Jason could stroll onto the set of any American soccer broadcast and nobody would blink an eye. The “hiding in plain sight” might be a good plan, actually.
Especially considering who is getting to be the relaxed mom.
Of course, I seem to recall even Robin basically stated that she was a RINO at one point. She did, at least, go along with the party somewhat, but it was a party affiliation born entirely from election pragmatics.
Yeah, RINO is really just a snarl term invented by the alt-right to refer to Republicans who in their eyes aren’t reactionary (bigoted) enough, go fucking figure. 😑
I’m glad Ruth is trying to help Jason, not sure if it will go the way she hopes but at least she is trying. Also, how many more jump cuts just before the great part?
BowlerHatGuy showed up, was a jerk in several ways. People responded negatively to some things he said, because they were jerkish, but he did not seem to understand why people were responding that way. (example: He would make a statement about the comic, followed by a statement insulting a vulnerable group of people; people would say, “Hey, that’s not okay to say about people”; he would say, “But here are ten paragraphs defending my views on the comic, so???”)
He got real critical of the comic in kind of baffling, failure-of-reading-comprehension ways. Yesterday he made a comment which, in my own opinion, wasn’t that bad on its own, but was part of his pattern and Willis decided to be done with him.
I wonder how the banning system works? Like in a few weeks will we see a commenter named “TopHatGuy”. Or some other hat related guy? No offense to any commenters who are or were associated with hats and or guys.
IIRC new commenters have to be actively approved; until they have a previous comment approved then then any comments they make will be invisible to everyone except them (and Willis).
The failure to understand the comic would have been tolerable if the person had ever explained how these bizarre conclusions were being reached. Instead, we got “Well, ackshyually, I read the entire comic for the first time just this week, so I’m the only one who understands it. You’re all a bunch of benighted extremists who can’t count to 2.” and “Have heard the good news about our Lord and Savior Penis Monster????”. The least fun version of what we could a had.
Besides what Yumi summed up, he would actively attack commenters with shit like “you all think in black and white and don’t know” and other lovely aggressive as fuck comments.
Jason likely has requirements on his visa on what kind of job he’s allowed to be on to satisfy them. In this case, it’s likely skilled work pertaining to his field – so TAing would work, bartending doesn’t.
Ruth might be hoping that, being an educator, Leslie might have connections to help Jason get skilled work again.
Jason could apply for a student visa but it can take 21 days to 8 months to get approved depending on an interview process, he also would have to travel to British consulate in Chicago.
He has a student visa. You can’t work off campus on a student visa in the US without explicit approval that only counts for emergent circumstances. I dunno if Jason would be eligible for such permission but he clearly doesn’t believe so.
He probably hasn’t which means technically he is documented but he needs to stop working. I am guessing what little I remember about the walkyverse as a whole (I have mostly read DoA and shortpacked ) Jason’s dad is a supervillan which in this universe is probably some posh executive a British firm so he has means but his dad is probably a jerk. Hence why he wants to keep working as a bartender?
Alternately, since Leslie is an Adult (TM) who hasn’t betrayed Becky, she can point Ruth and Jason in the right direction without hurting them. Certainly common for people used to adults like Sir to not believe other adults can help, or else they might think passing the buck to the proper authority, EG ratting one out to Sir, is help.
Technically Jason would be here on a student visa. Different departments at IU handle their grad students, so I am uncertain the situation a math student would have been in. Biology and Chemistry majors actually get paid decent on top of having tuition paid for while other departments are far less generous. I’d say the thing Jason most misses out on is he probably used to have his tuition reimbursed. He should have still been able to attend classes, though he’d be full on the hook for them unless his home country paid anything for his education (some do, but I have no idea about the UK).
If he was on a student visa then technically is he isn’t undocumented but he can’t work outside the school which could have his student visa revoked. Which i don’t know if that has been the case
Bingo. He can’t afford to stay without his job, but he got fired from his on-campus, student visa friendly job. So now he works in a ‘against the terms of his visa’ off-campus job and hopes he’s not caught. He’s hoping to get some help so he can afford to stay but preferably in a more visa-friendly option.
Do you have a link, by any chance? The last time I recall it being brought up, it was Sal asking how his new job affected his student visa, to which he responded ‘By me not thinking about it really hard’ or something along those lines, rather than ‘I’m on a work visa’ or anything of the like.
Well he then has to apply for a student visa which it’s weird he was TA on a work visa beacuse when I worked as a TA all my international colleagues were here on student visas and paid and funded by the University. But I was not in Indiana so maybe it’s different.
Can somebody refresh my memory what Jason’s status on campus WAS prior to the accusations? My memory says PhD student, but work visa sounds more like Post-Doc. PhD students are pretty powerless with regard to… well, everything. But a post-doc would mean he has a PhD and marketable skills in math stuff and can probably get a job that doesn’t care about vague accusations of possible relationships with adult students. Even if he already has an MS in math stuff, he can probably get some kind of math job somewhere if he actually tries.
I don’t know from visa issues, but I wonder if getting a job as a bartender on campus would count as education related. If IU has on-campus bars (no idea).
I finished college working as a full time-dishwasher in a bar on my private college campus. The neat part was that as a full-time college employee I got to take one course per term for free, which let me get the extra credits I needed to make up for the stuff I’d bombed in the first four years.
My last course was “Women and America” with a professor who Leslie keeps giving me flashbacks to.
IU does have an events staff that does hire bartenders, but that’s it. The bar Jason works at is literally across the street from everyone’s walk from dorm to class.
She may not be looking for someone with power or pull, but rather just someone who has more experience with advocacy/ally-ship and navigating The System in the US.
Jason needs a visa that will work for his situation and someone to sponsor it.
Right now, he has a work visa that is good for work in the education sector, but no sponsor. Getting a job with the school as a TA would fix that, but it’s not the only way he could legally stay.
