Fraudulent entry can only happen on entry. If they had no intent to be married on entry, then there's no fraud on entry, and therefore it doesn't apply.

The timeline is:

1. Foreigner is married to or intends to marry a US citizen and live in the US (they know this; the government doesn't). 2. Foreigner enters the US with the assertion they have no intent to immigrate (they know this is false; US doesn't). 3. Couple applies for change of status to immigrate → This reveals the foreigner's original intent to immigrate even at the time of entry (the US now knows the entry was fraudulent)

I'm not defending the law; I believe it's haphazard and inhumane. Why do you get to apply while together inside the US only if you decided to marry and immigrate after entering the US, but if the foreigner is outside the US at the time you make the decision, you're now locked out for years? But that is what it is, and these people are getting burned trying to skirt the law.

That's not my argument. My argument is that there are cases where the intent literally changes. There was no intent to immigrate when entering, but that intent did change after entry.

> Foreigner is married to

We're talking right now about people met who their spouse after entry.

> or intends to marry a US citizen and live in the US (they know this; the government doesn't).

This requires mens rea and is next to impossible to prove without some documentation.

> 2. Foreigner enters the US with the assertion they have no intent to immigrate (they know this is false; US doesn't).

Or foreigner intends to enter with no intent to immigrate, but that intent changes after entry when they decide to get married to whoever they're dating. This intent change happens after entry.

> 3. Couple applies for change of status to immigrate → This reveals the foreigner's original intent to immigrate even at the time of entry (the US now knows the entry was fraudulent)

The mere change of status request here proves nothing about any intent at entry.

> I'm not defending the law; I believe it's haphazard and inhumane. Why do you get to apply while together inside the US only if you decided to marry and immigrate after entering the US, but if the foreigner is outside the US at the time you make the decision, you're now locked out for years? But that is what it is, and these people are getting burned trying to skirt the law.

It sounds like this is the part that you're salty about.

If you are already married, then you enter the country with an assertion that you have no intent to immigrate, then you soon after apply to immigrate, chances you were not lying are vanishingly slim.

Yes, if you meet after you enter the country, then that doesn't apply to you. That's exactly when it is appropriate to apply from inside the country and stay while your application is pending. That's not what these couples are doing.

One year of a kafkaesque process to make $500k/year instead of 70k Euros is a trade worth it to tons of people to make the go at it. And that’s for stable corporate jobs, it gets even more favorable if you want to start a company.

It is true that it is probably better in the US if you're privileged, but then again it's good everywhere if you're privileged. The difference is in the quality of life of the average person.

But a lot of countries like Canada, EU nations and other developed countries (and even in developing nations like India) have free or affordable healthcare systems.

So, at least from a healthcare metric, most of these nations trump USA (pun intended, since Trump scrapped or crippled Obamacare, which itself wasn't a full-fledged solution to the healthcare crisis prevalent in USA).

IF the patient has Medical Insurance.

Only in the USA, medical insurance seems to be tied to employment. Non-employment driven medicare is unaffordable except for the filthy rich.

If someone is unemployed or poor, they won't be able to afford or get healthcare (not even for a toothache!) in the USA.

EU nations are struggling with state-sponsored Medicare because those are old systems that weren't improved with growing populations and the needs of modern times, and there are concerted efforts by Big Pharma to cripple and dismantle such free or affordable healthcare. NHS is under attack by Big Pharma is you read the news closely.

EU nations also made tne mistake of intaking thousands of "refugees" many of whom are still jobless and a constant drain on the nation's fragile Medicare system and social service subsidies.

Contrast this to countries like India which has lots of expert doctors and excellent hospitals, and free clinics and free healthcare for the poor. India also has state-sponsored pharmacies selling generics medicines that are extremely affordable substitutes for Big-Pharma-branded medicines.

e.g., A metal stent for a heart surgery in India costs a pittance compared to rest of the world. A dental root canal treatment costs around 5000 rupees (around $55). Foreigners visit India to get cheap (but high quality) Medicare (especially surgeries). One diabetic American I personally know gets his Insulin from India, because it is cheaper despite the shipping cost involved. There's a growing industry for "medical tourism" in India, as catered packages, wherein a foreigner needing surgery arrives with family to stay at a nice hotel, then gets timely appointment and surgery at a reputed hospital by skilled doctors, and then patient and family can recuperate at a nice holiday resort and partake in some local sightseeing as guided tours as part of the whole package.

