You know what? Immigrating to almost any country is a pain in the ass.

I will have to agree that the INS sucks though. They screw up a lot of entry/exit paper processing so sometimes it seems like either you were in the US for too long (for visitors) or you were gone for too long (only matters to resident aliens). When they do fuck up, they'll never admit it. They also had problems with mistreatment of detaineees along the Mexican border, which was brought to light a few years back. There was even a march to complain against the INS in NYC a while back, it was nice to see...

Amnesties are funny too when you take a look at them. It's like, "You MUST prove to us that you lived here illegally between xx/xx/xx and xx/xx/xx and we will give you a shiny new green card!" Do something illegal and be rewarded.

However, the "ridiculousness of the american bureaucracy" in general is nothing compared to the shit I had to do/pay while I lived in France. I lived in other countries also, but I'd have to say that the US is where you have to deal with the least administrative BS.

p.s. Oh, and what's the big deal about the SSN? It's just a an attributed number for employment (taxes) and social security (hee hee), as opposed to other countries where you have to have a personal ID card ith you at all times.