[ecopoesis]

The point is there are rules. To come to the US you can either:

1) Apply to INS, wait in line, enter the lottery and follow the law.

2) Hop on a plane and hope they don't catch you.

He chose route 2, and is now paying the consequences. Just because he's an entrepreneur doesn't give him any more right to be here then any other would be immigrant, and it certainly doesn't give him the right to jump the line

[steve8918]

I agree there are rules, and rules need to be followed. I immigrated to the US as well, and went through a lot of troubles to immigrate legally and successfully, so I very much do not like the idea of people trying to skip the line.

That being said, in the 20 years since he's been here, presumably legally since he was legally allowed to stay while fighting his case, he's made a good life for himself and his family, and they appear to be productive members of society.

If it were me, I probably would have denied the asylum application, but given his entrepreneurial skills, I would have allowed him to apply on an investor's visa and let him stay during the process. The problem is that it took 20 years for the case to go through, which allowed them to create a good argument to stay in the US by being productive members of society. If they sped up the process, this wouldn't have even been an issue.

In the end, aren't these people what we want from immigrants? It's ridiculous how politicians don't try to do very much about illegal immigration because it's so pervasive, but when they find a productive member of society who is trying to immigrate, they throw him in jail because he has revealed himself.

[RyanMcGreal]

The point is: there's something wrong with the rules.

[hugh3]

Maybe, but you can't complain if you choose to disobey the rules and they catch you.

Especially when the rules are just "dumb" rather than "immoral". That is to say, the United States is morally entitled to set rules about who can and can't stay in their country, and the rules at the moment are quite dumb.

[zb]

No, he didn't. He was legally in the country and he applied for asylum before his authorisation expired. It was all above-board, though that doesn't mean he gets to stay since the asylum application was eventually declined.

[shiven]

ecopoesis, there are laws and then there is the interpretation of those laws, right? you don't have to be lawyer to see that and i am not one. because there exists a law does not mean it is automatically just and 'right'. laws get changed all the time and examples as this are a good reason to re-evaluate their 'correctness' and discuss in a broader social context the changes that are required.

[ecopoesis]

It really doesn't matter if the law is right, what matters is the fairness in enforcement. In this case, he could followed the law, waited his turn and come to the US. Instead, he came to the US on an exchange visa, then stayed illegally when it expired. He claimed asylum, but after investigation, the INS/ICE found that he wasn't being persecuted. The US has even told him what he needed to do to become legal, he chose not too.

He's tried for twenty years find loopholes in US law because he didn't want to wait his turn with other would be immigrants.

So while US immigration law may be messed up, he's messing up far more by trying to cheat his way in.

[georgecmu]

he could followed the law, waited his turn and come to the US

Could you elaborate more on this wating one's turn concept? When exactly does this turn come about?

[angersock]

Much as I appreciate rules fetishism, this is the sort of view that screws up my country.

Look, elsewhere we've seen the wide variety of visas aimed at the "rich", "investors", and "job creators". So, clearly, enforcement isn't uniform across people who are immigrants.

Moreover, in your presumably simple moral system, any law regardless of how unfair in specification is fine so long as the implementation is uniform.

(note here I'm interpreting "fairness in enforcement" to mean uniform, as if we actually take into account "fairness" in the conventional sense your own statement is reduced to uselessness... and I'd rather not believe HN is frequented by the sort of drooling pedantic imbecile that would be necessary to make such a claim)

This being the case, you apparently would have no issue with a law that requires police officers to beat twelve citizens every day, provided they aren't biased in their selection?