Part 1 of 2. We play a little catch up this week. Tony had a lot going on. Then Stu ruins everything, and Tony is forced to fulfill a promise. Enjoy!
QUESTIONS:
Were you in charge of immigration, what limits or requirements would you impose on those entering the U.S., becoming citizens, etc.? –Stu
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Uh oh, Stu ruined Christmas!
I don’t think the AC was on this week, but Tony was very loud (compared to the intro tune, had to turn the volume down) but William was very quiet.
People don’t realize how difficult emigrating to the US is. It’d be easy to cheat and turn up on a visa (90 day waiver, 6 month vacation, J visa for students, etc.) and then not leave when required. But doing it all up front? Good grief. I don’t think I have the technical skills to merit applying for a job a US citizen couldn’t do, so marrying was really the only way it could happen. And even that was thousands of dollars, with inches (literally) of paperwork, and only toward the end was my case pretty cut and dry to get my 10 year green card. Have heard of plenty of people in my boat who didn’t have it that “easy.” Contrast moving from the UK to somewhere like Canada (i.e., within the Commonwealth), where reasonably educated people under 30 have a well trodden process they can follow. Or UK to New Zealand, which (essentially) requires you to have $300,000 in assets so you can support yourself and not be a drain on the state.
Enjoyed the nuanced debate, particularly the point about them already having been vetted for visas, even at the risk of junk punching 🙂 I’ll stop asking political questions. I asked because, well, I’m in Trump’s Venn diagram of dirty immigrants, but also due to the awful situation EU citizens find themselves in. Immediately after voting to leave the EU, even though that’s a process that’ll take years, lawful EU citizens are already receiving xenophobic comments, telling them they should leave the UK. That’s not the UK I know, it makes me beyond sick.
As it turns out, I’m fairly sure the reverse process back to the UK, thanks to recent changes in immigration law, is now to all intents and purposes impossible. Stuck with me, guys.
*sigh* And you thought you were sick of politics back when this episode was recorded.
New Ghostbusters film: Meh, it wasn’t as bad or as good as some people were saying. The dance number was odd.