Republicans get to use ‘illegal immigrants taking jobs’ as a stick to beat democrats with, and progressives use cries of racism to rally support amongst Latino voters.
Meanwhile anyone who espouses common sense ideas such as reforming our immigration policy gets called a racist and ‘anti-immigrant’.
That people still want to come here despite having to put up with that is a testament to how powerful the draw to living here is. I can't blame someone for illegally immigrating when they see that the legal path will take so long, and that they could be building a better life in the meantime, despite the struggles that come from living here without papers.
This isn’t both sides not wanting to do anything. This is both sides having very different solutions.
All of which is irrelevant to the article since this is discussing legal immigration.
pay a penalty, and stand in the back of the line for American citizenship while they are provided recognized status so they can live in the country legally in the meanwhile.
This is basically amnesty/open-borders. Not arguing for or against, but it is. There is no "line" for citizenship, after five years of permanent residency anyone qualifies. The "line" is for the permanent residency (green card), and you have to qualify to even get in the line, that's why people come illegally. So what's the new qualification? "already in the country"? Then what about the people here 20 years from now? Is it a rolling admission? If not then you have the same problem as before. If yes, then the policy is 'open borders' possibly with a qualification of "can avoid getting caught for X years".
If you don't find open borders acceptable the only reasonable compromise I can think of is a capped category that anyone can apply for, where the cap is adjusted as needed. Somewhat ike the current Diversity Visa (Green Card lottery) which is capped at around 50K per year, though that cap rarely changes.
It might be what progressives are calling for, but it's not what Democrats are calling for when they are in power. Additionally, I'm not sure how progressive it is to prefer elite immigrants with "advanced degrees" over other immigrants.
This is a legal immigration issue. There are no illegal immigrants on H1Bs waiting for a green card.
This could definitely be fixed or reformed without touching the illegal immigration issue.
Federal policy is hardly ever “common sense”. Have those people actually tried not saying racist things? Because I swear, 99.999% of the “common sense” reforms I hear about I nvolve deporting basically everyone who isn’t super white..
But keep winning votes and changing minds by calling your opposition racists and bigots. That will win your votes.
bold statement. source?
First: total strawman.
Second: not even relevant to the issue at hand. There is, to first approximation, exactly zero undocumented immigration among "Indian immigrants with advanced degrees" so I'm having a very, very hard time imaging how this is an "enormous penalty" we have to pay for failing to solve the "illegal immigration issue".
So... enlighten us. What's your common sense idea that would address the problem here? I'll only call you a racist if it's a racist idea, I promise.
>Second: not even relevant to the issue at hand. There is, to first approximation, exactly zero undocumented immigration among "Indian immigrants with advanced degrees" so I'm having a very, very hard time imaging how this is an "enormous penalty" we have to pay for failing to solve the "illegal immigration issue".
The "issue at hand" the parent discussed is immigration in general. Not "Indian immigrants with advanced degrees" immigration only, even if TFA is about that. Posts on HN are taken with liberty as starting points of a discussion, and the parent never mentioned that they constrain their observation to only concern "Indian immigrants with advanced degrees", so your response is disingenuous.
1. There is no per-country quota on H1Bs
2. There is a per-country quota on EB-1/2/3 GCs
3. And this is crux of the problem: H1Bs are issued indiscriminately, most problematically to so-called bodyshops.
There are various proposals to fix the immigration backlog. There's one bill that would get rid of per-country quotas. I wonder what that would do to the backlog of everyone. I kind of see this one as a nonstarter.
Bizarrely, it's the current (otherwise abhorrent) administration that is the first to even talk about fixing the real problem, which is (3). H1Bs are a lottery now. When the likes of FAAMG companies can't hire people because the likes of Infosys and Tata are flooding applications for people who will essentially become indentured servants, that's a problem.
Infosys settled a visa fraud case with the US government several years ago including a payment of millions of dollars. How exactly are they still able to apply for visas?
