IC Immigration & Crime

[Audacity]

As someone who has experience with immigration in-real life, I am not really happy with how the entirety of the server is roleplaying being from outside the United States. Coming to the United States from another country that requires transiting through air or water is an extremely hard process. 50 percent of the server is roleplaying British, which is not really realistic at some point, unless they are roleplaying being on a tourist visa on-arrival (which limits them to 6 months visit per entry). There is no possible way to immigrate to the United States from the United Kingdom on a Permanent Resident visa unless you are married to an American citizen, or unless you are highly qualified to travel, and being highly qualified means that you are the only person who can do the job in the United States, basically. The green card lottery is not EVEN available to British citizens, so they can not apply to immigrate through it. The only way is through marriage, studying or a work (impossible) visa. If you are not roleplaying being married to an American citizen, you will be deported. If you are found to be breaking your study visa, you will also be deported. It is completely unrealistic for people to roleplay being British for a very long time on the server.

 

When it comes to crime and first-generation immigration, immigrating from any other country to the United States is EXTREMLY rigorous and difficult. You go through background checks, criminal checks, you have to prove that you won't be a burden to the American economy (as in taking loans and stuff), ALL of this is DEPENDENT on your selection in a Green Card lottery (the DV lottery). Winning in the DV lottery is extremely hard, and it is 0.1 percent success. They select around 50,000 person a year, and at least no less than three million people apply to the green card lottery a year.

 

First-generation immigrants committing crimes is extremely unrealistic and should be looked into, unless there is some sort of detailed and realistic development behind it.

 

 

Edited July 9, 2021 by Audacity

[Aquila]

23 minutes ago, Audacity said:

As someone who has experience with immigration in-real life, I am not really happy with how the entirety of the server is roleplaying being from outside the United States. Coming to the United States from another country that requires transiting through air or water is an extremely hard process. 50 percent of the server is roleplaying British, which is not really realistic at some point, unless they are roleplaying being on a tourist visa on-arrival (which limits them to 6 months visit per entry). There is no possible way to immigrate to the United States from the United Kingdom on a Permanent Resident visa unless you are married to an American citizen, or unless you are highly qualified to travel, and being highly qualified means that you are the only person who can do the job in the United States, basically. The green card lottery is not EVEN available to British citizens, so they can not apply to immigrate through it. The only way is through marriage, studying or a work (impossible) visa. If you are not roleplaying being married to an American citizen, you will be deported. If you are found to be breaking your study visa, you will also be deported. It is completely unrealistic for people to roleplay being British for a very long time on the server.

 

When it comes to crime and first-generation immigration, immigrating from any other country to the United States is EXTREMLY rigorous and difficult. You go through background checks, criminal checks, you have to prove that you won't be a burden to the American economy (as in taking loans and stuff), ALL of this is DEPENDENT on your selection in a Green Card lottery (the DV lottery). Winning in the DV lottery is extremely hard, and it is 0.1 percent success. They select around 50,000 person a year, and at least no less than three million people apply to the green card lottery a year.

 

First-generation immigrants committing crimes is extremely unrealistic and should be looked into, unless there is some sort of detailed and realistic development behind it.

 

 

 

I've noticed a lot of people roleplay British too. While it may not be realistic, no RP server will ever be completely realistic and everyone needs to accept that.

 

We have to sacrifice some aspects of realism so that people have the freedom to roleplay what they want, within reason. We cannot really force everyone to roleplay an American, especially when maybe half the server's population (rough estimation) are from Europe, with little to no knowledge of American laws or customs outside of what they would see on TV. If we did force everyone to be American, it wouldn't be as fun.

 

Plus, we really need to stop treating San Andreas like it's an ordinary state of America. This is by no means an attack on you or anyone at all, it's just that I noticed a general sentiment that we have to treat San Andreas like California when that is almost impossible. At the end of the day, we're all here to roleplay and have fun, and sometimes we need to let our imagination run a little wild or free, meaning we may have to not focus so much on American citizenship and just let it go.

[Marty]

Totally agree. As someone who pretty much strictly only roleplay American born characters for the sake of being just a regular citizen with X type of a job or life choice as that is what you would most often encounter in US, it always has bothered me a little of how 1st gen immigrant comes from a good EU country to be a bartender in US, like why would you not do that in your home country? I just feel like we need less 1st gen immigrants unless properly researched of all the processes and more American population, cause honestly feels like there's just far too many 1st gen immigrants in the server.

[L I C E]

marry into citizenship EZ

[Aquila]

57 minutes ago, Marty said:

[...] it always has bothered me a little of how 1st gen immigrant comes from a good EU country to be a bartender in US, like why would you not do that in your home country?

