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Wondering

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Clarissa

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Has anybody seen anywhere an explanation of why Saipov – an uneducated, unqualified, radicalized fellow who clearly had nothing of particular value to contribute – was able to get a green card? This is not a rhetorical question. It bothers me because in 2010, when this hugely valuable terrorist came legally to the US, N was unemployed. Because he, apparently, was not as good as this Saipov jerk to get a green card. What is the immigration category Saipov fell under?

My best student, an incredibly bright and hard-working young woman, is undocumented with no hope in hell of getting a green card. Yet Saipov was welcomed with open arms. This student I’m talking about could easily be at Harvard and kicking ass there she’s that good. But she’s not wanted. 

I don’t know how this is supposed not to make one angry. 

13 responses to “Wondering”

  1. Shakti Avatar
    Shakti

    Here, subject to obvious change because everyone’s finding this out by trawling search engines New York City rampage: What we know about the suspect

    Authorities say he came to the United States seven years ago from Uzbekistan under what is called the Diversity Visa Program, which offers a lottery for people from countries with few immigrants in America. Sources tell ABC News that in addition to an address in Tampa, he also lived in Ohio and most recently, in Paterson, New Jersey, where he lived with his wife and three children, according to a law enforcement official

    What’s the over/under on this guy being a domestic abuser?

    Has anybody seen anywhere an explanation of why Saipov – an uneducated, unqualified, radicalized fellow who clearly had nothing of particular value to contribute – was able to get a green card

    Immigration rules have little to do with merit, worthiness or fairness of any kind and the process is byzantine and arbitrary. Citizenship is the same way. Countries like it that way. Natural born citizens and people who’ve never had their citizenship questioned don’t care, that is a major point of the system for them.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Ah, the famous lottery. The one I’ve been ranting against since last millennium. Fuck that shit.

      As we’ve seen in the last election, citizens do care. And this case won’t help. Especially since it’s being described as “a violent driving situation”.

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      1. Shakti Avatar
        Shakti

        When citizens talk about the immigration system they care about 1)safety and 2)whether those people will take their jobs and 3)why don’t they speak some goddamn English?*
        Other than that they don’t care about the inner workings of an immigration or citizenship system, unless they’re immigrant adjacent* somehow.

        A fellow like N is more likely to beat out a middle class American for a job than some dude like this Saipov. Your college educated student probably works a lot harder than her peers.

        *For varying values of “English”

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          N is not competing for jobs with anybody because there are two places in the world who give out PhDs in his field and their graduates are not crowding in Southern Illinois. So he’s safe, he’s a fluent English speaker and his job has fewer competitors than that of a truck driver or an Uber driver.

          Have you seen the Uzbek’s photos? I doubt there are many voters who would see him as safer than N. in his Ferragamo glasses.

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          1. Shakti Avatar
            Shakti

            You know the reality of how specialized his field is — but the average American does not and would see him as a competitor for lots of highly specialized jobs. How difficult would it be for him to open up his own business doing what he does? The average voter doesn’t know that either.

            I’ve seen the Uzbek’s photos. I just don’t see how policy makers and the people who elect them behave in ways consonant with keeping an angry relatively unskilled dude out of the country AND keeping someone like N in. 9/11 happened so you think people would’ve changed the system to that end. The policies being proposed do not reflect those aims either.

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            1. Clarissa Avatar
              Clarissa

              That’s precisely why Trump was elected. He’s a one-issue candidate, and that issue is immigration. Voters clearly care.

              Today, this moment, Democrats should be working the situation and loudly denouncing the lottery. Because if they don’t make the issue their own, somebody else will do it. Instead, they are maniacally obsessed with the ridiculous Mueller subpoenas. It’s like a case of severe collective psychosis. They sit in the midst of a completely ruined party and won’t move an inch to pick up apples that are falling right next to them. I’m observing it all with a sense of deep hopelessness for 2020.

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              1. Dreidel Avatar
                Dreidel

                “they are maniacally obsessed with the ridiculous Mueller subpoenas.”

                Ah, Clarissa, you obviously haven’t been watching enough MSNBC, where Chris Matthews is gleefully pointing out that Mueller’s investigation is “Trump’s Watergate.”

                Surely you’ve heard the famous expression: “History repeats itself as farce, then as 2016.” 🙂

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  2. The Dark Avenger Avatar
    The Dark Avenger

    Whatever else, Trump hires people right out of a comic novel

    According to Papadopoulos’ guilty plea unsealed Monday, the former Trump campaign advisor attempted to conceal that work from the FBI, destroying records and lying to agents. So instead of landing what he billed to other campaign staff as a “history making” meeting between Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Papadopoulos’ back-channel dealings landed him federal charges.

    His first missteps came during his initial interview with FBI agents in Chicago on Jan. 27. Papadopoulos’ statement of offense makes no mention of any counsel accompanying him to that sit-down, where agents informed him that the interview was “completely voluntary,” that lying to the FBI was a “federal offense” and that he could get “in trouble” for doing so.

    Papadopoulos proceeded to tell all manner of falsehoods about the “extent, timing, and nature of his communications” with multiple individuals with close ties to the Russian government, according to the statement. One was that a professor with links to Russian officials who supposedly had “dirt” on Clinton approached him about said dirt before he joined the campaign, when in fact he did so over a month after Papadopoulos joined the Trump campaign.

    Nick Oberheiden, a federal criminal defense attorney, told TPM that Papadopoulos’ false statements likely served as the “little mosaic pieces” that provided the FBI with the “slam dunk required to make it over the probable cause hurdle” to obtain a search warrant to dig through his online communications.

    Once the FBI did, they found copious emails detailing Papadopoulos’ efforts to coordinate an in-person meeting between senior Russian officials and high-level Trump campaign staffers that directly contradicted what he’d told them.

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/george-papadopoulos-goofy-mistakes

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  3. Shakti Avatar
    Shakti

    Here, a thread by someone who claims they are a “Political scientist, U.S. constitutional and immigration law, author of The Immigration Battle in American Courts, 2nd book on slavery, immigration, federalism”
    This is her faculty page

    (Click on link to get the entire thread, I wish there was a storify of this:)

    https://twitter.com/UnlawfulEntries/status/925693290053283840

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      I don’t respect people who turn to Twitter to discuss anything but cartoons and kitty pics, so I won’t find out what she has to say. the main issue is why Democrats allowed this to exist and are not making the issue their own. Voters want to hear about immigration. This is the perfect way to talk about it without hurting anybody and doing literally zero damage. I insist that many people are trapped into emigrating who don’t even want to emigrate. This is cruel and ridiculous. Why not, instead, let the Dreamers stay? They at least do want to be here.

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      1. Shakti Avatar
        Shakti

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        1. Shakti Avatar
          Shakti

          I don’t respect people who turn to Twitter to discuss anything but cartoons and kitty pics

          Noted.

          The Diversity Visa Lottery: A Cycle of Unintended Consequences in United States Immigration Policy (on JSTOR)

          Diversity visa lottery, criticized after New York terrorist attack, was invented to help the Irish

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          1. Clarissa Avatar
            Clarissa

            They should have fucking kept it in Ireland instead of inflicting this on the former FSU.

            I wish there were articles instead explaining why it’s proving so hard to close down this program.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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