There are problems with ranking applicants based on salary (or total compensation) as the one proposal would do. This would potentially drown out lower-paid STEM fields that have legitimate need with FAAMG SWEs. Then again... that's still probably better than the current system.
People have also complained "well you can't hire graduates if you rank on salary". That's true. But at the same time, are newly minted college graduates fulfilling unsatisfied demand for specialty occupation? Or just being used to lower labour costs?
So what do all these applicants do in the meantime? Are they overseas? Are they in the States on dual-intent visas? Are they in some creative legal limbo?
If somehow, in the meantime, they obtain a green card or work permit, are they allowed to take that same position, if it's still open -- clearly, they can accept any other position, as they're fully allowed to work in the States, but can they take the one EB-2 and I-140 was filed for originally?
This used to be the case. But not any more. A lot of people I know are getting RFEs and rejections for their extensions after i-140. I am actually one of them. Got my I-140, then got RFE. I am in a state that gives license based on your visa and won't renew license unless I have an approved work permit. So, I cannot renew my license, and has been using ride sharing for the last 1 month. Its going to be another 1-2 months before I get a decision on whether I can stay. Fun times. They always find creative ways to make your life difficult. Its amusing they refuse to give me license, but the state has no problem taxing me, even for the income I get in India.
Trump talked about self deportation. He succeeded at least in my case. I am done with all this immigration bull. I hope I can find a job in India soon so that I can escape from here.
Some forms of intolerance: believing in gender superiority, a caste system, exceptionalism based on ethnicity or country of origin. If you believe in those things, you might have a tolerance problem, no matter where you are from.
I try to be as tolerant as possible, and do not have negative views against immigration. But if you are intolerant I will have a hard time getting along if you openly express those views or if you apply those at work.
You'll universally find a much better healthcare system (e.g. health insurance not tied to your employer), with the exception of the UK. You'll find a humane immigration system that doesn't kick you out if your employer decides to screw you over (again with the exception of the UK). You'll generally have some form of state support if you lose your job instead of being thrown to homelessness. Etc etc. The US is a second world country nowadays.
And any children you might have will be far safer, and at lower risk for severe mental health problems.
They'll wait for 250 years
> The intent of the H-1B provisions is to help employers who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the U.S. workforce by authorizing the temporary employment of qualified individuals who are not otherwise authorized to work in the United States.
The focus seems to be on the temporary nature.
It sucks that the system is the way it is, and I think a point-based system like Canada is far more efficient, but it's not discrimination. If there are already known rules, and one particular country comes in an adds a massive amount of applications, you can't turn around and yell discrimination.
>IT industry body Nasscom on Monday came out in defence of its members TCS and Infosys, saying the two accounted for only 7,504—8.8%—of the approved H1B visas in 2014-15.
https://www.livemint.com/Industry/pHkRcTtIoKd8MkTkBNdtSN/Inf...
They must be partial to Infosys. I mean, what did it do. https://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2017-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.asp...
> These students are one of the primary abusers of the H1B system.
Right, the startups in bay area, good groups at Apples, Googles and Facebooks of the world are filled with people from Infosys ;)
>Literally every scam I saw in H1B is from body shops in US
That's partially true; I will let it slide
I understand you are frustrated, but you are barking up the wrong tree. The trouble is the easy jobs i.e, low-skilled in high-tech, are already filled. For example, see clouts of Infosys employees in some US companies. These days, people have two options, be really good at what they do, or find a clout to stick to. May be you had a hard time sticking to the Infosys clout(I am not surprised, given that you like to think). Don't blame it on others. If anything, most of the technically competent desi people in US have a US degree.
The entire premise of "limiting immigration" is discrimination based on a binary national origin/citizenship (i.e. you happened to be one of us or not) so it is comically laughable to talk about how to make such system "fair" without opening it to everyone, which has practical issues. Immigration is an inherently political mechanism constructed as a result of amalgamation of various underlying game theoretic balances and trade-offs over the years between nation states. It's important to note that you cannot divorce the individuals from their own governments/resource allocation when thinking about that.
