Illegal by Design

by Dave Bennion · 2009-04-04 11:00:00 UTC
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Joshua Holland of Alternet has written a first-hand account of his interaction with the maddening immigration bureaucracy.  Unfortunately he learned the hard way that the system is so complicated and poorly managed that you can't rely on immigration officials themselves to understand it well enough to give you reliable advice.  Immigration officers can dispense advice like Pez--it's no concern of theirs if someone they talk to ends up in immigration court, they face no liability for giving bad advice.  It's a system that does work well for immigration lawyers in a sense, but it's such a frustrating experience for us as well that virtually every immigration lawyer in the country is pushing for sensible immigration reform.  (Also, I've never been golfing with regional immigration officials, and if I ever did, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't get invited back.)

Holland also writes convincingly about how flimsy distinctions between "legal" and "illegal" are in such a dysfunctional system.

Via.

Dave Bennion
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