Someone who has more experience navigating The System is definitely going to be helpful. It’s my impression Jason’s under the impression that he’s just SOL, which is a horrible impression to have if you want to fix anything. Ruth knows that working the system is possible, but as a Canadian, she’s not had enough experience with ours to really know what to do – but as a college student from the US, I would not have really known either, other than the obvious step of need to find someone who does know and is willing to help. A lawyer would probably be better than Leslie, so long as that lawyer wasn’t as flaky as, say, Robin. But Leslie’s probably the most prominent character in the story with notable experience navigating The System. (Robin was way more prominent in Shortpacked!, but I think Leslie’s significantly more prominent here.)
Other options would include getting Jason a job that would sponsor him for a different work visa. Getting that different work visa would be difficult, because he’d be expected to be in England for that part. That he’s here already and not compliant with his current visa would make that awkward at best. But at least he has a get out of jail with the smallest amount of hassle possible skin tone, which probably would make changing visas go over a bit more smoothly than it would for other characters, were they in a similar situation.
As others mentioned, having a student visa would work, except his job still needs to be compatible with that. But a student visa would work with him having a job as university staff, while his current work visa wouldn’t (because work visas specify the type of work, and the difference between faculty and staff is the specific sort of distinction that those specifications cover.)
Marriage used to be an option that would work. I don’t know if it would anymore. Republicans keep putting more and more restrictions on it, because first generation immigrants tend to be Democrats. Democrats somehow haven’t picked up the plot that suggests they should counter those moves and I don’t understand why.
Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer, but I blather online a lot about stuff that’s at least legal adjacent. Sometimes I even do some research to support those posts.
I am the very model of an English major general!
I’m good at spelling “animal,” “vegetable” and “mineral”!
My suplexes, I’m very skilled at using to communicate!
But right now I am having certain troubles when I cogitate!
The head tilt and perspective are necessary to remind us that Ruth to Leslie is just barely not-a-child, instead of an adult authority as perceived by her peers.
For a minute I was confused by Leslie’s “English major?” question because I forgot she wasn’t an English professor. This confusion brought to you by my having been an English major and any supportive student-professor relationships I had being connected to such.
Ruth, what did you do. “Undocumented” is not a euphemism for “brown,” no matter how much NPR would like to make it so; either he’s still undocumented, or you did something either sketchy or paperwork-ey.
She didn’t do anything or using undocumented as a racist euphemism, she’s just talking about Jason’s issues with someone she hopes can help and clarifying that he had documentation and doesn’t anymore. That’s it.
She probably went for “undocumented” because you can’t go an hour around here without hearing it, while “out of compliance with the terms of his visa” is a little more rare.
No, she means that “undocumented” refers to people who entered the USA without letting the government know or filling in all the right forms, but he did all that stuff so there is in fact documentation on him, meaning that he technically can’t qualify as “undocumented”, at least in the most literal meaning of the term.
What are you blathering about? The only one who said anything about brown, is you.
Ruth doesn’t want to call him undocumented, because he does have documents, they’re just the wrong ones.
My wife had a visa, it’s just slightly expired. According to the immigration lawyer we talked to, that’s a different thing than not having any documents at all.
Of course, while it is legally different, a huge chunk of the people commonly called illegal or undocumented are actually in the same boat. Visa overstays rather than sneaking across the border. (Or crossing and applying for asylum, which is also documentation.)
Suplexes are a universal language. I don’t speak Italian but I’m sure if an Italian person hit me with a powerful belly-to-belly I’d understand how they felt about me real quick.
This is kind of tangential, but I once got into a conversation (really, walked into a conversation that was already happening) with people who were talking about how to be “uninvited,” you had to have first been “invited.” I did not think this was a good take, but they had apparently started to convince themselves of it before I arrived. S, by them, I guess Jason would actually have more claim to “undocumented” than some.
Nah, that’s not right. “Uninvited” would simply mean that they were absent of an invitation. To have your invitation taken away would probably be “disinvited”. Like you could make a product that was “unsafe”, it doesn’t mean it was ever safe in the first place, it’s just absent of safety.
I mean, English is kind of a mess anyway so there’s no strict rules.
There was a radio comedy with a similar dispute, and they tried to solve it by getting a disinterested party to decide. Unfortunately they got an uninterested one instead who gave the win to the first group they met.
But but but I thought there were millions of people flooding across our impenetrable border at all times, getting past our unstoppable border patrol and taking our extremely secure jobs!!!
(America only works if everything is simultaneously the best in the world AND at risk of collapsing any second now.)
Britain seems to be working on the same logic these days, except the people in charge didn’t get the message that you’re not supposed to /actually/ collapse everything.
Really? He (presumably) has identity documents from his home government. He has entry documents from his host government. What he doesn’t have is a job that meets the requirements of his entry documents.
Did Jason lose both his funding and status as a student? Beacuse if he only lost his funding he just needs to apply for a student visa which it take up from 21 days to 8 months depending if you get your interviewed waived.
Okay, thank you! Last I recalled was Sal asking about his student visa and Jason responded that he was trying not to think about it, not that he was on a work visa.
I’m not sure what the problem is with his visa then, since he does have a job. Though I can’t really find any that sound like his situation so now I’m curious.
Work visas also have conditions about the kind of job you can have; usually your job is sponsoring your work visa. Fun fact, this can lead to companies dicking immigrant employees over because they might need a job that sponsors their visa to stay in the country, and that gives them an extra challenge when looking for a new job. Can you guess a certain tech company this is happening with?
That’s fair. I was looking at the most broad descriptions of what each visa type was for and while they didn’t mention that, none of them really fit Jason’s situation even as a TA, never mind this.
And that doesn’t surprise me at all about employers being incorrigible douches.
My initial read, like BBCC’s was that he was here on student visa that allowed the TA kind of work as part of his graduate program. Maybe I’m wrong about how those work.
I am surprised that, since such a visa would have to have come through the university, that he’s allowed to stay enrolled as a student since they’ve fired him and thus ended the conditions for that visa.
Does it allow him to work (in education jobs) or require him to work? It might be he could legally keep studying as long as he had the money to pay his expenses. He just can’t get it from unapproved jobs.
I thought he was on a student visa because of his conversation with Sal. With Ruth and Jason’s chat, I thought that was the same as the student visa, with some sort of work requirement. Now that I know student and work are two different visa types, I’m just assuming Sal was mistaken about what type of visa he had and he was just feeling too crappy to correct her when his situation is the same regardless.