They request power of attorney from employees, file their tax returns on their behalf and steal their tax return money. Some employees do not receive their full wage.
In paper they meet H-1B salary requirements but in practice they don't.
They are not only in violation of immigration law but labor law as well.
The only "violation" I know these companies do is that they make the employee sign a bond that they have to come back to India and give a 3 months notice period if they want to resign while in US. And this is not just Indian companies. I was surprised to learn recently that the Indian division of an American product company (top 1 or 2 in the world in what they do) has a 12 months notice period with around 10 lakh rupees bond. Compared to that, Indian companies are less evil.
Another thing the Indian companies do is make you work on less desirable projects or otherwise you have to go back to India. And they don't treat their employees the same way a product company in America would do. They see us more or less as "you should be grateful to us that we gave you chance to come to US".
If the rules are discriminatory then it's entirely valid to call them as such, and doing so may help to change them.
Brilliant logic on your side!
"Discrimination" is a neutral term though: there are acceptable kinds and unacceptable kinds. For instance, it is discrimination to not let a stranger sleep in your home or in your bed, though no one reasonable would call that unacceptable discrimination.
The actual policy we're talking about here is a country-neutral permanent immigration quota coupled with country-neutral per-country percentage caps. There's nothing specially discriminatory in the law against people from India. It's just that there's massive amounts of temporary-worker immigration from there, which crashes hard against the other quotas. If German immigration were equally massive, Germans would have the same problems Indians have now, so the problem has nothing to due with racial or ethnic discrimination.
You could also think of the quotas another way: they're protecting the ability of people from countries other than India to immigrate, so the incoming immigrant stream is more diverse.
It sucks that the system is the way it is, and I think having the same water fountains for everyone is far more efficient.
(There is a term for when the system discriminates. It's called... you guessed it, systemic discrimination.)
Sheriff Joe tried this and ended up with a federal indictment, a pardon from Trump and (apparently) is now running for congress.
I'll consider not calling them racists and bigots when their policies stop being the policies of racists and bigots.
On the other hand, the private insurance in the UK that's usually included in big tech companies' work is absolutely top-notch.
For example, in big cities in Europe, you can easily and happily get by without a car, which saves a lot. You have more vacation. No tipping. Easier/more obvious ways to save for retirement. Your kids not having to do active shooter drills at school. Cheaper/free schools and universities. Maternal/paternal leave. Etc, etc.
So if you have a family, or thinking of starting a family, it's worth factoring that stuff in.
The NHS has something of a funding crisis right now, since our government seems to secretly want to privatize it, but it's still better than losing your health insurance if you lose your job.
For the DOL, yes. For you too, maybe. But for the individual involved, probably both intents are in equal importance, and that is perfectly legal and moral.
Whether you know that jumping off a bridge will hurt has no impact on whether it will hurt. It's not a question of fault. It's a question of fact.
And even with that, there are still 600K Indians trying become US citizens.
Coming back to the parents, now with all the negative coverage of H1B in Indian media, people have a negative perception of being in US. My visa expired and is in process of renewal. I didn't go to office one day. My dad thought I wasn't going because I was hiding from the authorities since my visa expired. They have been asking me to come back for a while now.
600K Indians out of 1 billion is nothing. Huge number of Indians don't want to leave India. I hope you know that. It becomes more evident once you are in the marriage market. Lot of them are downright reject proposals from people who work in US. Also, I never heard of Canada immigration until 1 year back. Now, a lot of my friends/colleagues are talking about or in the process of applying for the Canadian visa.
And a good number of those who apply for green card don't do it because they want to become a citizen. Its because once you complete a certain stage of green card (I-140), you can continue working in the country. Otherwise, you have to leave once you complete 6 years. They plan to work for 10-20 years, and come back to India and retire nicely with all the money they made in US.
I personally know a lot of lazy or borderline incompetent engineers, (some of them even went through PIP) who do thrive in corporate environment and it is much easy for corporate just to keep them on payroll. This is especially typical for software industry. This is anecdotal experience and may vary from company to company or even from team to team.
