Immigration and Vaccines

Follow the Incentive Structures

In 2014 my husband Oh was looking for a job in Las Vegas when he saw one in the Thai language newspaper circulated at the Laos Market that caught his eye. It was for a cook at a Thai restaurant. I drove him there for his job interview and hung out in the background.

It wasn’t much of an interview the lady manager spoke to him quickly in Thai language and asked him if he could start working the next morning. As he was new to America and this was his first formal job interview Oh asked if they needed to see his 10 year US green card, that thing that supposedly gave my husband the legal right to work in the United States. The manager not only didn’t need to see it, she seemed nervous that he had one at all.

Oh talked excitedly about this new job on the drive back from the restaurant. They were offering $120 daily straight cash for what they claimed was a 10 hour shift, from 10 AM through 8 PM. For Oh, who had worked long hours as a bartender and cook in Phuket, 12 hour days, 6 days per week, for a salary of 12000 baht ($430) per MONTH, this amount of money for less work seemed mind blowing to him. To me it was only $12 per hour and hardly a good job by US standards. But hey you’ve got to start somewhere.

They wanted Oh starting at 9 AM the next morning so my husband could learn the ropes in this Thai restaurant. Fair enough. I dropped him off and he told me he’d call me in the evening when he was done.

I got a call instead at about 2:30 PM. “Take me back home. This job no good.” My husband explained over the phone.

Oh told me that he was on his feet the whole time as he was trained and then as people and delivery drivers streamed into the Thai restaurant, which opened at 10 AM. “I so tired. Every time I try to take break, they say no! Chopping vegetable, or cooking this, or cleaning this.” He said. The last straw for him was at about 2 PM. “They say okay can take break! I so hungry. I sit down, maybe one minute. Some customer come inside the shop. They say okay you cook now! I not even eating! Don’t go toilet! No good.” My husband shook his head sadly.

I asked him about the money and then it got worse sounding. “They say $120 for I work until 7 PM today. Then they say $80. Maybe $120 if I work until finished at 10 PM.’ He spoke in Thai language then about what the restaurant manager had said but I did understand the gist. It was a bit of a honey trap without the honey.

Oh had done what any self respecting person would seemingly do in this situation. He’d told them to take their job and shove it. They didn’t pay him a thing.

The reason they hadn’t wanted to see his green card was so obvious by then. My husband had a 10 year open ended family based immigrant visa. He was a very LEGAL immigrant to the USA. The Thai restaurant people weren’t looking for his type. They wanted a Thai on an expired tourist or student or fiance visa, say, who they then had extreme leverage over. All that money could be sent back home to family in desperate need. Employers could report violations and threaten to get their own workers deported. The person in America could be milked like a slave. Welcome to the real American Immigration policy. It’s the new indentured servitude.

I’ve been meaning to update regarding my husband Ka’s visa to America. And for those who don’t get the story, I’ll explain it quickly. My first husband Oh died in 2018 in a motorbike accident, and I remarried a Thai man, Ka as his short name, in Phuket. Obviously he has no visa to go to the United States, unless you count my first husband’s unexpired green card.

All Thais look alike, right? Am I right?

We’re thousands of dollars and near three years into this, as is to be expected. One might assume that in a sane world that when you meet someone and maybe want to marry them that you would decide to travel and meet each other’s family and have an idea of how well the new place and culture fit with your own ideas. Am I right? I mean it would be great if I could just take my husband to America for Christmas to visit the family, and then we could regroup and think about where we want our future together. It doesn’t sound so hard for a Thai person to go to Europe.

According to BlueSpynx:

Hi, I returned September 4 from a 5-weeks holiday with my Thai girlfriend in my home-country of Belgium. Nor me nor my Thai girlfriend are vaccinated. The only 'restrictions' we encountered when leaving from Thailand to Belgium, was that both on the Thai domestic flight to Bangkok as on the Emirates flight from Bangkok to Dubai and then to Brussels 'mask-wearing' was mandatory. Once in Belgium there was no mask anywhere to be seen, except for the rare occasional loon (I spotted approx 10 during our 5-weeks holiday). To return to Thailand on 3 September both myself and my girlfriend had to show a negative Covid-test taken within 72 hours of departure. We did not opt for the intrusive (and dangerous) stick-up-your nose PCR test, but looked for a pharmacist that did a quick Antibody Test just by taking some saliva from the back of your throat (took less than 1 second). Note that even that negative Covid-test requirement has been SCRAPPED since 1st of October. So there are in fact NO entry restrictions anymore for visiting Thailand.