I believe it’s a fight move. An example of belly-to-belly movement, as Yotomoe have told here.
( Yes, I’ve look, because I thought it was a dance or other things couple do).
This is the one thing that is requiring suspension of disbelief for me— I have never met an English major who was a pedant or who even knew or cared about language or grammar to this extent. I’m not sure what I would have guessed or what would have gotten me to guess English major.
General consensus is that Jason probably needs some sort of job related to his specific profession to stay legal. I don’t know how I feel about that. He was a bad teacher, fairly narcissistic and holding a few minor prejudices towards his students I think. I wouldn’t want him in a teaching role or authority position of any kind at IU. Is there a clever way to solve that though? Like make him a secretary or something. Let him work at the library? Maybe he can change his profession to bartending officially? That’s a solid career.
Can’t say the specifics of US, but most countries are pretty strict about international entries. My guess is that Jason would have a few options:
1. Find another education-related job to satisfy his original visa requirements.
2. Re-apply for another visa that lets him be a bartender. However, those visas either tend to be short, working holiday type visas, which would likely mean Jason would be staying likely a year or so max. It’s a band-aid, but might be one that gives him enough time to sort something else out. The other problem though is that depending on his current status, he might not be permitted to stay in the country til a new visa is accepted… which has its own issues. Bartending is not exactly a skilled occupation in high demand, so it’s unlikely Jason would be able to get a more secure work visa just for bartending.
Having some relevant experience, I can tell you without a shadow of doubt that bartending is *exactly* a skilled occupation in high demand.
That being said, I will know acknowledge your intent, that is- that bartending is not a highly respected occupation, considered worthy of granting a work visa.
(My relevant experience is that, having worked in several disparate fields including the restaurant industry, construction, and education, I have more respect for the skill/intelligence of the individuals in the former industries, than the latter field of employment.)
It might be so, but Jason also doesn’t have any real qualifications or experience. He bluffed his way into the bartending job a couple months ago. Any skills he has were learned on the job in that time, which suggest he could be easily replaced.
Have we seen Jason really interacting with any students other than the Walkertons? Walky just ignores advice, while Sal actively resists doing things in the expected way. Neither one is going to do well with even an average teacher.
I don’t think it’s fair to put Jason’s failure as a TA on the Walkertons. Sal was able to learn math very easily when tutored by someone who respected her. Walky is completely different to Sal in his personality and approach to learning. I think Jason failed as a TA because he was too rigid. He kind of sums up a person’s worth on his first impression of them and gets frustrated very easily. From the brief scenes of him actually trying to teach I think he just gets angry when his method of just explaining math principles fails and doesn’t try to make the method fit the student.
Though in Jason’s defense (barely), this is pretty common among TAs. A lot of people seem to think knowing the material is all that’s required to teach the material, and there’s often very little training in pedagogy before one may be tasked with teaching college students.
I didn’t personally take math in college (yay for AP courses), but I hear this is especially common with math instructors… people who have advanced degrees in math tend to be people who, you know, GET math, and have quite commonly been “good” at math throughout their schooling. How do you explain something that is at least somewhat intuitive to you to someone for whom it is not intuitive at all? Granted, I think this can be the case for lots of subjects, but I really do hear about it the most in math.
Ruth and Leslie interacting is kind of weird. It didn’t strike me that way when they were in class, but them having a personal conversation feels like galaxies colliding.
The US Immigration system absolutely sucks. I was listening to a radio show once about all the convoluted steps it takes, so of course the first person to call in asks “okay but why don’t they just get documented?”.
It’s exhausting. “Just” this, “”Just” that, “Why don’t you just jump to the top of the building from the bottom?” “You just have to pay $7000 out of pocket” “Can’t you just make him stop beating you up” Just just just just just.
Why don’t they jUsT keep their fucking mouths shut? Why can’t they JuSt kick rocks? How come they haven’t j̸̡̼͍̖̜̮̟͍̦̗̼̱̯̼̟̝̽́́̆̓̇̀̅̒̃̀̿̚͘̕͝u̵̢̨̧̡̫͇͈̼̟̜͚̜̫̲͋͊̏̉̐͂͂̈́̎̈́͂̽̄̚͘͝s̶̢̯̺͎̲͎͈͖̬̜̩̃́͂͊̀̀̓͝͝͠t̶̛͋̂̓̄̆ evaporated into their base elements from sheer willful ignorance?
Oh, and also, why is it always somebody with no relevance to or even interest in the discussion who feels they simply MUST chime in? The one person whose opinion and “thought” and words mean the absolute least always has the rudest, most reductive thing to say, and they always think it’s so fucking novel and new and clever.
“Obvious” is another one. “The obvious solution is…”
Uh, yeah, it’s obvious. So obvious that if the people with actual experience of this problem aren’t using that obvious solution, maybe there’s an issue with doing so that’s less obvious.
“You obviously should have driven through the tunnel, since it’s the fastest route.”
And they never seem to notice that the tunnel is flooded with raw sewage and there’s dangling power cables zapping everything and also angry hornets are in there raisin’ up a ruckus.
“I don’t currently have that problem, so it can’t be an actual problem. WhY dOn’T tHeY jUst-” Weirdly enough, you even get that from peope who USED to have that problem, but have conveniently forgotten how hard it was for them to deal with it in real life, as opposed to their heavily edited memories.
Imagine if there was a book called “Why Don’t You Just…” that’s dedicated to addressing this thought-stopping cliché. If it doesn’t exist, then it damn well SHOULD. 😤
The trouble is, the chronic whydontyoujust-ers are already too incurious to care what they’re griping about in the first place. Every possible response is an “excuse”, because they already see you as being in the wrong for existing separately from their “consciousness”. We can’t expect them to be capable of reading a book! What if it says things that explain why people don’t just??? What they need is to be sat in a corner with a bib, some round-edged building blocks, and a nearby television looping episodes of Teletubbies.
(I don’t respect their intelligence or personhood. That is the joke.)
Sounds like you’d really enjoy the Alt-Right Playbook if you haven’t checked it out already, goes over all kinds of bullshitting tactics. Be sure to have a fidget spinner at the ready.
