the Philippines undergoing further processing.

Financial Responsibility Affidavit of Support

Legal green card immigration requires a sponsor who assumes financial responsibility of the immigrant to insure they will not utilize public benefits. https://www.uscis.gov/green-card/green-card-processes-and-procedures/affidavit-of-support

Transportation Expenses

The family entered into an agreement where the hard costs of their immigration was reimbursed to the US government.

The shop owner contrasted that with the current situation, where there seems to be very little identity verification, no apparent qualification requirements, and immediate access to public resources.

Another customer, a legal, Ukraine immigrant, overheard us and joined into the conversation.

She described the similar process to the shop owner’s experience that her family underwent to enter the United States legally in the 1990’s and shared the shop owner’s concern over the current “process”, or more accurately lack thereof.

Then a third customer chimed in. She is a US citizen who is a member of a church that has been supporting legal immigration for decades.

“I just don’t get it”, she stated. “One of the main priorities in legal immigration is to avoid the immigrant from going on public assistance after arriving. All that effort seems to have been thrown out the window with the current administration. And the “open border” is demoralizing the families we have been working with to immigrate legally. They are asking if they should just drop it (the legal pathway) and jump the border, or what?”

That prompted the owner and the first customer to echo with, “what do we tell our families and friends we have been helping to come in legally who are stuck in that long, drawn out process?”

“When they see how the system is upside down right now, they wonder if they are doing the right thing after all.”

The current circumventing of the normal process may backfire on immigrants.

Depending on the ultimate adjudication result of this period of novel entry to the US, the border crossers may be subject to significant blowback from entering during this time outside of the normal legal process.

“Unlawful Presence”

Crossing the border between Ports of Entry is illegal, and normally jeopardizes any future petition to change immigration status. Prior to this administration anyone who did not initiate immigration through the process in their home country or present themselves to a legal Port of Entry was formerly near unequivocally considered to be here as an “Unlawful Presence”. The character and duration of that “unlawful presence” can “time bar” an immigrant from applying for legal entry to the US.

6 to 12 months of “Unlawful Presence” bars application for entry for 3 years.

1 year or more of “unlawful presence” bars future application for 10 years.

Depending on future interpretations of the “legal statuses” currently being used such as “humanitarian parole”, and expanded asylum claims that are clearly outside the scope and intention of the original asylum statute, the current policies may be catastrophic for well-intentioned immigrants who want to be legal residents.

The current policies could be barring all of these people from being able to apply for a decade, or perhaps ever, on what could turn out to have been a false promise of acceptance.

Current Reversed Incentives

Under a normal, functioning border policy illegal immigration is discouraged multiple ways.

Disqualified from future legal status

Coming into the country outside of the proper system is supposed to disqualify the border crosser from future legal application for periods up to 10 years. Rational potential immigrants would not want to take this risk.

Inability to work

Coming into the country outside of the proper system is supposed to prevent the ability to earn money without a green card allowing employment. Why travel somewhere that you cannot support yourself?

Subject to deportation

Coming into the country outside of the proper system is supposed to subject the border crosser to potential deportation when encountering the government. Sanctuary cities, counties and states and an unwillingness to Federally enforce deportation undercuts this disincentive.

Immediate access to government financial, housing, and health programs

Instead of the normal process of an immigrant first securing a sponsor willing to file a legally binding Affidavit of Support to enter, prohibiting access to welfare and other benefits, it appears everyone who can gain entry, regardless of the method is considered qualified to apply for benefits, benefits that at times are seemingly greater than those allowed to citizens and legal residents.

Using services during “Unlawful Presence” used to result in “2022 Public Charge Ground of Inadmissibility”. This appears to have been amended, part of the myriads of changes to border policy that has stimulated the border rush.

Under the current policy climate, the actions of the border crossers are not irrational.

They are able to shortcut the normal wait times and processes required to enter the US, and then immediately receive benefits unavailable when immigrating legally, apparently without jeopardizing future statuses. No wonder there is the rush to the border. This is leaving out the evidence of this situation being exacerbated by multiple NGO’s accelerating the flow beyond what could be achieved organically.

Is saying, “Look, don’t come here, but if you do, we will house, feed, provide funds, medical care, and provide a legal status and allow continuing presence”, really going to stop anyone from risking the trek?

Long Term Implications

Regardless of what anyone’s personal position is on how immigration should be handled, and ignoring the potential security risks of large numbers of unvetted people entering the country, is it sustainable to have unlimited, unrestricted, apparently open-ended acceptance of anyone who can get here without any process?

Without any planning or system in place how can the US be prepared to care for everyone who wants to come to the US, both financially and physically?

If we use a lifeboat analogy, if the US is the lifeboat of the world, don’t we have at some point a limited carrying capacity?

There are stories of ship sinking survivors who have more people than the capacity of the lifeboat. Stories where survivors would take turns rotating in and out of the water, understanding that if they were all onboard the lifeboat would sink.

Outside of the national security risks, aren’t we jeopardizing the carrying capacity of the United States’ ability to properly integrate new residents with an unregulated, apparently unlimited, open border? Are we risking the sinking of the “Lifeboat” USA?

Does anyone really think this is a sustainable policy?