The immigration procedures of a country should be like a good skin, providing barriers against dangerous elements but at the same time sufficiently porous to breathe and benefit from nutrient opportunities. As it also is one of the display windows unto the world, it should perhaps also try to look beautiful.
Attending a recent seminar in New York arranged by The Center for Migration Studies, at the Fordham University School of Law, I found that most of the participants believed that the current conditions of this country’s skin were not that good, if not plain awful. Good-intentioned treatments, nips-and-tucks, such like a Premium Processing Service that allows anyone who pays a thousand dollars to jump the line, will not produce good and sustainable results as they seem almost to reward inefficiency. This program in particular is also an embarrassing blemish for a land that preaches equal opportunities.
It would be almost impossible to resolve the weaknesses of the current system by just tweaking it, and there is no reason for even trying this route when a true state-of-the-art system could offer so many benefits for the United States and the world. For instance, as we know that information that cannot be obtained in very few hours will most probably never be obtained at all, the current efforts to reduce procedure times from six months to one month must have very little to do with an as-good-as-it-can-get modern system.
There is a lot of nervous sensitivity with respect to immigration in the United States, perhaps even to the extent of preferring a system so closed that the American citizens themselves would be precluded from being able to leave the Unites States. Recently even a program on a global TV news channel has been calling for some close-the-doors-and-build-walls solutions.
As a temporary visitor to this country I know it behooves all of us from the rest of the world to understand that the more United States citizens feel comfortable in their own skin, the more they would be confident enough to open up and mingle with us.