No. djrogers above literally said that "This is one of the enormous penalties we as a nation have to pay because neither of our political parties actually wants to solve the illegal immigration issue." So unless you want to play games with finding an alternative antecedent for "this", you are going to have to retract that.
What the grandparent poster was doing, and you, is trying to inject a fundamentally unsound and offensive position into the debate by not saying it and instead creating a giant strawman around the issue to preemptively accuse the rest of us of intolerance.
So out with it: what's your common sense fix to this that we're refusing to discuss?
The parent's "This" indeed refers to the "150-Year Green Card Wait for Indian Immigrants Wit..." in TFA.
But as the parent explicitly mentions, "this" (the indian immigrants issue" is "ONE OF" the penalties that the US pays.
He then proceeds and explicitly mentions the larger issue they discuss, which is "the illegal immigration issue".
It's not really hard to parse the obvious fact that the parent expands the scope to the overall issue:
"THIS (the Indian wait issue in TFA) is ONE OF the enormous penalties we as a nation have to pay because neither of our political parties actually wants to solve THE ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION ISSUE".
Obviously he speaks of the "illegal immigration issue" at large.
Whenever I see someone make that claim, in my experience it's because they've been in favor of racist policies and when called out on it, tend to try and shift the argument into people being against immigration reform period.
He was making a claim based on his experience with people asking for the kind of reform he'd like to see (e.g. stricter rules).
In casual conversation absolute statements ("anyone") are not to be taken at face value, but (through the principle of charity) as the person meaning "in many -or most- cases".
>Whenever I see someone make that claim, in my experience it's because they've been in favor of racist policies and when called out on it
One can be an isolationist ("no more immigration", "we have enough people already", "priority to local workers and building a local skilled workforce as opposed to importing cheaper foreign labor") without being motivated by racial concerns -- and yet in many cases they will still be labelled a racist.
And in most scenarios when I've had to argue against isolationists they tend to ignore issues such as Americans refusing to work in certain labor sectors that illegal immigrants tend to work (and be abused without employers being punished, see: farm work) the way we treat immigrants right now (especially those seeking asylum) and so forth which ends up leading to a root motivation of racism rather than any actual practical reasons.
You've also managed to paint them with the stereotypical 'they took our jobs' mindset which, well, tends to thrive in more xenophobic communities.
What I understood GP to be saying is that "most desi people in US having a US degree are technically incompetent".
Both these view points are not incompatible, and true in my experience.
I am not quite sure if LCA is an accurate metric of visa count. For example, I had my visa renewed 3 times so far. Every time, they filed for an LCA. I had to relocate one time. For that also, an LCA was filed. Then another one for my green card PERM or I-140 stage. People who come from India and work for TCS, Infosys etc end up relocating more often. Also, unlike American companies, visas are given to Indian companies only for 1-2 years and sometimes even less (American companies usually get for 3 years). Further, 25405 number doesn't mean they all were deputed from India. Indian companies hire a lot from US. They actually prefer hiring these students because they are desperate for a visa and are willing to settle for a lower salary. If they have to bring someone from India, they have to file the h1b application, hope they get into lottery and then only they can even think of putting them in a project. Most clients won't even want to wait that long unless they had been working on that project for a while and has acquired good knowledge. Where as for students, they can hire them, and file for h1b in the next few months (students get upto 18 months of something called OPT that allows them to work without h1b). This is precisely what's happening in my company. Same I heard is the case for Infosys. And these companies also hire people who are in the green card queue.
>Right, the startups in bay area, good groups at Apples, Googles and Facebooks of the world are filled with people from Infosys ;)
100 thousand Indian students come to US every year. How many of them end up working in these companies? Your own list shows less than 15k.
Among the deputed ones from India, the good ones never stay in the likes of Infosys. While I don't know anybody who went to Google or Facebook, I know a few who jumped from these Indian consultancies to Amazon, Intel and few other Silicon Valley companies. So, I don't think its fair to dismiss a person working for an Indian consultancy company as incompetent. My friend in Infosys was saying recently that a lot of people are joining Amazon and a few other companies like them these days. They can't be stupid if they are getting hired in these companies, right?