Well, it is simple. I can walk into a public library, sit down at a computer, provide some personal information, and order an official sealed duplicate original of my birth certificate for maybe ten dollars.
If I’m a US citizen. If my birth was recorded. If I have ten dollars and a payment card. If I can show the right information. So, yes, for the sort of person asking “why don’t they just get documented,” it would be easy. For someone in a different situation, not so easy.
Reminds me of the person on the news talking about how illegal immigrants are going to give our good white kids drugs this Halloween season.
Yup.
They crossed a hundred miles of desert without water in order to work their asses off for decades in order to buy mansions in upper-middle class white neighborhoods and then buy hundreds of dollars worth of Halloween decorations for the express purpose of putting meth in a random kids candy bar.
How nice to see Ruth like this, with her big green eyes full of emotions and unsure of what she’s doing, but still making an effort to help someone she cares about. Despite her insecure air, she seems to me much stronger now than when she was yelling, threatening or hitting someone. She’s on the right track and I hope she stays there.
Nah it’s just coloring with a really light hand and layering different colors on top of each other. They’re Tombow colored pencils which is a Japanese brand.
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technically I think he still has the document, just whenever ICE decides he somehow isn’t white enough they can deport him
Jason could hide in a vat of sour cream and stand out by being too white.
Jason could stroll onto the set of any American soccer broadcast and nobody would blink an eye. The “hiding in plain sight” might be a good plan, actually.
Well, he’d complain about it being called “soccer” and draw attention that way.
And Cobi Jones or such would say “Soccer is a word invented in England”.
Now I’m wondering what team he’d be a fan of.
Hmm. I picture Jason as either being against sports in general, or possibly being in to rugby if he had a private school upbringing.
He also has the bonus that his dad is (probably?) rich. Everyone knows that makes him whiter.
“Putting the @$$ in ‘asylum’, I guess?”
Nice, I’m already liking these Ruth/Leslie interactions. They have some things in common.
I’m glad Ruth is getting help from Leslie with this, although the reminder of Becky leaves me with a different question.
Is Leslie still trying to be a “mom” or “older sister” to Becky? I only ask because it seems like Becky is drawing away from Leslie because of it.
If I recall, Becky eventually told Leslie about taking Robin’s advice and making a “good mistake.”
I think Becky is enjoying having two very different mom figures, and may come to rely on them in different ways.
Though Leslie might not prefer to have the uptight mom role.
Especially considering who is getting to be the relaxed mom.
Of course, I seem to recall even Robin basically stated that she was a RINO at one point. She did, at least, go along with the party somewhat, but it was a party affiliation born entirely from election pragmatics.
You’re not a RINO if you actually vote along with the party all the time, which she did.
RINOs aren’t even really a thing. The entire party consistantly votes as a unified block on almost everything.
Yeah, RINO is really just a snarl term invented by the alt-right to refer to Republicans who in their eyes aren’t reactionary (bigoted) enough, go fucking figure. 😑
I was an English major. But I’m sad that I never had the suplexing class.
Well, that’s the state of education these days! Not enough funding for the really *important* skills kids need!
Is THAT what we lost when they cut home ec? I thought it was just the knife skills.
I think they usually call it something like “rhetoric”.
That explains so much.
I’m glad Ruth is trying to help Jason, not sure if it will go the way she hopes but at least she is trying. Also, how many more jump cuts just before the great part?
I hope someone is keeping track of how many plots Willis is juggling at any one time. This stretch of comics might be a record!
“22 Short Films About IU Bloomington”?
“It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Campus”?
“How did you know he was english”
Hope he gets to stay 🤞
Also, in other news, BowlerHatGuy was FINALLY banned, yay!!!!
*plays “I Like Your Hat” by Dan Paladin on hacked muzak*
Haven’t been that active in the comments section lately, can anyone give me a rundown on this situation?
BowlerHatGuy showed up, was a jerk in several ways. People responded negatively to some things he said, because they were jerkish, but he did not seem to understand why people were responding that way. (example: He would make a statement about the comic, followed by a statement insulting a vulnerable group of people; people would say, “Hey, that’s not okay to say about people”; he would say, “But here are ten paragraphs defending my views on the comic, so???”)
He got real critical of the comic in kind of baffling, failure-of-reading-comprehension ways. Yesterday he made a comment which, in my own opinion, wasn’t that bad on its own, but was part of his pattern and Willis decided to be done with him.
Praise be unto Willis.
Yeah, okay, definitely glad he’s gone then.
I wonder how the banning system works? Like in a few weeks will we see a commenter named “TopHatGuy”. Or some other hat related guy? No offense to any commenters who are or were associated with hats and or guys.
IIRC new commenters have to be actively approved; until they have a previous comment approved then then any comments they make will be invisible to everyone except them (and Willis).
The tell will be if they post the same link over and over again as if we’re too dumb to get it.
It’ll be obvious but not like that. Just look for the first new commenter to go off about Bruno 😉
But I thought we didn’t talk about Bruno?
😛
The failure to understand the comic would have been tolerable if the person had ever explained how these bizarre conclusions were being reached. Instead, we got “Well, ackshyually, I read the entire comic for the first time just this week, so I’m the only one who understands it. You’re all a bunch of benighted extremists who can’t count to 2.” and “Have heard the good news about our Lord and Savior Penis Monster????”. The least fun version of what we could a had.
Besides what Yumi summed up, he would actively attack commenters with shit like “you all think in black and white and don’t know” and other lovely aggressive as fuck comments.
I’m sad I didn’t send a “tl;dr” to them.
One thing that waiting for a lull in work to check in here helps with, is assinine comments are modded away before I can read them.
I no nothing about immigration laws or visas. What can Leslie do about this. Jason does have a job right? Is something more than that needed?
No idea why my phone decided “know” was actually “no” in that comment.
presumably it’s supposed to be related to education, given he’s there for education reasons
Leslie: I suppose I could try to get him a job as a sub.
Ruth: Oh, he’s a sub alright.
Jason likely has requirements on his visa on what kind of job he’s allowed to be on to satisfy them. In this case, it’s likely skilled work pertaining to his field – so TAing would work, bartending doesn’t.
