Las Buenas Ideas Nunca Me Vinieron

Surprisingly there are seniors who are younger than me, one of whom is Leeor. On Thursday, September 29th, Leeor joined me in making that uneventful leap into the age of 17. It really is a pitiful age. We still can't vote. The only new right we are granted is the ability to see R rated movies legally, which isn't really any improvement at all because no one actually cares if a person who is 16 goes to such a movie. Anyway, Leeor had a very entertaining birthday party on Saturday. I'm not quite sure that there's any way to describe it well. It's exactly the kind of party you would expect Leeor to throw. Simply indescribable.

Although the usual contingent of foreign exchange students didn't show up, a number of noncitizen residents did. Jonathan, Leeor, a girl from Germany, a girl from France, and I were having a conversation about all the trouble that they have had with their visas, green cards (or lack thereof), and stalled citizenship applications. It turns out that most of them came because their parents do research at OHSU. At that moment the incredible hypocrisy of the US immigration policy became quite clear to me. All of the immigrants I know have gone through the proper channels to try to obtain green cards and citizenship and have experienced nothing but misery trying to navigate the infernal labyrinth of the INS. I'm not sure I know anyone who has succeeded in obtaining either yet. At the same time, all of these foreigners are smarter, better at the English language, and more motivated than at least 95% of the Americans I know. These people are brilliant compared to our own citizens, and yet we are spending millions, if not billions of dollars each year to maintain this barrier of bureaucracy to prevent them from becoming legal citizens. This is utter nonsense. These are the people we should be trying to steal from other countries.

True, not all the money spent on immigration control is useless. If we were to stop patrolling the border with Mexico, for example, all hell would break loose, as the US would flood with impoverished workers and public services would be zapped. But does not mean that our method of border control with our southern neighbor is an effective one. Indeed, it too is fatally flawed. The current policy involves aggressively patrolling the border and deporting any illegal immigrants that are found. Of course, the INS can't stop everyone, so a large number--probably over a million each year--seep through the cracks of their defenses. Every now and then the US government grants amnesty to these illegal immigrants by the million, while continuing to force the law-abiding immigrants to face the monolithic bureaucracy in their quest for citizenship. Therein lies the fundamental failure of the current immigration control methods: it is absolutely impossible to prevent loads of illegal immigrants from crossing the border. As long as there is a significantly better life to be had in the US, there will be throngs of Mexicans trying to cross. Trying to stop them is utterly futile. The true solution is to prevent them from needing to come in the first place. By investing massive amounts of money in humanitarian aid and economic development in Mexico, the US could potentially reduce the incentive for Mexicans to make the border crossing. Even if there still were to remain a large gap beween the two standards of living, immigration would nevertheless be drastically reduced. Mexicans have a strong cultural heritage that is often incompatible with US culture, so there will always be a strong incentive for them to remain in their own country, as long as they are not completely destitute. This would be so much more productive than just continually pouring money into the current black hole of deportation, which does nothing to solve the real problem. The only thing standing in the way is US unwillingness to realize that the goal of immigration control cannot be orphaned from humanitarianism and still remain achievable.

Maybe then we can stop giving such a hard time to all of the incredibly intelligent and motivated families who come here to do worthwhile things like scientific research. Until then, while other countries hurl money and citizenship all over the place to try to get brilliant minds to set up shop within their borders, we just give them a gigantic headache and periodically threaten to deport them.