Also, I was recently talking to 2 of my friends from Infosys on 2 separate occasions. Both said there teams were trying to hire people locally (Americans), and both had the same opinion as you about the people who came for interviews about skills and competency.
> If anything, most of the technically competent desi people in US have a US degree.
I actually developed a bad opinion of them based on their performance in my own company. People who end up in good colleges probably are good. But those who come from tier 2 and lower colleges are not going to be good just because they studied in a US college.
You can ignore the GC LCA, because most companies do it too, and companies like Google, Facebook and Apple at a higher rate. Even if Infosys applies twice per three years for a candidate's H-1, it stands at the top of that list.
> 100 thousand Indian students come to US every year. How many of them end up working in these companies? Your own list shows less than 15k.
And I am seeing very few people without a US degree in that 15k.
> Further, 25405 number doesn't mean they all were deputed from India. Indian companies hire a lot from US.
What is the point here? So does every other company.
> Both said there teams were trying to hire people locally (Americans)
It is a legal requirement.
> I actually developed a bad opinion of them based on their performance in my own company
Actually me too. I have worked with cliques from hell, coming from Infosys (mostly), but also Wipro and like. 10 people do the work of 1 person, with the end result being a mess.
Anecdotes aside, I don't know why you are fighting along Infosys here. The numbers are Facts. Also, not everybody in Infosys (US) is going through the same struggle you are. I am sorry you are going through this and I empathize with you, as I had some personal experience in that regard. I can also tell you this, this uncertainty will pass, but the after-effects will last for a while. Having a good social circle helps in mitigating it.
What I was trying to point out is that when people talk about Infosys, they are referring to the people who are deputed from India. Or at least thats what I thought. So, when some one says 25405 people got LCA, a person who is not familiar with these things would think that Infosys brings that many people from India every year, and that Infosys is using up 25405 of the 60k or 80k visas to bring new people. They may not realize that this number also includes visa renewals, relocations, and hires from US, and that renewals and relocations do not count towards the 60k limit. If the Nasscom quote below is to be believed, its around 4000.
>IT industry body Nasscom on Monday came out in defence of its members TCS and Infosys, saying the two accounted for only 7,504—8.8%—of the approved H1B visas in 2014-15.
http://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/tcs-infosys-accoun...
>Both said there teams were trying to hire people locally (Americans) >It is a legal requirement.
I was trying to say that just like how you are saying people in Infosys are bad, the Infosys people who work in interviewing Americans are saying the candidates they get are not as good as the Indians! Everyone thinks others are stupid I guess.
>as I had some personal experience in that regard.
I thought you were an American!
> I can also tell you this, this uncertainty will pass.
Thank you. I hope so too.
I pay my taxes, I pay social security for which I get no benefit, I have to pay US tax for income I make in India. I cannot understand why I am less valuable to your country.
Also, if we discriminate on merit, then racism is also fine? Maybe we should only discriminate on an individual level and with the attributes that individual has under his control.
You as one of over a billion people from the same country will understandably have more competition than a Kenyan who is competing with under 50 million countrymen. Overall more Indians have a chance of working in the US than Kenyans, but the pools drawn from are at least an order of magnitude apart.
Why isn't the system oblivious to one's country of origin?
Well, that's a question of payment. Raise the salaries, and Americans will flock to those sectors. Instead of artificially keeping the margins up and the salaries low through labor import (which would end to the lowest common denominator race to the bottom among world economies, but usually it stops midway just lowering the options for the higher economies).
That argument is akin to the argument that we need slaves. Illegal immigrants are second class citizens, they don't enjoy nearly as many rights that legal immigrants does. They can be paid less than minimum wage, be worked harder than legally allowed etc. Of course the low skill sector loves having them, who wouldn't want to hire slaves who can't fight back when you abuse them?