Ruth might be hoping that, being an educator, Leslie might have connections to help Jason get skilled work again.
That’s probably the best Ruth can do to help fix his visa problems, but Jason is frankly a way better bartender than he was a teacher
Maybe he could teach about bartending.
His skills would average out, so he’d simply be okay at that.
Jason could apply for a student visa but it can take 21 days to 8 months to get approved depending on an interview process, he also would have to travel to British consulate in Chicago.
He has a student visa. You can’t work off campus on a student visa in the US without explicit approval that only counts for emergent circumstances. I dunno if Jason would be eligible for such permission but he clearly doesn’t believe so.
He probably hasn’t which means technically he is documented but he needs to stop working. I am guessing what little I remember about the walkyverse as a whole (I have mostly read DoA and shortpacked ) Jason’s dad is a supervillan which in this universe is probably some posh executive a British firm so he has means but his dad is probably a jerk. Hence why he wants to keep working as a bartender?
He has to keep working to afford to stay in the US, yes, but I was incorrect about the student visa, at least last we heard.
Alternately, since Leslie is an Adult (TM) who hasn’t betrayed Becky, she can point Ruth and Jason in the right direction without hurting them. Certainly common for people used to adults like Sir to not believe other adults can help, or else they might think passing the buck to the proper authority, EG ratting one out to Sir, is help.
Technically Jason would be here on a student visa. Different departments at IU handle their grad students, so I am uncertain the situation a math student would have been in. Biology and Chemistry majors actually get paid decent on top of having tuition paid for while other departments are far less generous. I’d say the thing Jason most misses out on is he probably used to have his tuition reimbursed. He should have still been able to attend classes, though he’d be full on the hook for them unless his home country paid anything for his education (some do, but I have no idea about the UK).
If he was on a student visa then technically is he isn’t undocumented but he can’t work outside the school which could have his student visa revoked. Which i don’t know if that has been the case
Bingo. He can’t afford to stay without his job, but he got fired from his on-campus, student visa friendly job. So now he works in a ‘against the terms of his visa’ off-campus job and hopes he’s not caught. He’s hoping to get some help so he can afford to stay but preferably in a more visa-friendly option.
It’s a work visa, that’s been directly stated in the comic.
Do you have a link, by any chance? The last time I recall it being brought up, it was Sal asking how his new job affected his student visa, to which he responded ‘By me not thinking about it really hard’ or something along those lines, rather than ‘I’m on a work visa’ or anything of the like.
Never mind, someone showed me a link below. You are correct as we last heard.
Well he then has to apply for a student visa which it’s weird he was TA on a work visa beacuse when I worked as a TA all my international colleagues were here on student visas and paid and funded by the University. But I was not in Indiana so maybe it’s different.
Can somebody refresh my memory what Jason’s status on campus WAS prior to the accusations? My memory says PhD student, but work visa sounds more like Post-Doc. PhD students are pretty powerless with regard to… well, everything. But a post-doc would mean he has a PhD and marketable skills in math stuff and can probably get a job that doesn’t care about vague accusations of possible relationships with adult students. Even if he already has an MS in math stuff, he can probably get some kind of math job somewhere if he actually tries.
“I came here from England for graduate school.”
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/twist/
I don’t know from visa issues, but I wonder if getting a job as a bartender on campus would count as education related. If IU has on-campus bars (no idea).
I finished college working as a full time-dishwasher in a bar on my private college campus. The neat part was that as a full-time college employee I got to take one course per term for free, which let me get the extra credits I needed to make up for the stuff I’d bombed in the first four years.
My last course was “Women and America” with a professor who Leslie keeps giving me flashbacks to.
IU does have an events staff that does hire bartenders, but that’s it. The bar Jason works at is literally across the street from everyone’s walk from dorm to class.
She may not be looking for someone with power or pull, but rather just someone who has more experience with advocacy/ally-ship and navigating The System in the US.
Jason needs a visa that will work for his situation and someone to sponsor it.
Right now, he has a work visa that is good for work in the education sector, but no sponsor. Getting a job with the school as a TA would fix that, but it’s not the only way he could legally stay.
Someone who has more experience navigating The System is definitely going to be helpful. It’s my impression Jason’s under the impression that he’s just SOL, which is a horrible impression to have if you want to fix anything. Ruth knows that working the system is possible, but as a Canadian, she’s not had enough experience with ours to really know what to do – but as a college student from the US, I would not have really known either, other than the obvious step of need to find someone who does know and is willing to help. A lawyer would probably be better than Leslie, so long as that lawyer wasn’t as flaky as, say, Robin. But Leslie’s probably the most prominent character in the story with notable experience navigating The System. (Robin was way more prominent in Shortpacked!, but I think Leslie’s significantly more prominent here.)
Other options would include getting Jason a job that would sponsor him for a different work visa. Getting that different work visa would be difficult, because he’d be expected to be in England for that part. That he’s here already and not compliant with his current visa would make that awkward at best. But at least he has a get out of jail with the smallest amount of hassle possible skin tone, which probably would make changing visas go over a bit more smoothly than it would for other characters, were they in a similar situation.
As others mentioned, having a student visa would work, except his job still needs to be compatible with that. But a student visa would work with him having a job as university staff, while his current work visa wouldn’t (because work visas specify the type of work, and the difference between faculty and staff is the specific sort of distinction that those specifications cover.)
Marriage used to be an option that would work. I don’t know if it would anymore. Republicans keep putting more and more restrictions on it, because first generation immigrants tend to be Democrats. Democrats somehow haven’t picked up the plot that suggests they should counter those moves and I don’t understand why.
Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer, but I blather online a lot about stuff that’s at least legal adjacent. Sometimes I even do some research to support those posts.
Having a job might be the problem, if he’s there on a student visa. But he needs the job to pay rent and other expenses.
I am the very model of an English major general!
I’m good at spelling “animal,” “vegetable” and “mineral”!
My suplexes, I’m very skilled at using to communicate!
But right now I am having certain troubles when I cogitate!
+1
Excuse me, need to go look up if “Scientist Salarian” ever got full lyrics or a cover.
