If, by waiting list, people are referring to the green card lottery, here's some info from Immigration -- bold added by me.
"The Congressionally mandated Diversity Immigrant Visa Program makes available 50,000 permanent resident visas annually, drawn from random selection among all entries to persons who meet strict eligibility requirements from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States."
also
"For DV-2009, natives of the following countries1 are not eligible to apply because they sent a total of more than 50,000 immigrants to the U.S. over the period of the previous five years:
BRAZIL, CANADA, CHINA (mainland-born), COLOMBIA, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, ECUADOR, EL SALVADOR, GUATEMALA, HAITI, INDIA, JAMAICA, MEXICO, PAKISTAN, PHILIPPINES, PERU, POLAND, RUSSIA, SOUTH KOREA, UNITED KINGDOM (except Northern Ireland) and its dependent territories, and VIETNAM. Persons born in Hong Kong SAR, Macau SAR and Taiwan are eligible."
Whether or not this is the waiting list you're referring to, I'm not sure.
What I was referring to was the 'waiting list' (if there is any) to be one of the 173,753 legal immigrants in 2006... I don't know if these are 'permanent resident visas', or seasonal, or tourist - do you? Whatever the case, if there is a waiting list, I'd like to know how long is the typical waiting period, and how many people are on it... I have looked quite a bit and cannot find this information.
the laws aren't enforced because they skew the political and legal system with bribes and lobbyists; they can pay bribes and lobbyists because they have higher profitability. Rather than guarantee them acceptable profitability if they obey the law, I think it would be just as (or more) effective to guarantee them non-profitability if they don't!
What, in theory, we have
now is a situation where it should be expensive for them to break the law. However, since the corporations seem to own a large number of the enforcers, this does not work. I believe the only way to make it work is to make it a good business decision to work within the law, and a poorer business decision to work outside it.
Again, only because enforcement agencies are either too small, or bought and paid for. ICE already knows who the major employers are -- good heavens, I can name several just off the top of my head. If they're not being busted now, it's because nobody wants them busted.
Indeed that does seem to be the case.
Incidentally, I just ran across this:
Illegal immigrants packing up and leaving ArizonaApparently there's some new state law that appears to be the same as existing federal law, but now it's going to be enforced? The article says that a lot of immigrants are picking up and leaving, and suggesting that the economy will suffer even more than it is now. Others say not...
Do you think this is a Good Thing? I'm wondering, if there *is* a waiting list for legal immigrants, this would be the ideal time to speed up the process of getting more legal immigrants in, and working, and businesses will have less ability to take advantage of them. That's what I would hope would happen, anyway.
Your thoughts?
