I think Seamus’s case would have been unusual in most administrations. Just because one is removable, does not mean one will be removed. This especially the case for overstays married to citizens.
Visa overstays are are extinguished but marrying a U.S. citizen. In addition, you cannot apply for an I-90 just because you married a citizen. There is a way to overcome your visa issues but it’s time.-consuming, expensive and had a low rate of success. It’s called a waiver of inadmissability aka I-601.
I always wonder why are the illegal sob stories never talk about this option. It’s because they’d lose and they want to seem as sympathetic as possible.
A U.S. citizen files a I-130 and if their foreign national spouse is present, they file an I-485, of Adjustment of Status application. If successful, the sposuse gets a Green Card.
One files a I-90 to replace a Green Card that is lost or expired.
I think Seamus ran into problem because he entered under the Visa Waiver Program and there was a final order of deportation entered against before his adjustment of status application was adjudicated. Once it is adjudicated overstays are waived and cannot be basis for removal.
If one enters without inspection and marries a U.S. citizen, they are not eligible to adjust their status. The spouse must leave the U.S. and re-enter via a hardship waiver, the I-601.
Many of these “sob” stories involve situations that involve prosecutorial discretion, which would not resulted in unnecessary detention and/or removal is past administrations, including Trump I.
The Guardian did a poor job in describing the actual legal issues at hand, but I do have sympathy for people who are victims of the abuse of discretion.
The discretion you speak of was abused by prior administrations so it’s about time the pendulum swung in the other direction.
Also 601 waivers don’t require removal from the U.S. for adjudication.
Also visa overstays are serious matters. You cannot just adjust status and get your green card. It triggers a ban, the length of which is dependent on the length of overstay.
You are wrong about overstays. You are confusing it with unlawful presence. See INA 245(c). Immediate relatives of US citizens can adjust their status even if they overstayed their visa and worked without authorization. Finally as I was hinting above Seamus’s case was complicated by the fact that he entered under the visa waiver program so he waived his right to challenge his removal. Had he entered on B2 visa, he could succeeded in his removal hearing by showing clear and convincing evidence that his marriage was bona fide. I am for the Rule of Law. Trump and his thugs ignore the law when it is convenient for them and have lied so much in court that the Administration’s lawyers have lost the presumption of good faith usually granted to government attorneys.
My wife and I have for some years now referred to any all things that people get sucked into as "porn". Example: Realtor.com = "housing porn." Yeah, this may neuter the word "porn" but can't be any worse than neutering the word Nazi (going from "Soup Nazi" (Seinfeld) to "any and everyone I don't like is a literal Nazi" (Democrats-Progressives).
I find it jarring. I don’t like it. It’s very Reddit. Also soup nazi worked as humour. I’m not seeing the humour in everything being some type of “porn”.
The reality is US border protection people like Australian ones process thousands of people a day. Both countries are desirable ones to live and work in. Of those thousands of people there will always be some trying some thing doggy, who get caught, trying to game the system. The hot women and little old grandparents along with other heart wrenching participants are fodder for the press. I’m totally fine with said dodgy people being excluded or deported when they get busted.
I am glad you wrote this. We need all these stories carefully vetted, whether or not they seem to fit our narrative. I too was suspicious why the Guardian article had no details on the case of the British grandmother’s husband.
That said… if this is the best counter-narrative to the Guardian articles, it is not very flattering to ICE. Several of these are marginal cases full of overreach by ICE in response to genuine misunderstandings and represent unnecessary heavy-handedness against friendly tourists and visa-holders.
The same tactics used against willing illegal immigrants should not be wielded against people who are clearly guests and visitors — for example, the young woman who did short-term labor in exchange for accommodation during a vacation. This is a common work-exchange situation that many young travelers use worldwide, and it is not unreasonable to expect that the employers in question might have obtained the necessary paperwork. It is also not unreasonable not to realize that this constitutes labor, rather than payment-in-kind specifically for accommodation.
P.S. Not that it makes it right, but it is worth a reminder that both Elon Musk and Melania Trump took paid employment in the US before they were authorized.
PBS is like the Guardian, in that too much their reporting is biased in one direction, casting doubt on all of their work.
That said, yes, the same tactics should be used against "willing illegals" or anyone else who violates US immigration law. They are still illegal, Full Stop. The reasons of why or how do not matter in the least, and amount to nothing more than special pleading.
No, even if you have no sympathy, over-reaching for every infraction is an inefficient allocation of limited resources and undermines public support of law enforcement.