 

This is just me nitpicking, but bartending in most EU countries is a terrible job. Much like how many of the bars and restaurants in the UK have EU citizens working in them, I'd imagine there are a lot in America from EU countries as well, just to work in a bar or whatever.

 

With that being said, I'd like to refer to my earlier post about realism. It isn't always possible to do real life jobs on the server, because most of them are boring desk jobs, and who wants to go on a game to do that? I've always recommended people roleplay that they have day jobs that happen off-screen, because sitting at a computer to roleplay sitting at a computer is ridiculous.

[jcat]

1 hour ago, Marty said:

1st gen immigrant comes from a good EU country to be a bartender in US, like why would you not do that in your home country?

 

Travel, adventure, new experiences, laughing at the rubes from close up, unemployment in the home country, problems in the home country.  Met a Filipino lady who was in the USA for 2 years, and she had 2 jobs, her husband had 2 jobs, and they were getting ready to buy their first house.  She said, 'you have a good system here' meaning that the same effort she put in the Phillippines earned her and her husband a much higher standard of living in the USA.  She was only working in a shop. 

[jcat]

31 minutes ago, Aquila said:

I'd like to refer to my earlier post about realism.

 

Admins should implement NPC bosses who pour abuse and scorn on characters and characters get paid according to how many times they click the dialogue option for scorn and abuse.

[jcat]

1 hour ago, Marty said:

honestly feels like there's just far too many 1st gen immigrants in the server.

 

True, there's hardly any Americans.  It's more like an international legation on US soil, like some alternate history Singapore type city.

[Koko]

47 minutes ago, jcat said:

Met a Filipino lady who was in the USA for 2 years, and she had 2 jobs, her husband had 2 jobs, and they were getting ready to buy their first house.

The Philipinnes isn't really comparable to the UK or any other EU country with their social security net and general economic level. If, as a British citizen, you have the means to immigrate to America, that likely means that you have a Master's degree in something (or above) and are coming essentially with a job offer from overseas. Someone portraying a character like you describe would be entirely realistic to the American experience of many immigrants.

 

The average immigrant character we're talking about comes from a "First World" country and comes with no apparent marketable skills (other than perhaps being hot) and oftentimes base their existence around going from club to club and from penthouse party to penthouse party. They "work", meaning they bartend once in a Blue Moon, or otherwise make no mention of their occupation or are always "just looking to see what's out there" (which in reality would give you a couple months before you'd get your ass sat on a plane back home after skipping your visa).

 

I agree that it's an RP server and we just have to assume that some things are not going to make sense, but I still think that it's good to put the word out there and hopefully tempt more people into playing characters that would make more sense from an immigration perspective.

 

We need more immigrants from poor countries that would definitely be improving their chances by coming here to do odd jobs and wait tables, not people who could be doing the same work for the same money at home but just decided to "check out Los Santos". It can work, you can justify it well, but you'll always be compared to the dozens of others who don't.

[i dont wanna od in LA]

I think it's all just a question of doing your research properly. Being arrested as an illegal immigrant (especially from countries like Mexico) doesn't always result in deportation. It also must be noted that if your character is supposed  to be a convicted felon from some European country, there's a huge chance they would never be allowed into the US (i.e. a customs officer at the airport wouldn't allow them to stay, even if they had a valid visa, which is also unlikely) so if you roleplay a convicted felon from Europe suddenly moving to the US and then committing several crimes here, you're completely fucking up your char dev.

If you'd like to dive deeper into the issue of illegal immigrants coming to the US and then committing crimes here and serving time in american prisons, read about the shooting of Kate Steinle (in SF, California) committed by José Inez García Zárate. According to several sources: "José Inez García Zárate (or Juan Francisco López-Sánchez), of Guanajuato, Mexico, is an undocumented immigrant who was deported from the U.S. a total of five times, most recently in 2009. He was on probation in Texas at the time of the shooting.He had seven felony convictions, none of them for violent crimes. When he was apprehended, García Zárate was listed as 45 years old by police, but as 52 in jail records. García Zárate arrived in the U.S. sometime before 1991, the year he was convicted of his first drug charge in Arizona. He worked in Washington state in roofing and construction, and was also convicted three times there for felony heroin possession and manufacturing narcotics. Following another drug conviction and jail term, this time in Oregon, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) deported García Zárate in June 1994. However, García Zárate returned to the U.S. within two years and was convicted again of heroin possession in Washington state. He was deported for the second time in 1997." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Kate_Steinle

To reiterate my original point, I believe that it's not unrealistic to commit a crime as an illegal immigrant and then end up in an american prison or get deported and try to make your way back into the country (well, you're left to NPC this but it's still fully doable). You just need to be reasonable about all of this, and I mean like very reasonable. Don't be afraid to do your research, because at the end of the day you won't know how to rp this properly unless you have some rl experience.