Currently you cannot get a visa to the USA unless you take the Covid jabs. It is also only possible to visit from Thailand to America if you have money. We tried going the tourist visa route with my husband Oh when I was pregnant with our daughter. Like about 50% of the people that applied, my husband got denied to make a tourist visa to come to America. The reason? Well basically because he was married to me (a US Citizen) and neither of us were rich. Therefore it was presumed that he would intend to immigrate to America unless he could obviously prove otherwise. How would he prove otherwise? Either through substantial family ties in Thailand (that one is usually disregarded) or through substantial monetary ties to Thailand (i.e. a ton of money in Thai bank accounts, businesses, properties, all in Thailand). In reality only the second one is looked at. Hence the idea among Thai citizen that you cannot make a visa to come to America unless you have at least 500,000 baht (maybe 18K ) in the bank. Section 214B:

“(b) Every alien (other than a nonimmigrant described in subparagraph (L) or (V) of section 101(a)(15), and other than a nonimmigrant described in any provision of section 101(a)(15)(H)(i) except subclause (b1) of such section) shall be presumed to be an immigrant until he establishes to the satisfaction of the consular officer, at the time of application for a visa, and the immigration officers, at the time of application for admission, that he is entitled to a nonimmigrant status under section 101(a)(15). An alien who is an officer or employee of any foreign government or of any international organization entitled to enjoy privileges, exemptions, and immunities under the International Organizations Immunities Act, or an alien who is the attendant, servant, employee, or member of the immediate family of any such alien shall not be entitled to apply for or receive an immigrant visa, or to enter the United States as an immigrant unless he executes a written waiver in the same form and substance as is prescribed by section 247(b).”

My understanding is that an employee of an international organization (NGO) is exempt. Got it. But for us lowly normal people, what this is saying is that anybody applying for any type of nonimmigrant visa to the USA is assumed to be trying to immigrate to America, unless they can prove otherwise.

So obviously since you can’t make a tourist visa everybody on a family type visa gets grouped in the immigrant visa category, whether they wanted to be or not. It’s sort of 19th century. You obviously pack all your bags and get rid of everything and get on a boat and take a several week’s journey to the USA and clearly understand that it is unlikely that you will see your homeland ever again. This probably explains the 1864 immigrant from, say, Ireland exactly.

There’s planes and trains and automobiles nowadays though. Is it a little half assed backwards? Of course you can get to America quite easily if an employer sponsors you. Facebook inundates me with advertisements about how I can get a visa to come to America or Canada if I am a healthcare worker. They are quite obviously eager to replace all the missing workers with foreigners.

This was mentioned on an interesting thread naming all of the authors on the paper that spliced Covid into a new version with an 80% fatality rate in mice. What kind of mad scientists would do such a stupid thing? Maybe someone beholden to their employer:

Oct 19·edited Oct 19

Can we get a US Citizen vs H1 or J1 Visa breakdown?

Because I’ll tell you, if you are on a Fellowship on a Visa, it’s sponsored by the hospital or academic and conditional on your job there.

You’re captured. You decide you’re not down with the program?

Pack your shit, you’re out.

Not to mention the obvious espionage clusterfuck here.

Writes Amy’s Newsletter

Great point and so true. I've been almost three years waiting on my husband's visa to America. That's because family preference visas are the lowest ones. Now if my husband was a techie who needed ad H1N! visa or a nurse who could replace some unjabbed worker in Canada his wait is around two weeks...

Oct 20Liked by Sage Hana

This is a part of the ‘incentive structure’ that is overlooked, not only with the R&D Scientists but also MDs.

Most rural hospitals are staffed with J1 Visa doctors. I don’t know what visas research scientists fall under but the deal is the same. Your visa is sponsored by the hospital or university and only valid while employed with those institutions. Smacks of indentured servitude.

Do you see the problem with this when combined with highly suspect treatment protocols?

Are these doctors likely to speak out and risk the ire of administrators?

This is an extra added layer of compliance leverage ON TOP of the regular hospital employment contracts and also State Medical Licensing boards.

This is not me being xenophobic! Doctors should have committed ties to the communities they serve.

They should have skin in the game.

Yes immigrants should have skin in the game, and of course those whose visas are threatened will not rock the boat. It’s another level of compliance based buy-in.

A few years ago I decided to check on the US Embassy website to see what the average wait times were for various visa classes. The longest wait was a not immediate family visa, which is in a different class than a spouse or minor children. This would refer to elderly parents or siblings of the immigrant, say. This class can take five to 10 years to process. I knew one woman from Vietnam who faked a fiancee visa so she could get to Los Angeles and work at her sister’s nail salon. A lot of these loopholes also provide ample room for sexual trafficking and exploitation.

The shortest wait time by far was for a H1B visa, which is sponsored by an employer to employ foreigners in specialty occupations, like tech, say, or perhaps medical specialties. That wait time on that one was 2 weeks. Even more maddening from my position is that many of these employers also sponsor the spouse and minor children to come with the worker. It would be a shame if they had to be separated from their family or something while they worked in the United States.

There’s always running across the border through Mexico. Unfortunately my husband would need a visa to come to Mexico, and since the only purpose of going there would be to cross the border with him this would obviously violate immigration policy. I would do it only on the condition of it being a very publicly broadcast display of the sheer hypocrisy of US immigration policy.

Always follow the incentive structure….

Buy me a ko-fi