Tell him he's looking at selection bias. The immigrants he sees here represent a very small fraction of those who have tried to enter the US. Those are the few that succeeded in either satisfying or dodging the process, not the bulk that get rejected by it or sit on waiting lists.

He should be comparing himself to the typical outcome of a would-be immigrant (never passing the border at all), not to outliers cherrypicked to only be observed after they have already succeeded.