Have you ever been a migrant in America? Because I’m an immigrant the United States. Do you have any idea the expense and time it takes to secure a resident visa? It cost me thousands and took nearly a full year - and I was coming as a spouse of a US Citizen.
Its very far from a free-for-all.
And if you try and claim that people arriving at the Southern border get a free pass then take that shit elsewhere, those people are treated like shit and, in the majority, get deported.
Just want to concur with Sweeting, as an Englishman married to an American, and having been through the immigration process.
Plenty of trips to the US embassy in London on that side, interview, paperwork, fees… it was a robust thing. I got a green card, which lasts for ten years, but the expectation is you will turn it into citizenship when you get here. I didn’t do that, but somewhere along the way, about 7 years in, I turned it to citizenship as Trump was on the rise, and I didn’t like the way he was talking, and didn’t want to be vulnerable to some whim of his that would separate me from my wife and kids.
One ridiculous aspect of the citizenship test they had me do was to demonstrate some competence in the English language. I sat in an interview with a government official, and they read a simple sentence and I had to write it down. I explained that English is my first language, and had been speaking and writing it my whole life, including through University and Master’s, but they had no humor or facility to understand the situation in front of them.
So I wrote out something about a cat sitting on a mat, or some such thing, and did my bit to preserve the Union 
There was a civics test and you had to know 100 questions about politics and American history and so on. I randomly ask colleagues some of these questions - people who have been here their whole life and graduated college - and they don’t always pass with flying colors.
The citizenship ceremony was a meaningful experience, I would guess about 40-50 of us, and many nationalities from all around the world represented. The judge did an impassioned speech about making your way and adding to the fabric of the country, American dream sort of thing, and I distinctly remember her saying that in America nobody is above the law. Er, I don’t know about that one! Have you seen what’s been happening?
Yeah similar experience of citizenship. I got it early because I joined the military - but still had to do the questions and the english language test (although in my case the person giving the test was pretty apologetic for the silliness of it).
I didn’t go to a courthouse for my ceremony it was in a veterans lodge, although I was the only military member, and there were probably 20 people there. Very nice experience at that point and some people there had been waiting their entire adult lives to secure that citizenship paper so it was a fun and celebratory atmosphere.
The process of getting into the US in the first place had absolutely zero humour or fun to it though fees every step of the way, at least three trips to London for me and I was doing it during Covid which shut down the embassy for months midway through my application. Glad I’m all done with that.
If you think getting US citizenship is a pain in the arse, you should take a look at the process for getting rid of it…
I remember on one trip to the embassy the whole family had to go. My son was two years old and I asked him if he had any plans to assassinate President Bush, and he said, “yes.” I thought uh-oh, this isn’t going to go well…
Mrs ROTW was unhappy at my frivolity with the whole thing, whereas I was mostly applying my right as an Englishman to take the piss out of a situation. What were they going to ask a two year old?
I remember the fees. There was no clear statement about that, and they seemed to be making it up as we went along. That might have been my administrative lack, but by my reckoning, I must have personally funded the war on terror.
Yes! It seemed like every step there was yet another hidden fee. Fill in a simple online form, click “next” - $200 fee. Upload a document, click next $75 fee. Every damn step. If I remember right there was even an entry fee to pay once I reached the border which was like $400.
Whiners. Renunciation has many fees along the way, but the big one is a ‘consular fee’ of USD 2350.
So Arminius, what’s the story?
Did you have US citizenship and gave it up?
Personally I am a dual citizen, and hold a UK passport and a US one too. All four of us in my house are dual citizens. If you open up the draw, it looks like a scene from Jason Bourne, minus the wads of cash I suppose!
Nope, not me. Wife did. The US is one of two countries in the world that tax on the basis of citizenship, not where you earn your income. The other is Eritrea, and the US complains bitterly about their practice. Having to file two tax returns and optimize your affairs against two tax codes is a massive pain in the ass, and after 2016 started to look like potentially more than that. Until 2015, there were about 1000 renunciations a year, that is now over 6000 - and given that it is a multiyear process, the trend may be higher now.
Yep, the tax situation being based on citizenship is ridiculous.
Anyway, yeah, I think we can all agree its a free-for-all 
I used to work with someone who had a US, a Canadian, a British, and a Swiss passport. Wasn’t even a spy, which is sort of disappointing. Lived in Geneva, and was absolutely livid about Brexit apparently.
My residency was done through work, through a channel that requires the Department of Labor to do something called a labor certification before USCIS will even start processing anything. The LC is the vetting process that determines if the role qualifies for an immigrant to fill it. To do that the employer has to prove that there is no candidate who wants the job who is already legally allowed to work in the US and can do it to a minimum acceptable standard (not that your foreign candidate is the best). At a high level the authorities will verify that the employer
Further complicating this is that the Department of Labor will only complete a certain number of LCs from each country per year (different per country) and so if you are from a country that has an excess number of applications relative to the LCs available the waiting list grows year on year. Mine, despite coming from a country where we do not take up the number of LCs available to us, still took 2 years to complete (admittedly, a timeline impacted by the 2008 financial crisis).
My process will have been very different to Sweeting’s but not less filled with soul crushing administrative bullshit. At these are just two of the 1000s of pathways available to come to the US, all of which have meaningful differences in what it takes to get through them. That is largely what explains what a shit show the process is…it is massively overly complicated and bureaucratic requiring incredible human resources to process everything.
Sure
You weren’t even the slightest bit tempted to fuck with them and accidently insert an ‘h’?
They are generally a fairly humourless bunch, who might cause all kinds of trouble at the slightest irregularity. I once got into hours of trouble having flown all night to Miami, and wasn’t able to form an English sentence properly. Ended up in one of those interview rooms where they keep a box of latex gloves on hand.
During my naturalization interview I made a joke to the guy giving me the civics test that if I didnt know the answer to any question I had decided the safest best was to just guess “the right to bear arms”. He didnt like my tone and so got all uppity about whether I questioned the value of the second amendment and lectured me about freedom. All while my partner was required to wait in the car because for some reason this immensely important moment in your life is not allowed to be shared with your family and loved ones (or at least not without them looking through the window at you).
Ann Coulter takes great offense at the suggestion that Trump made the GOP openly racist and is out there trying to teach the MAGA kids to do it with some OG style
Wow, I’m actually kind of admiring how many offensive things she managed to pack into a 1.06 minute clip. That was like a machine gun.
Even Ramaswamy seems to be regretting his life choices once she starts talking.
I scrolled through the comments in one version of this video and the response was 50% denying she said anything racist and 50% admiring his restraint and wishing the world was more full of these sorts of exchanges, where they can be brazenly racist and still have their opinions treated with respect.