“Had to be me. Someone else might have gotten it wrong.”
Love that guy.
I’m very well acquainted too with fascism grammatical
I shatter fewer femurs since I took a short sabbatical
It’s times like these I’m reminded (yes I know like ten years later) that these characters aren’t all peers like in Shortpacked
The head tilt and perspective are necessary to remind us that Ruth to Leslie is just barely not-a-child, instead of an adult authority as perceived by her peers.
They’re only like 5-6 years apart in age.
leslie is more trustworthy but i doubt she has experience. are there any foreign/immigrant teachers we’ve seen at all so far?
For a minute I was confused by Leslie’s “English major?” question because I forgot she wasn’t an English professor. This confusion brought to you by my having been an English major and any supportive student-professor relationships I had being connected to such.
Leslie’s just that good.
…this is going to be interesting.
“English major? Looks like Fred from Scooby-Doo?”
“Looks like if Fred and Shaggy from Scooby-Doo had a baby?”
Nice to see how much Ruth trust Becky in some matters…
Ruth, what did you do. “Undocumented” is not a euphemism for “brown,” no matter how much NPR would like to make it so; either he’s still undocumented, or you did something either sketchy or paperwork-ey.
(Yes, I am your right-wing druncle.)
Is this one of those “believe people when they tell you who they are” moments, or are you making a weird joke I don’t understand?
She didn’t do anything or using undocumented as a racist euphemism, she’s just talking about Jason’s issues with someone she hopes can help and clarifying that he had documentation and doesn’t anymore. That’s it.
She probably went for “undocumented” because you can’t go an hour around here without hearing it, while “out of compliance with the terms of his visa” is a little more rare.
No, she means that “undocumented” refers to people who entered the USA without letting the government know or filling in all the right forms, but he did all that stuff so there is in fact documentation on him, meaning that he technically can’t qualify as “undocumented”, at least in the most literal meaning of the term.
He absolutely qualifies in the legal sense, but she’s trying to be specific and also probably isn’t super well informed about immigration laws
It can also mean “does not possess the right documents to be here.”
What are you blathering about? The only one who said anything about brown, is you.
Ruth doesn’t want to call him undocumented, because he does have documents, they’re just the wrong ones.
My wife had a visa, it’s just slightly expired. According to the immigration lawyer we talked to, that’s a different thing than not having any documents at all.
Of course, while it is legally different, a huge chunk of the people commonly called illegal or undocumented are actually in the same boat. Visa overstays rather than sneaking across the border. (Or crossing and applying for asylum, which is also documentation.)
To the usual bigots it all gets lumped together.
The joke is she’s being pedantic about etymology because she’s an English major.
Suplexes are a universal language. I don’t speak Italian but I’m sure if an Italian person hit me with a powerful belly-to-belly I’d understand how they felt about me real quick.
an ex wrestler specializing in suplexing turned masseuse would be an interesting twist/application of that (“suplex your soreness away lol)
more disputes should be settled through turkish oil wrestling (These thoughts aren’t rly connected but eh)
It’s not STRICTLY inaccurate. He is CURRENTLY undocumented.
This is kind of tangential, but I once got into a conversation (really, walked into a conversation that was already happening) with people who were talking about how to be “uninvited,” you had to have first been “invited.” I did not think this was a good take, but they had apparently started to convince themselves of it before I arrived. S, by them, I guess Jason would actually have more claim to “undocumented” than some.
Nah, that’s not right. “Uninvited” would simply mean that they were absent of an invitation. To have your invitation taken away would probably be “disinvited”. Like you could make a product that was “unsafe”, it doesn’t mean it was ever safe in the first place, it’s just absent of safety.
I mean, English is kind of a mess anyway so there’s no strict rules.
Yeah, I tried to explain things to them but *shrug*
I think “uninvited” can be used in multiple ways, but I do like “disinvited” as well.
There was a radio comedy with a similar dispute, and they tried to solve it by getting a disinterested party to decide. Unfortunately they got an uninterested one instead who gave the win to the first group they met.
There’s always “invited to leave.”
If I’m not mistaken people who crossed borders legally and with documentation that expired represent the majority of undocumented immigrants
But but but I thought there were millions of people flooding across our impenetrable border at all times, getting past our unstoppable border patrol and taking our extremely secure jobs!!!
(America only works if everything is simultaneously the best in the world AND at risk of collapsing any second now.)
Look, I’m just a simple honest businessman who wants cheap exploitable labour that I can threaten with deportation with no legal consequences.
Don’t forget that in addition to taking our jobs they’re also just lazy and here to live off of government benefits.
Exactly! These lazy fucks taking all our jobs! It makes perfect sense to think this way!
Britain seems to be working on the same logic these days, except the people in charge didn’t get the message that you’re not supposed to /actually/ collapse everything.
Well, no wonder there’s so much heat and so little light on this issue, if we are using words in a way that means the exact opposite of what they say.
Really? He (presumably) has identity documents from his home government. He has entry documents from his host government. What he doesn’t have is a job that meets the requirements of his entry documents.
Did Jason lose both his funding and status as a student? Beacuse if he only lost his funding he just needs to apply for a student visa which it take up from 21 days to 8 months depending if you get your interviewed waived.
He has a student visa but apparently the terms of his student visa prohibit him from working off-campus, which he does.
You said this last time it came up, too, and I’m not sure you saw the replies– Jason is on a work visa. Should he be on a student visa? Probably! But so far, the text is pretty explicitly “work visa.” (see: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-13/02-turning-saints-into-the-sea/gettingstarted/ )
Okay, thank you! Last I recalled was Sal asking about his student visa and Jason responded that he was trying not to think about it, not that he was on a work visa.
I’m not sure what the problem is with his visa then, since he does have a job. Though I can’t really find any that sound like his situation so now I’m curious.
Work visas also have conditions about the kind of job you can have; usually your job is sponsoring your work visa. Fun fact, this can lead to companies dicking immigrant employees over because they might need a job that sponsors their visa to stay in the country, and that gives them an extra challenge when looking for a new job. Can you guess a certain tech company this is happening with?