I am not trying to belittle USA here, but even the staunchest American patriot will agree their healthcare system is under the crippling grip of Big Pharma and bad policies, and is anti-poor by design, and desperately needs an overhaul to become at par with the best healthcare systems in other developed nations. A closer look at America's neighbor Canada's healthcare system will be an eye opener on how to do healthcare better.

Sadly you are drastically overestimating American patriots

I've lived in many states, the differences are minor.

This is exactly the justification for all the anti-immigration policies, the idea that immigrants from foreign countries have extended the mess that is in their home countries to the United States, and the only way to prevent it is to prevent those people from having the right to settle permanently in the United States.

> "this doesn't happen to people like us".

Up until now wasn't this the case that generally white collar workers would only face issues in very narrow set of conditions? And even now, are all irregular migrants experience the same worsening prospects?

b) English language as a first class language. For example, while there are many job offers promising English only requirement, in reality a significant part of these unofficially presume you will speak local language at proficient level in the team, and hiring process filters for that.

c) EU countries have a lot of their own bureaucracy hell regarding immigration. For example I'm now on a Blue Card status in EU, that's a high skilled immigration program. I need to renew my card for the next 1 to 3 year period, I've started process in Sep 2025 and best case scenario will get card around next winter 26/27. Worst case scenario, add half a year more to that. If I want to get a passport, originally I had to dance through these hoops for at minimum 9 years. Just recently it increased to 11 year. And right now there is a law proposal in the parliament, increasing this term to minimum 17 years (among other inane requirements). If that passes, they may increase it even more in the future, making all immigrants live on the flimsy status for decades. USA at least makes the process faster, even if unpredictable.

tl;dr - EU is nice, just like USA is nice in it's own way, but in both countries immigrants have to put up with a lot of legal BS.

People would rather align with wealth and power and pretend they are part of the club than align with the other schmucks like them.

The article is very light on details, but implies all of these spouses travelled to the US on a visa waiver (or similar) and then applied for a green card. Entering the US on most visas includes the assertion that you have no intent to immigrate. If you happen to already be in the US when you fall in love, get married, and apply to stay, that's when you're allowed to overstay during your pending application.

As far as I can tell from the article, it appears all of these people committed immigration fraud by entering on non-immigrant visas with clear intent to immigrate. Given that they're almost certainly upstanding people who intended to do the right thing, I think they could safely be asked to leave and apply correctly without the forceful detention, but they are technically in the wrong. What they did is specifically something I knew not to do and went through great pains to avoid.

The immigration processes for legitimate foreign spouses are Kafkaesque and absolutely need to be overhauled. It shouldn't be easier to come in illegally than through legitimate marriage. But in the meantime, people also can't circumvent the existing laws and then act flabbergasted when called on it.

I really do feel terrible for these couples caught up in it, especially since it seems their lawyers misled them.

The only options are to be lucky enough to have decided to get married and immigrate after you were already in the US, or to do the application from overseas.

It's an inhumane system, but as someone heavily impacted by US immigration policy, I'd much prefer they enforce the laws evenly and then fix them where they're broken rather than disadvantaging everyone going through the legal process while those that cheat get to jump ahead.

That is incredibly optimistic to believe that any legislation reforming immigration will be passed in the next decade.

There is a reason ICE was neutralized until now. Life is short. We don't have time for congress to play politics while Americans and their spouses suffer. Let people live their lives.

It's not even a law that results in the years-long wait; it's just because the system is clogged up with other junk and understaffed. As other's have mentioned; there's no formal waiting for citizen spouses—it's supposed to be immediate—it's just that they don't even get to look at your application for years.

I’ve found that people tend to respond as you have until the laws impact themselves or their friends. Then it’s very much a case of - I didn’t think this applied to us…

It really feels like a slap in the face to the people who do the "right thing" to allow others to be allowed in freely not following the law.

Fix the issues first.

Immigration reform will happen, but regardless no queue cutting.

So, we filed the spousal petition with USCIS overseas. It was a lot of paperwork, interviews for her, and some process delays. Eventually she got her immigrant visa issued. Upon arrival in the US on that visa, it was endorsed to reflect immigration status.

This was about fifteen years ago, and as I recall the process delays were pretty much as advertised at the time. We were able to time our filing so that the visa was issued around when she would be ready to relocate.

Most of the time we spent apart was due to our conflicting career opportunities and obligations. I think the petition could have been pipelined better if I'd been willing to stick with my expat job until she also wrapped up her work there.

