Python is an Equal Opportunity Programming Language

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sunday 08 May 2016 13:40, Random832 wrote:

> On Sat, May 7, 2016, at 22:43, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>> > If not for the quotas, a citizen of some other country would have an
>> > equal chance to get a green card as a citizen of India or China.
>> 
>> If you have a big hat with 5,000,000 tickets marked "Indian", and 500
>> tickets marked "Finish", and you stick your hand in the hat and rummage
>> around and pick a random ticket, do you really think that you have an
>> equal
>> chance of selecting an Indian ticket and a Finish ticket?
> 
> But that's not what it is. You would have, say, 1,000 tickets labeled
> "green card" and 100,000 tickets labeled "no green card", and  (say)
> 12,000 Indian people and 50 Finnish people each get their turn drawing
> from that same bucket. In your version, the Finnish people draw from a
> bucket with 500 green card tickets and no "no green card" cards, and the
> Indian people draw from a bucket with 500 green card tickets and 11,500
> "no green card" tickets.


That's not how the green card works.

The US immigration system is pretty messed up in many ways, being the overly 
complex and confusing product of many competing and contradictory 
requirements[1], but there's nothing even vaguely analogous to being 
randomly denied entry by pure chance. There's no such thing as "No Green 
Card" tickets that you can draw -- in principle at least, if you are refused 
entry, it is because you do not meet the requirements for a visa. (E.g. you 
have AIDS, are a known trafficker or smuggler, a member of the Communist 
Party in certain countries, have lied to the immigration officer, have 
publicly called for the violent overthrow of the US government, or are 
unable to provide sufficient evidence that you will go back home when your 
visa expires.)

Aside: immigration officials have great power in deciding who meets the 
requirement for a visa, and the US government and courts are unable to over-
rule them except in a matter of the interpretation of the law. With one 
exception: the rules for banning terrorists can be over-ruled by the 
Attorney-General and the Secretary of State. In other words, of all the 
things which a person might do to render themselves ineligible for a visa 
into the USA, there is no higher power able to over-ride the immigration 
official, *except* that if you fail the "No Terrorists Allowed" rule, the A-
G and Sec of State, acting together, can choose to grant you an exemption.

Go figure.

(The intent, I presume, is that if somebody like General Pinochet of Chile 
is found guilty of crimes against humanity by the European courts, which 
would count as terrorism, the US could still grant him a visa.)



[1] Some businesses want easy immigration, so they can drive down the cost 
of skilled or unskilled labour; some people want to prohibit work visas, to 
keep wages high; some want to allow people of diverse nationalities into the 
melting pot, while others want to keep the national character as it is 
without being overrun by large numbers of foreigners with strange or 
terrible customs and practices like sati, female genital mutilation[2], or 
effective social safety nets.


[2] Apparently *male* genital mutilation is perfectly acceptable.


-- 
Steve