04/03/07 Email exchange
Dear Hal,
I live in Mexico, but I have a brother living in the U.S. who told me that as a naturalized U.S. citizen, he can legally petition for me. Do you think it's a good idea?
Gloria
Dear Gloria,
No, it is not a good idea. If you do it the way your brother suggests, you will be a fool. You should come illegally. That way, you will receive all the benefits of a legal immigrant -- but much sooner -- and you won't need to obtain a costly Mexican passport and your brother won't have to fill out all those messy forms.
And if you get lucky, you can expect to get a crack at Earned Legalization (when you get here, pretend that you don't consider it an amnesty). If that happens, you can expect to get on a path to become a U.S. citizen much sooner than those who have applied to immigrate legally. That's because the wait for an immigration visa is now 13 years -- you will only have to wait six years before you can apply, but the sweet thing about it is that you will have legal presence in the U.S. with working rights and you will even be able to legally obtain a drivers license.
But won't I have to prove that I have been present as an illegal alien for many years back.
Yes, but you can fake it like millions did in the 1986 amnesty. Just get one of your U.S. citizen friends to vouch for you and say that you have been working for him for the last 10 years (I wrote a legitimate letter in 1986 for my Mother's Honduran house keeper truthfully certifying that she worked for my mother for the past 10 years) and no one ever checked it out.
What about paying back taxes if I haven't really been in the U.S. all the time I said I was?
Not a problem. The millions of aliens, including my mother's housekeeper, who were given amnesty in 1986 who filled out the form for back taxes, never heard from the IRS -- probably because it would have been impossible to check out millions of tax declarations and it would have been a paperwork nightmare. But just in case, just declare that you were a domestic and that you worked part time 20 hours a week at $3.50 per hour and you supported your family back home. In that way, you wont owe anything.
What if they do a criminal background check?
Not to worry. The Department of Homeland Security won't be able to find anything on you in their databases even if you are a fugitive in your own country because you weren't present in the U.S. For example, a post mortem background check of all nineteen 9-11 terrorists who all had valid driver's licenses, revealed that they did not have any criminal record. That shouldn't be surprising since there was no criminal history on any of them in the U.S.
P.S. Keep this to yourself, as this useful information is intended only for hard working law abiding illegal aliens -- not for terrorists.