Which is one of the reasons that the pre-trump executive orders that granted leniency and amnesty at times were all terrible terrible things to do. We really have a problem in this country where we've decided that the laws suck, but we don't want to do the hard part of changing the law, so we just decide to ignore it. Until at some point someone comes along and decides to enforce the law and now a whole bunch of people who were acting on the de facto state of the law now have to deal with the consequences of the de jure state of the law.

Immigration is a place we've done this a lot, but things like the status of marijuana across the country is also predicated on this sort of arbitrary non-enforcement of the law. Obviously the states are not obligated to enforce federal law, but the feds absolutely can. The feds could raid every marijuana dispensary in the country and take them all down with barely a hiccup, at least from a legality standpoint. Yet they don't because we have decided to arbitrarily not enforce the law, even if we haven't changed the law.

I had really hoped after Trump's first term, we would have seen a real awakening to the amount of things that are allowed only because we don't actually enforce the laws that are on the books, and a real push to both fix the laws and roll back the abuses of executive power like this. But we didn't seem to learn that lesson, and sadly it doesn't look like that lesson is going to be learned this time either.

This is not a realistic scenario, but does seem to present the argument, that Federal law and the power to enforce it is inherently and legally superior to individual State laws?

> fix the laws and roll back the abuses of executive power

Perhaps we could start with the federal law that made marijuana a Schedule One controlled substance: so that ordinary residents of responsible and responsive states would not have to rely on "arbitrary non-enforcement of the law" in order to get their smoke on.

Think about it! Every one of those citizen-puffers are in violation of federal law! Send in the troops!

The argument seems to be that federal laws overrule states', and that underlying idea justifies sending military forces into cities, because, you know, federal laws are being violated, everywhere, like, all the time, man.

Sheesh.

That's the current state of US law yes. That's why California needs explicit permission from the federal government to have more restrictive air quality laws than the federal standards. It's also quite literally baked into the constitution:

>This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in >Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the >Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the >Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any thing in the Constitution or >Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

Subsequent rulings and case law have largely established that the states and their law enforcement agencies are not inherently bound to enforce federal law, but that is a very grey area with lots of edge cases, and can change substantially depending on the "incorporation" status of the underlying constitutional basis for the law. This is why the drinking age is controlled by highway funding rather than direct legislative imposition, but it's also why the feds can and will send the military in to ensure your schools are integrated. The interplay between the supremacy clause and the 9th and 10th amendments is a very complex part of the legal system but this has been the state of the country for a very long time.

> Perhaps we could start with the federal law that made marijuana a Schedule One controlled substance

You'll get no argument from me on this front. Especially since there is a federally legal synthetic form of THC that is actively prescribed by doctors for cancer patients. It's called Dronabinol and it's a Schedule III substance. Yes you're reading that right. Psychoactive THC can be obtained via prescription in the US from any pharmacy and that synthetic version is a lower control level than xanax. And all of this in the face of the fact that the plant source of the THC is a Schedule I substance which in theory is supposed to mean there is no known or accepted medical use for the substance. Which seems like a lie.

> The argument seems to be that federal laws overrule states', and that underlying idea justifies sending military forces into cities, because, you know, federal laws are being violated, everywhere, like, all the time, man.

It's not "the argument", it's the actual law of the land. The fact that the feds can't send in the military is that we explicitly disallow the use of military forces for domestic law enforcement. But that restriction doesn't apply to non-military federal LEOs and even with the military, it's a grey area (see aforementioned use of the National Guard to enforce racial integration). And it's one of the reasons why we should have been concerned about the ever expanding federal powers in general and executive powers LOOONG before Trump had ever considered running the first time. It's part of what makes "legislating" via the courts so dangerous, and what makes the impulse some people seem to have to respond to the Trump administration by way of things like court packing and other attempts to simultaneously empower the federal government without also empowering Trump a dangerous impulse.

It doesn't. But it probably will, especially with Japan's history. How many times does history have to repeat before we stop dismissing it as a slippery slope?

>many also believe that the US alliance and the bases are critical to Japan's greater sovereignty and prosperity.

America stripped their standing army for decades, so that damage is inflicted by the very ones that claim to protect them. And the US isn't exactly a reliable ally as of late.

The China issue is orthogonal to all this. US-Japan relations were atleast beneficial till now (unlike say Europe's colonial possessions in Asia), but it looks like the country will first suck all its vassals dry before going down.

I'm sure you're aware, but I think others will be confused by the link with no context. This is one of the "right-wing rivals".

I found myself actually using the incidental reflection on the surface of the screen instead of the actual pixels. I can't believe this arrangement is legal.