S06.E23: Immigration

[PrincessPurrsALot]

Immigration; also Russia's election

Original air date 2019.09.15

[Annber03]

Man, I love it when Oliver gets passionate like this. That rant at the end was pure gold. 

I swear, if I have to hear one more speech about how other countries are "bringing their worst people here" I'm going to scream. Just. Stop. For the love of God. STOP. 

It's so cute that people out there think coming here legally is so easy. And by "cute", I mean infuriating and incredibly sad. And it's been abundantly clear already that this administration has no interest whatsoever in differentiating between legal and illegal immigrants, but damn if this episode didn't make that even more apparent. I mean, this administration is currently trying to restrict people from the Bahamas coming here, because they may not have the proper documentation. You know, the stuff they may have lost in the hurricane that just destroyed their homeland.

Wouldn't it be fantastic if we could make every single person who was born and raised here do a test in which they had to go through the immigration process? That might be the only way we could get it to sink in for people. 

On something of a lighter note, yay at the news of people protesting in Russia, and Putin's party declining in popularity. Fight the good fight, guys. 

I also love that John has a collectible that looks like him :D. Is it weird that I want one? 

[scarynikki12]

43 minutes ago, Annber03 said:

I also love that John has a collectible that looks like him :D. Is it weird that I want one? 

I have a John Oliver Funko POP so, no, you wanting that giant bear is normal.

Excellent breakdown of the immigration paths and problems. I didn’t know he had to go back to England every year to get a passport stamp and now I’m wondering if Trevor Noah is jumping through the same  hoops or if he has to do different things for South Africa. Apple pie and a can of Bud to celebrate his green card was a sweet and funny thing for The Daily Show to do. 

[Annber03]

3 minutes ago, scarynikki12 said:

I have a John Oliver Funko POP so, no, you wanting that giant bear is normal.

Well, I know what I'm looking up next :D.

Quote

Apple pie and a can of Bud to celebrate his green card was a sweet and funny thing for The Daily Show to do. 

His getting all emotional over that was so touching. Aw. 

[swanpride]

Yeah, the "worst people" nonsense is pretty much the opposite of reality. In reality the US is draining the best and brightest from developing countries. And then complain about the fact that said countries don't develop. Geez, I wonder why.

[swanpride]

Oh, and regarding the "my country is full" line...the US is actually one of he LEAST populated country in the world in terms of how much people live in how much space. There is PLENTY of room left.

[Lantern7]

The president doesn’t know what he’s talking about. There’s a news flash. It is good that John manages to shine light on a process most Americans don’t know about (even when they say that do). And John’s bias is welcomed in this case.

In other news, Putin has rappers on his side, FBN people suck, and Joe Kenda is a scary motherfucker. Good to know.

6 hours ago, scarynikki12 said:

I have a John Oliver Funko POP so, no, you wanting that giant bear is normal.

Holy cow, It does exist. Maybe there could be one you can spin on a turntable as it frantically waves at you.

[swanpride]

Also, there is now officially a day which sucks even more as birthday than Christmas.

[Robert Lynch]

The young woman's expression when that old woman uttered what she thinks about immigrants getting in line....just wow. 

[khyber]

In the eighties I worked with a Turkish woman who had to fly from California (where she lived) to Istanbul, to interview for a green card at the American embassy in Turkey. It seemed crazy. Also worked for a Japanese owned company in the 90's. We worked with an immigration lawyer to get special H1 visas for the Japanese workers. They basically lied about them having special skills that no American possessed. Its common practice in Silicon Valley.

[DoctorAtomic]

Does the president not know that we know he doesn't know what he's talking about?

I didn't realize everyone had to fly back to their home country to re-up their visas. That's really rough. 

[arachne]

3 hours ago, swanpride said:

Also, there is now officially a day which sucks even more as birthday than Christmas.

Just ask Butters from South Park. 

[Iguana]

Hey, John.  Good, funny and informative episode on a process everyone thinks they know more about than they actually do.  And, unfortunately, that includes most politicians.  And voters.  Having gone through the immigration system yourself obviously brings a whole different perspective to your observations and feelings about how fucked up it really is.  The bit about the backlog (they are just now working on applications from Mexico from 1997???!?!?!?!?) blew my mind.  I have no idea what it would take to fix something so massive that is so broken, but it will likely collapse under its own weight sooner rather than later if nothing is done.  Which won't be pretty.

And that immigration guy (Cucinelli?) can go fuck himself with a chainsaw for his "stand on their own two feet" bastardization of the Statue of Liberty poem.  Seriously.  A rusty, gas powered, really sharp chainsaw.

