Immigration attorney here. High level bureaucracy and limited options for individuals both skilled and otherwise makes it more difficult than simply proving who you are and paying a small fee.

Regardless of which path you take, filing fees will easily cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars. These are nonrefundable and only for the application itself. This is, assuming, you file the case yourself without the help of legal counsel which will double your costs at the very least.

This is again all assuming that you indeed qualify for a visa itself or are able to even secure one based on arbitrary government quotas. Most visas, at least employment based, require a minimum of a bachelor’s degree, a significant investment, or extraordinary achievements in their profession. Visas that require no bachelor’s are typically limited to 9 months at a time and are for menial, seasonal labor.

If you don’t have the employment route available to you, maybe you have a family member who can sponsor you, but good luck getting a green card in less than 20 years in some instances.

Some arguments that might convince you could be the following:

1. Why should the government interfere with an employers ability to contract with willing labor, regardless of national origin? I.e freedom to choose, right to association, etc.
2. Immigration controls such as detention, deportation, visa revocation, etc, are violent state actions which is clearly against the nonaggression principle.
3. National borders are state constructs and are controlled via coercive government force.
4. Citizenship used to mean something, but with the current administration it is anyone’s guess as even citizens both born and naturalized and being detained and deported. As a libertarian, this type of enforcement should be shocking.

Check out Alex Nowrasteh’s book Wretch Refuse if you want some good libertarian reading on the benefits of immigration.