That’s fair. I was looking at the most broad descriptions of what each visa type was for and while they didn’t mention that, none of them really fit Jason’s situation even as a TA, never mind this.
And that doesn’t surprise me at all about employers being incorrigible douches.
BBCC, this might be the comic you’re thinking of. It doesn’t mention his visa, but does say something about being enrolled.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/03-faz-is-great/jason/
No, it was this one, where Sal asks about his student visa: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/04-of-mike-and-men/visa/
My initial read, like BBCC’s was that he was here on student visa that allowed the TA kind of work as part of his graduate program. Maybe I’m wrong about how those work.
I am surprised that, since such a visa would have to have come through the university, that he’s allowed to stay enrolled as a student since they’ve fired him and thus ended the conditions for that visa.
Does it allow him to work (in education jobs) or require him to work? It might be he could legally keep studying as long as he had the money to pay his expenses. He just can’t get it from unapproved jobs.
That was my assumption, but then he’s still documented. He’s still here legally, just working illegally.
I thought he was on a student visa because of his conversation with Sal. With Ruth and Jason’s chat, I thought that was the same as the student visa, with some sort of work requirement. Now that I know student and work are two different visa types, I’m just assuming Sal was mistaken about what type of visa he had and he was just feeling too crappy to correct her when his situation is the same regardless.
Suplexes? Suplices? Suplexen?
I believe it’s a fight move. An example of belly-to-belly movement, as Yotomoe have told here.
( Yes, I’ve look, because I thought it was a dance or other things couple do).
I know what a suplex is, I was trying to figure out the plural.
Everything I about suplexes I learned from Yui in “Angel Beats!”
I really appreciate that Ruth’s pedantry rivals my own. 😀
This is the one thing that is requiring suspension of disbelief for me— I have never met an English major who was a pedant or who even knew or cared about language or grammar to this extent. I’m not sure what I would have guessed or what would have gotten me to guess English major.
One of my minors required some linguistic classes, and the linguistics majors were definitely more fun to discuss this sort of thing with.
I’ve met some who weren’t really pedants about it, but did like to play with words – which I can kind of see the “dedocumented” being.
I was a scientist not an English major but yeah I get that.
I want that jacket.
If English doesn’t let you communicate through suplexes, you haven’t studied enough word-play.
General consensus is that Jason probably needs some sort of job related to his specific profession to stay legal. I don’t know how I feel about that. He was a bad teacher, fairly narcissistic and holding a few minor prejudices towards his students I think. I wouldn’t want him in a teaching role or authority position of any kind at IU. Is there a clever way to solve that though? Like make him a secretary or something. Let him work at the library? Maybe he can change his profession to bartending officially? That’s a solid career.
He could go into some sort of research job in IU, that would keep him out of teaching and still keep him in his field (math).
Can’t say the specifics of US, but most countries are pretty strict about international entries. My guess is that Jason would have a few options:
1. Find another education-related job to satisfy his original visa requirements.
2. Re-apply for another visa that lets him be a bartender. However, those visas either tend to be short, working holiday type visas, which would likely mean Jason would be staying likely a year or so max. It’s a band-aid, but might be one that gives him enough time to sort something else out. The other problem though is that depending on his current status, he might not be permitted to stay in the country til a new visa is accepted… which has its own issues. Bartending is not exactly a skilled occupation in high demand, so it’s unlikely Jason would be able to get a more secure work visa just for bartending.
Having some relevant experience, I can tell you without a shadow of doubt that bartending is *exactly* a skilled occupation in high demand.
That being said, I will know acknowledge your intent, that is- that bartending is not a highly respected occupation, considered worthy of granting a work visa.
(My relevant experience is that, having worked in several disparate fields including the restaurant industry, construction, and education, I have more respect for the skill/intelligence of the individuals in the former industries, than the latter field of employment.)
Yep you’re right, my bad. It is definitely a skilled profession. It’s just, unfortunately, not one that’s respected.
It might be so, but Jason also doesn’t have any real qualifications or experience. He bluffed his way into the bartending job a couple months ago. Any skills he has were learned on the job in that time, which suggest he could be easily replaced.
Have we seen Jason really interacting with any students other than the Walkertons? Walky just ignores advice, while Sal actively resists doing things in the expected way. Neither one is going to do well with even an average teacher.
I don’t think it’s fair to put Jason’s failure as a TA on the Walkertons. Sal was able to learn math very easily when tutored by someone who respected her. Walky is completely different to Sal in his personality and approach to learning. I think Jason failed as a TA because he was too rigid. He kind of sums up a person’s worth on his first impression of them and gets frustrated very easily. From the brief scenes of him actually trying to teach I think he just gets angry when his method of just explaining math principles fails and doesn’t try to make the method fit the student.
Look at how Jason teaches Sal.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/01-if-the-shoes-split/without/
Versus how Danny teaches Sal.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/03-up-all-night-to-get-vengeance/shirk/
Jason just kinda sucked at his job.
Though in Jason’s defense (barely), this is pretty common among TAs. A lot of people seem to think knowing the material is all that’s required to teach the material, and there’s often very little training in pedagogy before one may be tasked with teaching college students.
I didn’t personally take math in college (yay for AP courses), but I hear this is especially common with math instructors… people who have advanced degrees in math tend to be people who, you know, GET math, and have quite commonly been “good” at math throughout their schooling. How do you explain something that is at least somewhat intuitive to you to someone for whom it is not intuitive at all? Granted, I think this can be the case for lots of subjects, but I really do hear about it the most in math.
Ruth and Leslie interacting is kind of weird. It didn’t strike me that way when they were in class, but them having a personal conversation feels like galaxies colliding.
I’m gonna go with abdocumented.
Ex-documented?
Disemdocumented?
He’s English, but I’m not sure what military rank he had if any.
Lieutenant just so he can be extra British and pronounce it LEFTenant.
Serving British officers are all captains, while retired British officers are all colonels. Ask any screenwriter.
*Ruth appears, canned audience cheering ensues*
Is it wrong to say I’m glad Jennifer isn’t in today’s strip?
It would depend on the reason (most reason would probably be ok), but not inherently wrong.
Suplexes? Now I can’t imagine Ruth as a bespectacled Becky Lynch
Leslie’s smirk bodes well.
