Screwing Over the Huddled Masses

We’re being immigration visa jerks and that’s gonna hurt us in the long run.

America’s always done well by taking everybody else’s best people and making them ours – Einstein, Von Braun, my mother.

Okay, those were all Germans, but I’m sure there are good people from other countries who also came to the US.

It works out well for the United States – we get brilliant physicists, rockets that take us to the moon, and me. Who can complain about that? We attract smart, hardworking folks to our industries, universities, and culture, and milk them for all their worth.

Seriously, folks, we won WWII with a guy named Eisenhower. Doesn’t sound like a Native American name to me – we used a German to whup the Germans.

But part of this system is us being willing to work with foreigners. That’s pronounced “Furrnurs.”

Better yet, try saying it without any vowels.

If we’re gonna brain drain the rest of the world, we have to be willing to play the immigration game and have a relatively open (one-way) door to the international neighborhood (and bars on the windows). If we close the door too tightly, Prof. Wu will go unravel genetics at Cambridge and Dr. Schneider will go open his company in France.

Instead, we’re being tools.

I know a British woman doing public interest work here in the states, trying to fix things we’ve screwed up for free, and we’re making it an unholy pain in the arse for her to stay more than a few months.

And that’s how we treat our friends! C’mon – we’re allies with the UK. They’ve been our closest friends in the global game of Risk ever since we kicked them out. They’re the only ones who’ve had the pluck/bad judgment to stick with us in Iraq in any force!

Then there’s a German buddy of mine who wanted to come study here. There was a metric tonne of paperwork, and when even a German complains about the paperwork, that’s a lot.

My buddy had to make an in person visit to the consulate in Munich – I dunno, to show folks he didn’t look like a terrorist or something – but the best I’ve heard was about some foreign academics at a local university. They couldn’t apply to renew their visas till, say, two months out from the expiration date. But it’d take the government six months to process the paperwork….

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses” and screw em."

JOHN DERRICK