Imagine if a police department decided to finally crack down on speeding and ordered every driver out of a car at gunpoint if they were driving 10 mph over the speed limit.
The police department would be creating a bigger problem for itself than the one it is solving.
Every case like the ones above result in 100 tourists not spending their money in the US.
I forgot to mention the case that Dennison did not examine of the South Korean auto workers, on work travel visas, who came here legally specifically to open a factory and train local workers before going back home. Their arrest and treatment was an abomination, and directly hurt scores if not hundreds of potential American auto workers.
We are starting to treat immigration and foreign visits just like every other country, and the number of these countries which have seen a drop in tourism over that is not even worth mentioning. Picture the harsh penalties that are routinely dished out in Singapore, which has a thriving tourism industry.
And your examples, both the actions of police departments and what happened with the South Koreans are, again, special pleading. But, in any case, lets examine them:
A police dept. is a political group (as are every gov't institution) and acts in the interest of the public it serves. The public does not want every speeder punished to the full extent as there is little desire for it, but, if they did more money would be thrown at that specific action. But, just to keep the public safe, every week or so in my state they have massive speeding crackdowns, with people getting stopped for any small violation. Why? The law is still the law, no matter what any one person may want. This differs from the question of illegal immigration as there has been a push for taking care of it, as witnessed by Trumps election, which campaigned heavily on this plank.
As far as the South Koreans: "The deported workers were not Hyundai employees but worked for its contractors and LG Energy Solutions, it’s South Korean partner in the plant. [Hyundai CEO Jose] Muñoz said while the workers should not have been here without the proper work visas, there needed to be a change in US law to allow for the kind of work. Muñoz also said last month he expected a deal soon between the countries.
“What I’ve learned in the past couple of days and weeks is that activities in this particular battery factory that require a very specific expertise that is not in the country,” Muñoz told CNN at a media roundtable in September. “I believe there needs to be a visa which is especially designed for these types of people that may need to enter the country five or six or six, seven times. Once the factory is finished, they don’t come back again.”" Again, not the fault of ICE, or US law, but one of general international misunderstand over new conditions that was worked out.
Singapore is not our peer. Liberal Western democracies don’t treat minor visa violations this way. The situations I’m aware of in Singapore involve misbehavior unrelated to immigration policyz
It’s not relevant whether the workers were Hyundai employees. They obtained 90 day visas typically used for extended business trips, and at least one detainee had a HB1 visa that was valid to stay in the country.
Munoz’s remarks are just his opinion that there isn’t, but should be, a specific visa for the situation that the Korean workers were in - to open a plant, train local workers, and leave - which would remove any ambiguity.
Anyway, it’s not clear to me that a visa for an extended work trip should result in such heavy handed treatment. International business travel is common, and typically involves working. If working on a business trip is against the law, I must have violated several countries’ immigration laws.
President Trump himself indirectly acknowledged on Truth Social this whole episode was a mistake, walking back comments from Kristi Noem, saying he doesn’t want countries to be scared to invest in the US.
The Koreans were abusing and gaming the system by misusing visas so they could work here. One guy came in a tourist visa intending to work in the U.S. you cannot do that and I have 0 sympathy for the Koreans and Hyundai. See how South Korea treats illegals and asylum seekers, then come talk here.
The problem is that, as David very shortly mentions, if they behaved that way, they would get absolutely trashed on racism charges, possibly even charged. This is the catch-22 we have currently in the entire west:
Selective enforcement based on the perception of danger and seriousness of the violation invariably results in unflattering stats, and in some countries it is even illegal. Not the selective enforcement per se, but any selective enforcement that results in disparate impact.
Strict enforcement against any technical violation no matter how benign it is seems like the obvious answer, but normal people rightfully hate it. This is how you lose elections.
So what do institutions do? Generally, a reduction of enforcement altogether, or mixing the selective enforcement with blatant actual racism to make the stats check out. Or both.
Btw, this principle can be trivially generalized to completely different contexts, such as university admissions.
I think that if people in the administration cared about thinking things through, there are some simple policy changes that would result in less cruelty and still be consistent with Trump’s mandate to deport as many illegal residents as possible.
There should be a higher bar for locking people up in jails. If someone is locked up by ICE for 6 hours or 6 weeks and then released without being deported, then in general, a mistake has been made, whether it is admitted or not. This mistake has been happening repeatedly.
