Applicants for residence visas and/or citizenship should be allowed an alternative route to illegal immigration.

They can enter a lottery for weekly or monthly televised gladiatorial games where they fight another potential immigrant.

The winner gets resident status and a modest financial reward. The loser gets patched up and sent home, or a free funeral.

To avoid legal complications, and complaints from hand-wringing pinko liberals, the fights would be staged on a ship in international waters.

Governments get the revenue from the TV rights after the costs of running the ship are paid to the organizers.
-- 8th of 7, Mar 25 2016

The immigrant song https://www.youtube...watch?v=kEGuHdKn0Lc
[normzone, Mar 25 2016]

This is more or less the present system.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 25 2016


meh
-- Voice, Mar 25 2016


Lol, 'immigrants', right?
-- WcW, Mar 25 2016


What language would the fights be announced in?

Maybe a spelling bee would suffice. Usually less blood.

For the fights in Grandmothers and toddlers classes, perhaps Tag teams ?
-- popbottle, Mar 26 2016


8th, the only problem I see with this is: 50% of immigrants will be accepted. If we pit two champions against each other for citizenship, then we will have half the immigration and almost twice the over-head.

[+], btw.
-- MikeD, Mar 26 2016


Better would be something like "the amazing race" where camera crew follow groups of immigrants each trying a different route or approach to get to Germany.
-- bungston, Mar 26 2016


Staging multiple daily fights playoff-style would reduce at-sea overhead. A daily pool of 32 contestants sparring one-on-one simultaneously would reduce to a single very tired champion after 5 sets.
-- whatrock, Mar 27 2016


Hey [8th]...

Did that Half Bakery flag ever make it out to you?? I've had several email changes since my Afghanistan deployment so I lost contact.
-- MikeD, Mar 28 2016


The downside to immigration is the probability that you import disease, a casual disregard for the finer points of enlightenment thinking, or violent murderers. This idea essentially applies selective pressure FOR violent murderers*. This is certainly a good idea, since the more violent murderers a country has, the more realistic the TV crime dramas seem. This is the first idea I have seen today which really gets to the nub of the TV crime drama credibility gap.

*possibly against disease, I imagine severe respiratory infection or a congenital heart deformity would be somewhat disadvantageous in a fight to the death.
-- bs0u0155, Mar 28 2016



random, halfbakery