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    VinIsha Aran
    11/15/14 3:43pm

    "B-b-b-but you were successful! Everyone else in your situation who fails is just lazy! Bootstraps! 'Murica! Wharrbargghalhlghgldkfjahd;fjfk"

    - Internet Mouthbreathers

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      minxymaxx1Vin
      11/15/14 3:49pm

      And the kids should go back the destitute country their parents are from so they won't be separated. Who cares if you will face poverty cause boot straps and die fixing your country.

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      The President Of The United States Of AmericaVin
      11/15/14 3:51pm

      So should only people with access to the southern border be allowed to come in illegally, or should we make it just as easy/free for people who want to come over from the rest of the world? Because everybody else has to jump through hoops to move to this country.

      "Sorry, immigrants from Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Asia, etc, it sucks that you weren't born close enough to sneak in and had to do it the official way. Better luck next time, suckers."

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    freckledbruhIsha Aran
    11/15/14 3:52pm

    Well, I feel bad that her parents put her in such a bad situation.

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      zamperlfreckledbruh
      11/15/14 3:55pm

      Yeah, it's irresponsible of her parents to want her to grow up in a stable country. So selfish.

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      freckledbruhzamperl
      11/15/14 4:14pm

      I didn't say anything about anyone being selfish. The fact remains that her parents are the ones who put her in that situation.

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    BurtsUnnaturalWaspsIsha Aran
    11/15/14 4:00pm

    "Throughout my childhood I watched my parents try to become legal but to no avail. They lost their money to people they believed to be attorneys, but who ultimately never helped."

    Wow, of course, put the government funds towards separating families, but not towards prosecuting the fraudsters who exploit the inconsistencies of an unfair immigration system.

    "Not a single person at any level of government took any note of me. No one checked to see if I had a place to live or food to eat, and at 14, I found myself basically on my own."

    Jesus.

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      BeccaonmarsBurtsUnnaturalWasps
      11/15/14 6:37pm

      Yeah. I read that part and my heart broke.

      How many other kids has that happened to?

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    azucenaIsha Aran
    11/15/14 6:21pm

    Reading some comments on this article are extremely disconcerting to someone who has specialized in immigration. There is a total disconnect between some preconceived notions regarding immigrants/prejudices about immigrants and current/historical immigration policy.

    There are undocumented immigrants from all backgrounds in the United States. Undocumented Irish immigrants typically reside in Chicago/the Midwest. Undocumented Russian immigrants reside in New York. Undocumented Serbian/Croatian immigrants live in Los Angeles. There are many enclaves for many undocumented people in this country. Don't let your prejudices/what you heard on Fox News be your primary source on immigration policy because the facts will embarrass you.

    Also, really people? On blaming her own family for escaping violence? Are you serious? I challenge you to research United States foreign policy in Latin America before you even think about criticizing or proposing your own less than educated theories on immigration. For example- for the boos bothered by Central American immigration caused by violence- take a little gander into Reagan's involved in Central America. The Reagan administration straight up funded a fucking genocide! But the scary thing is we don't talk about it, recognize it, or acknowledge the victims or refugees of it because the administration went to extreme lengths to sugar coat its involvement. Cuban refugees were met with open arms- less than 3% of asylum applicants from Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala or Honduras were granted refugee status.

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      iluvcatsIsha Aran
      11/15/14 4:00pm

      ugh it's so hard. One of my best friends husband was illegal and had to go back to Mexico until he could get his green card after they married. I never even knew he was here illegally. They have two little ones and she went to Mexico with him while they fought it. He is back now but it took a very long time. I love them both dearly but what he did was wrong. I have a lot of sympathy for his situation but it was illegal. I wish the laws were different for sure but he knew what he was risking.

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        TadKosciuszkoIsha Aran
        11/15/14 3:46pm

        Man, she looks so much prettier without those ridiculous OITNB drawn-on eyebrows.

        The parallel between her anxiety at coming home to an empty house (and one day having those fears realized) seems pretty similar to families of "disappeared ones" in dictatorships. No warning, no explanation, just absence. Goddamned terrifying. Thank god she had a support network.

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          EmmaIsha Aran
          11/15/14 11:10pm

          I see a lot of "why didn't they just come in legally?" in this thread. It's really not very easy. One way to get a green card is through a family member, be it a spouse, parent, or a child. Every month, the State Department issues a visa bulletin for the wait times associated with this application. This is the visa bulletin from November 2014.

          You'll see that the shortest line is for the F2A category, which is for spouses and children of permanent residents. All other categories (for most countries) carry a wait time of, at the least, 6 years. These numbers don't progress normally. Often they jump back months or even years, so it's completely impossible to tell when you will be able to come to the country legally.

          So why on earth would someone facing gang violence, drug wars, no job prospects, decide to wait for an unknown number of years to improve their lives? Especially when they want the best for their own children.

          Oh, and all of this is only even possible if you have a qualifying relative.

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            Blueberry JonesEmma
            11/17/14 5:23pm

            Even if you are married, it can still take a while. My mom and dad got married in 1983. We moved to the US in 1991 and he got a green card in 1993 and finally became a citizen in 2000. Weirdly, when my aunt came over here and she was trying to get her green card, she already had two citizenships, UK and Libyan. She would have to give one up if she ever got US citizenship. It was going to take her five to eight years if she applied for one as a UK citizen and only one to two years if she applied as a Libyan citizen (this was in 2001 btw). We ended up hiring a lawyer who got her into a lottery. It's super fucking hard.

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          tetonsIsha Aran
          11/15/14 7:40pm

          Wow, I guess immigration is an area the jezebel commentariat are really not very progressive on. This comments section is a huge WTclusterF

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            Your DadIsha Aran
            11/16/14 7:42pm

            Legal immigration is great and I fully support it, however, merging with Mexico and letting Latin American empty into the States is the worst idea the Left ever dreamed up. We're increasingly told that our working class is obsolete and has to run to keep up with the pace of technical innovation, yet we seem determined to bring millions of relatively unskilled laborers into a economy that is already short on decent paying jobs for citizens. Also, we have barely gotten the ACA off the ground - a corporate program many oppose, btw - and now we seem to complicate matters by swelling the pool of needy in this country? What about overpopulation, which the Left never tires of talking about? Aren't these large families with 4x4's going to increase our carbon footprint? Mexico isn't exactly an environmentalist country, and that's not really something that you can entirely blame on the "evil white" industrialists.

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              Blueberry JonesYour Dad
              11/17/14 5:24pm

              WOW.

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            HlaalluIsha Aran
            11/15/14 4:44pm

            I'm a US citizan, but my husband is not. We were married for a year and a half (and living in the US) before he even got his green card (and he's European! Our lawyer said it would have been longer had he been from Central or South America). We were terrified for his status not just because it can be revoked on a whim ... but because of all of the immigration BS going on in Washington. Had the 2012 election gone the other way, who knows if we would even be living here by now.

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