Corruption can and will always be justified only by the corrupt – there are choices to avert being one.

An immigration advocacy group called “Civil Society Helps” and attorney Martha J Sullivan help perpetuate fraud against U.S. citizens. See http://www.marthasullivanlaw.com for more information about the immigration fraud these kind of groups help facilitate.

With false accusations from an immigrant residency seeker, a stable American citizen can be reduced to living in poverty. All of your assets can be seized and given to the residency seeker even if you are not found guilty. You will immediately be forced to surrender a portion of your income to the residency seeker. The courts may order you to turn your motor vehicle over to the residency seeker even if the car is in your name and the residency seeker does not have a drivers license. Your immigrant spouse becomes legal and you become illegal. The court system will abuse you and strip you of your rights while social programs that promote immigration fraud thrive.

Attorney Martha J. Sullivan – VAWA and Immigration Advocate (651) 438-9992 1317 Vermillion St Hastings, MN 55033 Web: http://www.marthasullivanlaw.com

Civil Society Helps – Immigration Advocacy Group 1st National Bank Building 332 Minnesota St, Suite E-1436 Saint Paul, MN 55101 Phone: (651) 291-0713 Fax: (651) 291-2588 Web: http://civilsocietyhelps.org

Rationalise and/or excuse, Yes. “Justify”, No.

How do some societies end up corrupt while others are “clean”?

More tolerance for corruption on a political and/or societal level. Plus “trickle-down effect” etc.

Actually, the INS has been offering expedited service for H-1B processing, at the rate of $1000 dollars or so (processing time goes down to a week or two).

Another issue, which is closely tied to privatization, is that attaching a monetary value to how quickly and how well you receive a service inherently privileges those who have the money. So this might not matter if it’s a fairly low amount (although even that, I would imagine, adds up over time) relative to how much people earn, but if it costs, say, $200,000 to get your Parliamentarian to support the tax policy you support, that’s inherently regressive. And gross.

It also creates another value system which might get obscured by the money. For example, there is already fast tracking in U.S. immigration policy–if you’re a spouse of a U.S. citizen, you’ll get a greencard much faster than if you’re a sibling of a greencard holder. If you have a lot of connections that can vouch for you, you’ll probably get a visa more quickly than your average person outside the United States. And of course what country you hold citizenship of changes things dramatically.

Adding an express lane to the green card application processing, however, seems like it would just shift the problem from some and leave the remainder behind (and even worse off), given what the priorities of the immigration system overall seem to be. The real problem with USCIS (and really the whole immigration system) imo is that the bureaucracy is not sturcturally accountable to the people it’s supposed to serve.

What many of the comments to AmardeepÂ’s post suggest is that corruption can be rampant without being a serious problem. Without being a problem, even. Functioning, rather, as a solution. This is interesting.

My instinct is to disagree, but IÂ’m sure I need to think a great deal more about it.