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Thursday, September 24, 2026

Legal Immigration to America

A recurring complaint of the left is that legal immigration is so hard and expensive that there is no practical way to legally come here. This has seemed like crap to me, because the Hart-Celler Immigration Act of 1965 gave preference to Western Hemisphere immigrants.  If you are legal immigrant, share your experience. 
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4 comments:

  1. Tom LockerSeptember 24, 2026 at 6:26 PM

    How can legal immigrants share their experience when you so seldom publish comments?

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    Replies
    1. Clayton CramerSeptember 28, 2026 at 6:13 AM

      I almost never reject comments and tthey are usually links to casinos.

      Delete
  2. Douglas2September 26, 2026 at 8:03 AM

    I'm presuming that not calling it the Hart-Celler Act was an editorial choice, and all the standard texts give the impression that it ended giving preference to Western Hemisphere immigrants -- in spite of the fact that (per-capita) the caps highly advantaged any westerner individual's chances over any person from the rest-of-the-world. The prioritization of professionals and other individuals with specialized skills, while facially neutral, is also not so in practice..
    When I moved back from EU to USA and my wife wanted to come too for some reason, I learned that she was exempt from the cap as an immediate family member. The process was quite opaque and slow, with many pitfalls of ambiguously worded questions on forms and things that had to be done in a specific order that was never explicitly laid out.
    With lots of reading on marriage-visa forum posts it was easy in practice -- other than the enforced separation during the time (about 2 months as I recall) that she had to remain outside of the US and I was expected to be present at my new job.
    I can see that people with less available mental energy, higher anxiety, poorer research skills, or poorer reading comprehension would benefit from paying an immigration attorney firm to fill out the paperwork and map out the steps, but that expense isn't really necessary.
    Many years ago my (US) boss (a small business owner) hired a foreigner and went with a top-rated NY immigration attorney to get the visa. The cost, between legal fees and government fees exceeded a year's salary for the fellow. Several years later he was lamenting what it cost to hire who-you- want-to if-they're-foreign to a friend who worked for a large cultural organization who responded "Oh, I fill out those forms all the time. It's easy. A couple hours work for me at $200/hr. -- They only get away with charging so much because you don't know any better, let me do it for you".

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