Every case where someone had an unexpired visa and was locked up would have been prevented by a simple policy that people with unexpired visas are not locked up.
Not sure about all your facts, but most were not on tourist visas. Also, your framing seems off. Seems misleading to say they were trying to take advantage of our system. They were only here to train US workers and go home. Their employer was making a major investment in the US economy with a long term payoff to hundreds of potential US employees and their families.
Thank you for writing the essay I wanted to write! My British husband is refusing to go to the states this summer because of these articles. I get that it’s scary for him, but none of these pass a basic smell test.
I agree, as an expat myself, I have almost zero tolerance for this kind of sob story. I’ve worked so hard for all my visas, and double checked I was doing everything right. I live every day knowing I could be deported if the laws change. That’s part of what I agreed to when I left the US. A good liberal isn’t supposed to see it this way though. It’s very frustrating.
Thank you for this clear and detailed take-down of emotion-based reporting as opposed to balancing the reporting and coming to conclusions for improvement. I got in a tiff with someone whom I follow and I said much of the same thing to the article she re-posted in the Guardian about how awful Magats were. Are you happy? she asked reporting about Karen and her husband. It was quite the go-round for both of us.
Now that’s top-quality reportage. If only The Guardian and other big media sources did their homework and showed their work like you did here, Substack would have never launched, Mr. D!
Regarding policy changes: anyone legally married to a US citizen, while so married, is automatically allowed in the country indefinitely. This is revoked if they divorce.
Yes, this would absolutely lead to sham marriages for immigration purposes. But legal marriage has enough dangerous higher-order financial effects that this is self-limiting.
Sham marriages are real and a sizable problem. Also the U.S. used to give automatic citizenship to spouses of citizens back in the 70s. That policy was changed for obvious reasons.
I think Seamus’s case would have been unusual in most administrations. Just because one is removable, does not mean one will be removed. This especially the case for overstays married to citizens.
Visa overstays are are extinguished but marrying a U.S. citizen. In addition, you cannot apply for an I-90 just because you married a citizen. There is a way to overcome your visa issues but it’s time.-consuming, expensive and had a low rate of success. It’s called a waiver of inadmissability aka I-601.
I always wonder why are the illegal sob stories never talk about this option. It’s because they’d lose and they want to seem as sympathetic as possible.
A U.S. citizen files a I-130 and if their foreign national spouse is present, they file an I-485, of Adjustment of Status application. If successful, the sposuse gets a Green Card.
One files a I-90 to replace a Green Card that is lost or expired.
I think Seamus ran into problem because he entered under the Visa Waiver Program and there was a final order of deportation entered against before his adjustment of status application was adjudicated. Once it is adjudicated overstays are waived and cannot be basis for removal.
If one enters without inspection and marries a U.S. citizen, they are not eligible to adjust their status. The spouse must leave the U.S. and re-enter via a hardship waiver, the I-601.
Many of these “sob” stories involve situations that involve prosecutorial discretion, which would not resulted in unnecessary detention and/or removal is past administrations, including Trump I.
The Guardian did a poor job in describing the actual legal issues at hand, but I do have sympathy for people who are victims of the abuse of discretion.
The discretion you speak of was abused by prior administrations so it’s about time the pendulum swung in the other direction.
Also 601 waivers don’t require removal from the U.S. for adjudication.
Also visa overstays are serious matters. You cannot just adjust status and get your green card. It triggers a ban, the length of which is dependent on the length of overstay.
You are wrong about overstays. You are confusing it with unlawful presence. See INA 245(c). Immediate relatives of US citizens can adjust their status even if they overstayed their visa and worked without authorization. Finally as I was hinting above Seamus’s case was complicated by the fact that he entered under the visa waiver program so he waived his right to challenge his removal. Had he entered on B2 visa, he could succeeded in his removal hearing by showing clear and convincing evidence that his marriage was bona fide. I am for the Rule of Law. Trump and his thugs ignore the law when it is convenient for them and have lied so much in court that the Administration’s lawyers have lost the presumption of good faith usually granted to government attorneys.
I stand corrected. Thank you for the information.
Another really interesting essay.
I will complain though: “I have an admittedly low susceptibility to immigration sob porn.”
Sob stories. The phrase is sob stories. That doesn’t work for you? It’s a gross liberal habit that everything sensational or graphic is now “porn”. 😩
It could also qualify as "glurge."
