Steve - I will disagree with you on the repeated tourist visa runs is - for me - an integrity issue. If my intent is to live in Argentina then I should apply for residency or citizenship status. You obviously decided to go the resident's route and did. For the sake of discussion if I wanted to be a resident I'd apply for residency; if I am a temporary visitor (90 day tourist) and I keep "overstaying" and or make "visa" runs I really am not being a tourist I am being a resident. Call it what you want but my personal integrity says its wrong.
Many of the illegals in the US (from all over the world) came on either tourist visas, student visas, or temporary work visas. When the clock ran out on their visas they just "overstayed". The consequence is if caught they can be jailed, then deported - in many cases there are repeat offenders; and they end up with 5, 10, 20 year bans or permanently barred from entering the US.
Integrity is defined as "the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles". If your personal integrity brings you to the point where you must follow every single law of a given country, that is how you've defined your personal integrity and that is fine. Others have defined personal integrity in different ways, and yet they are still people with integrity even though you may not agree with their personal definitions.
You use the term "illegals" when referring to the US and people staying there past their visas. It is simply not the same here - neither constitutionally nor legally, nor within policies that the immigrations department openly practices.
No one is breaking a law here, as the immigrations officials at the border allow you to come in, it being a policy of the people and government of the country of Argentina that such behavior be officially allowed until a change in your status goes from "irregular" to "illegal". People who do the visa runs are not violating a law but are rather working within the framework that this country allows. If the policy were to change, I'm betting no one will be allowed to enter who has stayed past their official visa limit.
Argentina is not even similar to the US as far as laws and customs (I mean specifically social customs, not border customs, although that is included in this case as well) for the most part, nor in how things are enforced, but in particular what is allowed.
Given that the Argentine government is very often non-specific and often contradictory, I don't blame anyone for trying to figure out what's allowed and what's not allowed. Particularly when it is nearly impossible to get a residency here for many people - yet the government openly allows them to stay anyway.
That's the part I don't get, how there is a lack of integrity in what "perma-tourists" do. See, I'm a guy who likes to think he has a lot of integrity. I never screw anyone on purpose and not even by accident if I can ever avoid it. If I do inadvertently screw someone I do everything I can to make it up to them. I often suffer, to my detriment, to ensure that I have covered my obligations with others.
And yet, for about 2 1/2 years, I was a perma-tourist when I first came here.
I couldn't get residency until I married my wife, who got residency through being a citizen of a Mercosur country. Until then, I went to Colonia every 90 days or so (when I wasn't traveling back to the States for business or something), with the full knowledge of immigrations officials,
who let me into the country. I never had to lie to anyone, and even if I had lied, the immigrations official could easily have looked at my passport stamp pages (which is now only with 1/2 of one page that still has space for stamps) and known I was lying if I ever told him that I was not really living here, but just traveled a lot and liked Argentina (what other excuse could there be?) People who say they are trying to get their residency status regularized are not necessarily lying either - I'm sure that many (if not most) who do the visa runs would love to have a program under which to get residency and are constantly listening or looking for some means to do so. Again, the immigrations officials are not idiots - they know what is going on and via official policy are letting people in the country who live here with irregularized status.
If someone is fooling themselves that "they should be allowed" in because they are bringing hard currency into the country and aren't a drain on the country's economic resources (or whatever misguided reasoning), that's something a little different. They are still not "illegal", they are just arrogant. Many people do legal things while being quite arrogant about it. It doesn't make their actions any less legal than anyone else's, but it does mean they are arrogant people who aren't considering anything but themselves. I would agree that I don't find that attitude to have any integrity contained within it, but I really don't think that is anywhere near the majority of people who make visa runs..
You can't apply the same standards for just about anything here, that you would in the US. Of course, just because a lot of people here do everything they can to game the system here doesn't mean you should as well. But not paying taxes, hiding income, being dishonest in your dealings with others, etc, is quite a bit different than walking up to a border official, showing him or her your passport with a multitude of stamps in and out of the country over years, and accepting his offer to let you into his country without even trying to pay a bribe or coerce the official in any fashion.
And I can tell you from a personal standpoint: if you get hung up on other people not having integrity as you see it, you may not fit in too well in Argentina. It has taken me quite some time to deal with that specific issue, where there is a certain lack of integrity in many things here. "Visa runs" don't even show up on my personal radar when compared to the real lack of integrity that exists in abundance here.