[peeayebee]

8 hours ago, Lantern7 said:

Holy cow, It does exist. Maybe there could be one you can spin on a turntable as it frantically waves at you.

I absolutely LOVE the image of John waving at us in the opening. It's such a happy little start to often maddening stories.

4 hours ago, DoctorAtomic said:

Does the president not know that we know he doesn't know what he's talking about?

Does the president care? I'd say no. He's the center of his world.

1 hour ago, Iguana said:

The bit about the backlog (they are just now working on applications from Mexico from 1997???!?!?!?!?) blew my mind. 

Gosh, mine too. I wonder how many people actually work on the applications.

The show was very informative. There was a lot I didn't know, except for the pulling-names-out-of-a-bowl Trump story, which I knew wasn't so. How can he be so ignorant?

And the bit about the refugee telling him (again) about her family being killed and his not remembering? Unfuckingbelievable. He doesn't retain information, like the whole thing about category 5 hurricanes. I really think each time he said he'd never heard of it, he did not recall hearing of it... because he doesn't listen to anything unless it directly pertains to what his current interest is, like himself.

About the John Oliver bear doll -- Do you think they bought that or did the prop dept make it?

Oh, and I enjoyed the bit with the Bottomless Pinocchio being a strip club for wooden boys (was it boys?).

Edited September 16, 2019 by peeayebee

[Annber03]

2 hours ago, peeayebee said:

Does the president care? I'd say no. He's the center of his world.

You beat me to it. 

Quote

And the bit about the refugee telling him (again) about her family being killed and his not remembering? Unfuckingbelievable.

That was truly just...there are no words. No. Words.  

3 hours ago, Iguana said:

Hey, John.  Good, funny and informative episode on a process everyone thinks they know more about than they actually do.  And, unfortunately, that includes most politicians.  And voters.

How sad is it that we've got people in office who don't know how this stuff works. That's just plain depressing. I don't know what we can do to get this message out to people who think this process is so easy. Everybody needs to be aware of this.

I was on another site earlier and people were talking about this episode, and their conclusion was that they didn't know why anyone would bother coming to the U.S. MAGA, indeed. 

10 hours ago, Lantern7 said:

Joe Kenda is a scary motherfucker. Good to know.

I got a kick out of that snippet :D. I've seen his show. Definitely not someone you'd want to get on the wrong side of, no. 

Edited September 16, 2019 by Annber03

[paigow]

8 hours ago, DoctorAtomic said:

Does the president not know that we know he doesn't know what he's talking about?

Trump must have used this guy as a role model.....

[izabella]

Every day I am reminded how relieved I am that I helped my parents to get their citizenship back in the 80's, and then got mine.  I still worry that this administration will decide naturalized citizens don't have the same rights as citizens by birth, though, and strip our rights to vote among other things, despite what the Constitution says.

I was perplexed that John did not bring up the fact that the refugees from South America are trying to legally migrate to the US and are using the legal method to do so.  It is legal for asylum seekers to present themselves at the border to seek asylum.  That's how it works!  They aren't doing anything illegal!  It is a form of legal immigration.  We are locking them up in cages without enough breathing room, sanitation and food for doing something that is legal and is the way they are supposed to come to this country.  That was a big miss in this segment.

Edited September 17, 2019 by izabella

[swanpride]

Or at least they would do it legally if not for the fact that they are prevented to get close to the border.

Btw, do you know that there are regularly weddings happening on the bridge to the border? Apparently if you marry your spouse in Mexico you are not allowed bring him or her in and naturally said spouse won't be allowed to enter the US to marry there. So they marry ON the border and then have to wait until they are allowed in. Well, I suspect in those cases the application is dealt with a little bit faster.

[peeayebee]

13 hours ago, izabella said:

I was perplexed that John did not bring up the fact that the refugees from South America are trying to legally migrate to the US and are using the legal method to do so.  It is legal for asylum seekers to present themselves at the border to seek asylum.  That's how it works! 

Does the Safe Third Country rule apply to South Americans, too?

[Victor the Crab]

I too was surprised to find out immigrants looking to get a green card had to go back to their country of origin and have their passports stamped. Ollie is very lucky he can afford the hassle, and  it still made him on edge. Imagine being not well off and having to go through that shit.

I will not believe Funko didn't customise that Ollie bear doll just to display it on LWT. That's just too surreal.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

I remember before gay marriage was legal, there were several widely publicized stories about international couples where the person who was not an American citizen had to go back to their home country and re-apply to come back every few months (the length of time before you have to go back depends on what kind of visa you have). There is never a guarantee that it will be granted either so every time these people went back to their countries, they knew it could potentially be the last time they saw their partners.

