marcocom

It’s not that much easier even in perfect health. I moved permanently to Europe for a number of years. My parents were actually both born in Italy, and it was still a very long and expensive process to get residency. Costed a lot more than it did to register my wife here in America!

It’s frustrating because then I moved back to USA where I work in Silicon Valley and am often literally the only American in an entire floor, I’m completely surrounded by H1 Visa workers, and then to grind it all even more, I often hear people tell me “you Americans should just open your borders for everybody” in a huge double-standard of hypocrisy.

It’s not just Europe either. Want to spend a summer working a bar job in lovely sunny Mexico? Well guess what, they deport people all the time (you are usually reported by your coworkers who want that job for their cousin or friend) as almost all countries do.

It turns out that the world outside of America actually takes borders and where you are born very very seriously.

We aren’t even discussing social integration, here , but let me tell you that the world also has strong opinions about anyone not from their country and they don’t hide it. (Another thing we are taught never to do here in our country)

I love our diversity here, and immigration but it should be fair in both directions

This reminds me of an experience I had, as an outsider, with an archeologist, whereby they once explained to me how they were ‘leaving a site today for future studies when they have the technology’ and that really gave me a new respect for the scientific process involved.

Remember that in Europe you got free medical for your birth, your dental, those braces you needed, your entire college education all at no cost. You get paid a bit more in America and receive none of that. We are so short-sighted with our greed that we can even rationalize past ‘but I would get a smaller check every month’.