Ruth would know about having a parental figure you can’t go home to
The US Immigration system absolutely sucks. I was listening to a radio show once about all the convoluted steps it takes, so of course the first person to call in asks “okay but why don’t they just get documented?”.
Ah, the “why don’t you just….” crowd. 😑
Part of me is wondering if any of them aren’t willfully ignorant. I mean if it really WERE that simple… you know?
People honestly think there’s always a simple way.
It’s exhausting. “Just” this, “”Just” that, “Why don’t you just jump to the top of the building from the bottom?” “You just have to pay $7000 out of pocket” “Can’t you just make him stop beating you up” Just just just just just.
Why don’t they jUsT keep their fucking mouths shut? Why can’t they JuSt kick rocks? How come they haven’t j̸̡̼͍̖̜̮̟͍̦̗̼̱̯̼̟̝̽́́̆̓̇̀̅̒̃̀̿̚͘̕͝u̵̢̨̧̡̫͇͈̼̟̜͚̜̫̲͋͊̏̉̐͂͂̈́̎̈́͂̽̄̚͘͝s̶̢̯̺͎̲͎͈͖̬̜̩̃́͂͊̀̀̓͝͝͠t̶̛͋̂̓̄̆ evaporated into their base elements from sheer willful ignorance?
Oh, and also, why is it always somebody with no relevance to or even interest in the discussion who feels they simply MUST chime in? The one person whose opinion and “thought” and words mean the absolute least always has the rudest, most reductive thing to say, and they always think it’s so fucking novel and new and clever.
Frickin’ hate that word!
Once again, praise to you, Taffy. 👏👏👏💯
“Obvious” is another one. “The obvious solution is…”
Uh, yeah, it’s obvious. So obvious that if the people with actual experience of this problem aren’t using that obvious solution, maybe there’s an issue with doing so that’s less obvious.
“You obviously should have driven through the tunnel, since it’s the fastest route.”
And they never seem to notice that the tunnel is flooded with raw sewage and there’s dangling power cables zapping everything and also angry hornets are in there raisin’ up a ruckus.
One might say that it is in fact unjust.
“I don’t currently have that problem, so it can’t be an actual problem. WhY dOn’T tHeY jUst-” Weirdly enough, you even get that from peope who USED to have that problem, but have conveniently forgotten how hard it was for them to deal with it in real life, as opposed to their heavily edited memories.
Imagine if there was a book called “Why Don’t You Just…” that’s dedicated to addressing this thought-stopping cliché. If it doesn’t exist, then it damn well SHOULD. 😤
The trouble is, the chronic whydontyoujust-ers are already too incurious to care what they’re griping about in the first place. Every possible response is an “excuse”, because they already see you as being in the wrong for existing separately from their “consciousness”. We can’t expect them to be capable of reading a book! What if it says things that explain why people don’t just??? What they need is to be sat in a corner with a bib, some round-edged building blocks, and a nearby television looping episodes of Teletubbies.
(I don’t respect their intelligence or personhood. That is the joke.)
Sounds like you’d really enjoy the Alt-Right Playbook if you haven’t checked it out already, goes over all kinds of bullshitting tactics. Be sure to have a fidget spinner at the ready.
Well, it is simple. I can walk into a public library, sit down at a computer, provide some personal information, and order an official sealed duplicate original of my birth certificate for maybe ten dollars.
If I’m a US citizen. If my birth was recorded. If I have ten dollars and a payment card. If I can show the right information. So, yes, for the sort of person asking “why don’t they just get documented,” it would be easy. For someone in a different situation, not so easy.
Reminds me of the person on the news talking about how illegal immigrants are going to give our good white kids drugs this Halloween season.
Yup.
They crossed a hundred miles of desert without water in order to work their asses off for decades in order to buy mansions in upper-middle class white neighborhoods and then buy hundreds of dollars worth of Halloween decorations for the express purpose of putting meth in a random kids candy bar.
The blog post about this I bookmarked a while back:
“All possible responses to “they should get in line and do it the right way, the way my family did,” with citations (also jokes)”
tl;dr: There is no line
https://medium.com/deportation-nation/all-possible-responses-to-they-should-get-in-line-and-do-it-the-right-way-the-way-my-family-did-ab0b7dbcbb26
How nice to see Ruth like this, with her big green eyes full of emotions and unsure of what she’s doing, but still making an effort to help someone she cares about. Despite her insecure air, she seems to me much stronger now than when she was yelling, threatening or hitting someone. She’s on the right track and I hope she stays there.
I like your opinion a lot. :3
You don’t need Leslie’s permission to ask Jason to marry you, Ruth.
But note that femurs are not community property in any state.
Don’t worry, she’ll make sure “Ruth gets the femurs” is in the prenup.
Okay, is it just me, or does “suplex” totally sound like it could be an English major thing? Like a pluperfect suffix or something?
Speakers of modern English often struggle with the declensions of the suplex case in Middle English…..
If this were anyone but Ruth I might think she’s bragging about having a boyfriend.
(Seriously i missed the part where Ruth declared boyfriend and now must look it up.)
Does Jason know that he is Ruth’s boyfriend? This seems to be a widespread problem on campus.
She told him in a previous strip that it was up to him, and he seems to have chosen to continue the relationship despite the noise from Jennifer.
Ah yes Lucha Liberal Arts. Such a great major!
Ruth looked cute in this strip so I drew her:
https://twitter.com/namioshiro/status/1607784607209881601
Adorable! Love your style.
Thank you!
OMFG IT’S SO CUTE! We love it!
Haha awww 😀
We’re unworthy – absolutely frickin’ adorable <3
Awww she’s so cute!!
Do you use watercolor pencils? Or do you smudge the colors some other way to have them fade into one another like that?
Nah it’s just coloring with a really light hand and layering different colors on top of each other. They’re Tombow colored pencils which is a Japanese brand.
Oh my god, she’s so cute!
Splendid!!! 🙂
I like Les’s “OH THANK GOD IT’S NOT ABOUT SEX” expression in that last panel.
To quote Brock Lesnar… “Suplex City, bongo!”