New bill offers amnesty to the educated
Last month I received a letter that I've been waiting the last 15 years of my life to get, ever since I immigrated to this country as a wide-eyed toddler from China.
The page-long letter is printed on thick gray government-issue paper, with the "United States of America" across the top and Lady Liberty's famous torch watermarked in the center. It begins: "You are hereby notified to appear for an interview on your Application for Naturalization..."
I've not actually been naturalized yet-I have to get tested on civics and such at my interview-but it's close. Hopefully, after just a few more months of red tape I can be officially sworn in as a U.S. citizen.
Hurrah. I should be more excited, but after watching my parents battle through lawyers, work visas, green cards and paperwork for so many years, the only thing I really feel near the end of our quest for citizenship is relief.
Especially since I'll no longer be classified as an "alien," a label that always made me feel like I was supposed to have three eyes and green skin.
Don't get me wrong, though. I grew up here and America is my home. I may not agree with everything in it, but I love this country and my family still believes it is their golden land of freedom and opportunity.Communist China was no picnic for them, and America shone in their eyes as a beacon of hope and promise.
So when I heard about the new immigration bill that is under consideration in the Senate, I was far less than thrilled.
At the heart of the bill is a point system that sets the criteria for who can get into America, though it feels more like admissions criteria for an Ivy-league school.
Out of a max 100 points, an applicant can earn 75 points based on job skills and education, 15 for proficiency in English and 10 for family ties. The criteria favor people with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering and math or who work in "high demand" jobs like healthcare and food service.
For anyone who isn't the foreign equivalent of a Tech grad, it's bad news. Not to mention a far cry from "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." The whole thing smells suspiciously of social engineering and class bias.
What about starting out poor and uneducated and working your way up, the whole pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps approach to life that is so distinctly American? People come to the U.S. believing that they can make a better life, whether they started out as janitors or doctors. It's the same American dream the first Americans had when they immigrated to Plymouth Rock.
Of course, if the point system had existed then, they probably wouldn't have made it over, and I'll bet that most of the forebears of the current Congressmen crafting this immigration bill wouldn't have either.
I understand the new bill is designed to help stem the problem of illegal immigration and offset immigrants competing with homegrown Americans for jobs by selectively allowing people in who fill employment gaps. But illegal immigrants won't be discouraged by stricter immigration requirements - they weren't getting in by meeting the old ones anyway.
Also, the job market is far from static. The current bill will set immigration criteria for the next 14 years, so if science and engineering jobs dry up, there could be a lot of highly educated taxi drivers floating around in the next decade.
I won't pretend to be qualified enough to solve everything that is wrong in immigration today, but I know there must be alternative solutions. America is a nation of immigrants, and I just don't see the value in such a biased system.
After all, what's inscribed on the Statue of Liberty isn't "give me your smart, your skilled, your well-connected professionals toting graduate degrees."
Once, the U.S. was the country people immigrated to when they had no hope elsewhere. If this bill passes as stands, the U.S. could very well become the country people have no hope of immigrating to.
