Indeed, while applicants who are rejected for refugee status can at least ask for a limited review of their cases, Iraqis who go through the special immigrant visa process have little recourse if they are rejected.
In a word, social capital is a key factor in the immigrant adaptation process.
It has also been suggested that the immigrant screening process may favor admission of only the healthiest immigrants.
The formal immigrant selection process favours TFWs who do very well in the labour market before they apply for immigration status.
In that sense, naturalisation is presented as a means but not necessarily the end of the immigrant integration process, which evolves with the changes in the distribution of opportunities and power within society (e.g. debates on inequality, on the welfare state and social policy, on ethnic minorities and diversity, and so on).
But if Mr. Bush and Mr. Gore are concerned about fairness, they should be pushing hard to repeal cruel laws that deny immigrants due process of law, impose hardships on thousands of immigrant families and make America less hospitable to asylum seekers fleeing persecution.
The government has once again begun to consider visas for Afghan immigrants, a process suspended some weeks ago after the Taliban government in Afghanistan fell under American attacks.
Her ignorance about her own roots is as telling about the willful amnesia that clouds many immigrants' assimilation process as anything else she reveals.
No longer do immigrants necessarily have to become more American to thrive; in fact, Americans might have to become more like the immigrants — a process that Portes and Stepick observed in Miami and labelled "acculturation in reverse".
The lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York, asserts that the agency violated immigrants' due process rights by routinely failing to finish their applications within a 180-day time period that Congress has set as a standard.