My wife and I have for some years now referred to any all things that people get sucked into as "porn". Example: Realtor.com = "housing porn." Yeah, this may neuter the word "porn" but can't be any worse than neutering the word Nazi (going from "Soup Nazi" (Seinfeld) to "any and everyone I don't like is a literal Nazi" (Democrats-Progressives).
So ... "immigration sob porn" Meh
I find it jarring. I don’t like it. It’s very Reddit. Also soup nazi worked as humour. I’m not seeing the humour in everything being some type of “porn”.
The reality is US border protection people like Australian ones process thousands of people a day. Both countries are desirable ones to live and work in. Of those thousands of people there will always be some trying some thing doggy, who get caught, trying to game the system. The hot women and little old grandparents along with other heart wrenching participants are fodder for the press. I’m totally fine with said dodgy people being excluded or deported when they get busted.
Worth your while investigating Culleton, who is facing an avalanche of charges for drug dealing & girlfriend beating.
The media here (a pack of evil lying woke bastards) had tried to turn him into Martin Luther King, which has backfired spectacularly
I am glad you wrote this. We need all these stories carefully vetted, whether or not they seem to fit our narrative. I too was suspicious why the Guardian article had no details on the case of the British grandmother’s husband.
That said… if this is the best counter-narrative to the Guardian articles, it is not very flattering to ICE. Several of these are marginal cases full of overreach by ICE in response to genuine misunderstandings and represent unnecessary heavy-handedness against friendly tourists and visa-holders.
The same tactics used against willing illegal immigrants should not be wielded against people who are clearly guests and visitors — for example, the young woman who did short-term labor in exchange for accommodation during a vacation. This is a common work-exchange situation that many young travelers use worldwide, and it is not unreasonable to expect that the employers in question might have obtained the necessary paperwork. It is also not unreasonable not to realize that this constitutes labor, rather than payment-in-kind specifically for accommodation.
P.S. Not that it makes it right, but it is worth a reminder that both Elon Musk and Melania Trump took paid employment in the US before they were authorized.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/politics/melania-trump-modeled-u-s-prior-getting-work-visa
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2024/10/27/what-elon-musk-working-illegally-says-about-the-immigration-system/
PBS is like the Guardian, in that too much their reporting is biased in one direction, casting doubt on all of their work.
That said, yes, the same tactics should be used against "willing illegals" or anyone else who violates US immigration law. They are still illegal, Full Stop. The reasons of why or how do not matter in the least, and amount to nothing more than special pleading.
No, even if you have no sympathy, over-reaching for every infraction is an inefficient allocation of limited resources and undermines public support of law enforcement.
Imagine if a police department decided to finally crack down on speeding and ordered every driver out of a car at gunpoint if they were driving 10 mph over the speed limit.
The police department would be creating a bigger problem for itself than the one it is solving.
Every case like the ones above result in 100 tourists not spending their money in the US.
I forgot to mention the case that Dennison did not examine of the South Korean auto workers, on work travel visas, who came here legally specifically to open a factory and train local workers before going back home. Their arrest and treatment was an abomination, and directly hurt scores if not hundreds of potential American auto workers.
We are starting to treat immigration and foreign visits just like every other country, and the number of these countries which have seen a drop in tourism over that is not even worth mentioning. Picture the harsh penalties that are routinely dished out in Singapore, which has a thriving tourism industry.
And your examples, both the actions of police departments and what happened with the South Koreans are, again, special pleading. But, in any case, lets examine them:
A police dept. is a political group (as are every gov't institution) and acts in the interest of the public it serves. The public does not want every speeder punished to the full extent as there is little desire for it, but, if they did more money would be thrown at that specific action. But, just to keep the public safe, every week or so in my state they have massive speeding crackdowns, with people getting stopped for any small violation. Why? The law is still the law, no matter what any one person may want. This differs from the question of illegal immigration as there has been a push for taking care of it, as witnessed by Trumps election, which campaigned heavily on this plank.
As far as the South Koreans: "The deported workers were not Hyundai employees but worked for its contractors and LG Energy Solutions, it’s South Korean partner in the plant. [Hyundai CEO Jose] Muñoz said while the workers should not have been here without the proper work visas, there needed to be a change in US law to allow for the kind of work. Muñoz also said last month he expected a deal soon between the countries.
“What I’ve learned in the past couple of days and weeks is that activities in this particular battery factory that require a very specific expertise that is not in the country,” Muñoz told CNN at a media roundtable in September. “I believe there needs to be a visa which is especially designed for these types of people that may need to enter the country five or six or six, seven times. Once the factory is finished, they don’t come back again.”" Again, not the fault of ICE, or US law, but one of general international misunderstand over new conditions that was worked out.