Even if you have a work visa, as John Oliver did, that doesn't mean that you will automatically get your visa renewed to return, let alone get a green card. That's why all of this "get in line and do it legally" rhetoric doesn't work for me. This isn't the equivalent of standing in line at Trader Joe's where if you are just patient, you will eventually get your turn and get to pay for your groceries and go home to eat your food. It's more like standing in line for 10 years, getting to the front of the line, and then being forcibly ejected from the store. Lots of people fill out the paperwork to "do it legally" and wait years for their applications to be processed, only to be rejected years later (and not because they are criminals who are on welfare or whatever other nonsense various people were spouting during this episode).

Edited September 20, 2019 by ElectricBoogaloo

[Hooper]

I just got around to watching the Legal Immigration episode, and as usual was both entertained and enlighten by JO.  But I do have to pick a minor quibble with him leading off the main segment by showing photos of vast stretches of "empty" land to counter the current Oval Office occupant's declaration that our country is full.  I'm most definitely not a supporter of the notion that we should deny sanctuary to desperate people escaping horrible circumstance because we have no room for them.  But still, if one scrutinizes those photos of all that empty land vewy vewy carefully, one might discern that all that supposedly empty land is actually occupied by, uhm, food.   Issues of over population and sustainable food production are extremely complex and examination of different aspects of those issues could easily fill a few seasons of LWT, so I don't want to get overly incensed over the use of a couple photos.  But still, using pictures of farmland and implying that we can just find room for immigrants/refugees by having them occupy those "unused" spaces kinda reinforces the notion that elitist libruls don't really care much about what goes on in those fly-over states, and have no idea where their avocado toast comes from.  I might have gone with a photo of a golf course or football/soccer stadium and associated parking lots as  better visuals of the fact that we have room to spare for immigrants.

Edited September 19, 2019 by Hooper

[swanpride]

It put the point across. And, as I pointed out above, the US is one of the LEAST densely populated country in the world. To put this is numbers, there are 87 people living in the US per mi². In Canada it is even only 10. Most of the countries which have less population are either very icy (Greenland is with 0.08 at the very bottom of the list), or have a lot of desert (western Sahara with 0.6) or are simply islands which just aren't hot-spots.

Now, if we go on the top of the list, we find Monaco with 14,106. But that would naturally not sustainable for the whole world, you are right, we need farmland somewhere. So let's go down on the list to the more populated European countries which still have a proper agricultural sector. There are the Netherlands with 1,082, Belgium with 974, the UK with 710 and Germany with 601. Germany has btw just agreed to take a certain number of Refugees off the hands of the Italian government.

To put it differently: Theoretically the US could take in ten times of its population, and still have enough room for farming and nature. Practically this is naturally not something you would be able to do from one day to another. But realistically speaking, the US is far, faaaar away from being "full".

[DoctorAtomic]

Yeah, if everyone pours into the largest cities it's going fill up, but there's a looooooottttt of space in my state. 

[ALenore]

When Trump kept saying the country is "full," I was thinking: well, I guess that means you're going to announce mandatory birth control for everyone and forced abortions for all pregnant women, right?   

[swanpride]

Not necessary...birth rates tend to adjust to the level of wealth. Meaning people living in wealthier countries automatically get less children.

[b2H]

On 9/20/2019 at 7:27 AM, DoctorAtomic said:

Yeah, if everyone pours into the largest cities it's going fill up, but there's a looooooottttt of space in my state. 

Continuing the discussion on population density:  I'm in Phoenix on business this week and next.  We were here a couple of weeks ago too and someone on the radio said that 200 people A WEEK were migrating to the Phoenix area.  Per. Week.  And it's mostly desert around here.

There is an enormous amount of residential building and, while the highways are holding up, the traffic is pretty horrendous.  They have a good mass transit system downtown but in the outskirts is pretty messy and that includes Maricopa County which is 9,224 square miles.

So there is room, but in some places, it's getting messy.

[meowmommy]

2 hours ago, b2H said:

They have a good mass transit system downtown but in the outskirts is pretty messy and that includes Maricopa County which is 9,224 square miles.

I live in Maricopa County.  I used to live in the East Valley and I tried desperately for years to find either public transportation or ridesharing to get me to my work in Phoenix, but was never successful.  Highway commuting rivals L.A. 

I left four years ago and came back last year and it looks about the same.  Now I'm in the West Valley and I don't work any more, but my daughter takes the bus to her community college.  She bitches about it, but it mostly gets the job done.  And she has Dial-a-Ride because she is ADA certified.

Edited October 3, 2019 by meowmommy

[swanpride]

That's is more a "public transport" than a population problem, though. In a way, more population is a reason to have more public transport on offer because there are more people to use it.