Singapore is not our peer. Liberal Western democracies don’t treat minor visa violations this way. The situations I’m aware of in Singapore involve misbehavior unrelated to immigration policyz
It’s not relevant whether the workers were Hyundai employees. They obtained 90 day visas typically used for extended business trips, and at least one detainee had a HB1 visa that was valid to stay in the country.
Munoz’s remarks are just his opinion that there isn’t, but should be, a specific visa for the situation that the Korean workers were in - to open a plant, train local workers, and leave - which would remove any ambiguity.
Anyway, it’s not clear to me that a visa for an extended work trip should result in such heavy handed treatment. International business travel is common, and typically involves working. If working on a business trip is against the law, I must have violated several countries’ immigration laws.
President Trump himself indirectly acknowledged on Truth Social this whole episode was a mistake, walking back comments from Kristi Noem, saying he doesn’t want countries to be scared to invest in the US.
The Koreans were abusing and gaming the system by misusing visas so they could work here. One guy came in a tourist visa intending to work in the U.S. you cannot do that and I have 0 sympathy for the Koreans and Hyundai. See how South Korea treats illegals and asylum seekers, then come talk here.
The problem is that, as David very shortly mentions, if they behaved that way, they would get absolutely trashed on racism charges, possibly even charged. This is the catch-22 we have currently in the entire west:
Selective enforcement based on the perception of danger and seriousness of the violation invariably results in unflattering stats, and in some countries it is even illegal. Not the selective enforcement per se, but any selective enforcement that results in disparate impact.
Strict enforcement against any technical violation no matter how benign it is seems like the obvious answer, but normal people rightfully hate it. This is how you lose elections.
So what do institutions do? Generally, a reduction of enforcement altogether, or mixing the selective enforcement with blatant actual racism to make the stats check out. Or both.
Btw, this principle can be trivially generalized to completely different contexts, such as university admissions.
I think that if people in the administration cared about thinking things through, there are some simple policy changes that would result in less cruelty and still be consistent with Trump’s mandate to deport as many illegal residents as possible.
There should be a higher bar for locking people up in jails. If someone is locked up by ICE for 6 hours or 6 weeks and then released without being deported, then in general, a mistake has been made, whether it is admitted or not. This mistake has been happening repeatedly.
Every case where someone had an unexpired visa and was locked up would have been prevented by a simple policy that people with unexpired visas are not locked up.
Not sure about all your facts, but most were not on tourist visas. Also, your framing seems off. Seems misleading to say they were trying to take advantage of our system. They were only here to train US workers and go home. Their employer was making a major investment in the US economy with a long term payoff to hundreds of potential US employees and their families.
Thank you for writing the essay I wanted to write! My British husband is refusing to go to the states this summer because of these articles. I get that it’s scary for him, but none of these pass a basic smell test.
I agree, as an expat myself, I have almost zero tolerance for this kind of sob story. I’ve worked so hard for all my visas, and double checked I was doing everything right. I live every day knowing I could be deported if the laws change. That’s part of what I agreed to when I left the US. A good liberal isn’t supposed to see it this way though. It’s very frustrating.
Keep putting out these stories guardian it will deter the worlds dishonest to stay away from.
Thank you for this clear and detailed take-down of emotion-based reporting as opposed to balancing the reporting and coming to conclusions for improvement. I got in a tiff with someone whom I follow and I said much of the same thing to the article she re-posted in the Guardian about how awful Magats were. Are you happy? she asked reporting about Karen and her husband. It was quite the go-round for both of us.
Excellent article, though I would appreciate seeing links to sources. Keep up the good work
Now that’s top-quality reportage. If only The Guardian and other big media sources did their homework and showed their work like you did here, Substack would have never launched, Mr. D!
Regarding policy changes: anyone legally married to a US citizen, while so married, is automatically allowed in the country indefinitely. This is revoked if they divorce.
Yes, this would absolutely lead to sham marriages for immigration purposes. But legal marriage has enough dangerous higher-order financial effects that this is self-limiting.
Sham marriages are real and a sizable problem. Also the U.S. used to give automatic citizenship to spouses of citizens back in the 70s. That policy was changed for obvious reasons.
Well, yes, that's by design not reversible. But that's not the same as a green card.