But I argue that California have no need for slaves. If a job can't be filled with legal workers then you raise the wages and conditions. If you can't afford that then the job obviously wasn't critical to our economy and we should let it disappear.
However, there are a lot of industries in the US propped up by the low cost of illegal immigrants and often abused by (ironically) Republicans. We can't actually fix those jobs because the margins are too thin to survive without that source of extremely cheap labor. We've created a dependence on what is effectively slave labor, and those jobs are generally critical to our country especially as we move more towards isolationism.
These are all important issues to consider when thinking about real immigration reform.
In addition to the numerical limits placed upon the various immigration preferences, the INA also places a limit on how many immigrants can come to the United States from any one country. Currently, no group of permanent immigrants (family-based and employment-based) from a single country can exceed seven percent of the total amount of people immigrating to the United States in a single fiscal year. This is not a quota to ensure that certain nationalities make up seven percent of immigrants, but rather a limit that is set to prevent any immigrant group from dominating immigration patterns to the United States.
That seems reasonable. You’re not being targeted, Tuvalu isn’t being advantaged, it’s just that there are a lot of Indian people. What’s the alternative? No one gets a chance until every Indian who wants in gets in? Remove all limits? How would that be more fair? You’d just shift one country’s overpopulation to another. If a billion people from various parts of Africa and Asia suddenly were able (and did) immigrate to the US, what would be the result? My guess is economic collapse and social upheaval, followed by people immigrating to the next “best” country with the same results, and so on and so on.
It seems to me you think that the highest population should entitle people to more opportunities. That’s better for the individual, because they get more chances, but it’s at the direct expense of lower populations. That’s not about fairness or being against discrimination, it’s just wanting what you want and fuck anyone else.
They can "limit" based on skills, they can "limit" based on country of origin with the main difference being not using the hot-button word "discrimination" to, err...discriminate between the two while implying some sinister race-based system of visa allocation.
> Maybe we should only discriminate on an individual level and with the attributes that individual has under his control.
They you'd be "discriminating" against people who can't afford advanced degrees from prominent schools who just want to work hard so their children can have a better life like the countless number of first-generation citizens I've met over the years. This is where I'd put a "why you hate poor people?" to make my point but I know that's not what you're arguing.
But in no way is the biases or diarciminations in a "fair" merit based system a justification for the discrimination based on country of birth, like in the current system.
Individually it may suck if you come from a country with a large population like China or India but overall it gives people from all over the globe the chance to emigrate without having to directly compete with the large numbers of visa seekers from these countries.
I honestly can't think of a more egalitarian immigration policy.
We are just arguing why the rules are the way they are.
> There is a set limit based on country. Just because 1 country has more applicants doesn't mean there's discrimination
If you have different outcomes for individuals based on what country they were born in, that is discrimination. Not sure what stupid definition of discrimination you have in mind.
> Having a set limit per country ensures that everyone globally gets a fairer shot
Not everyone, but every country. And that does not mean every race, or every ethnicity. So much for forced "diversity". You have no idea how diverse India is, with thousands of languages and hundreds of ethnic groups. It is the origin of four major world religions, and has been always been an accepting land. But you SJW can go through your forced diversity with your discriminatory policies, with complete lack of logical thought.
After all, EU is a combined political and economic entity, makign it a federation, just like India.
Africa is a continent, India is a country. The cap isn’t based on diversity, but a country. The reason being the same as several people including myself have stated, namely so that one country doesn’t dominate at the direct expense of all others. Your personal demands based on what you personally want because it would advantage you aren’t how policies anywhere are made.
Given that, and given that your argument is neither consistent nor in good faith, I’m out. It’s clear that you don’t care about diversity or discrimination or anything else, you’re just all about personal advantage. That’s not an argument, it’s a form of bigotry.
EU is a unified political and economic entity, with individual states having well defined freedom. Just like a federation. India is like that, so is USA. So, does EU also qualify for a combined 7% cap as a united entity?
Discrimination and limits on the country of birth is such a stupid policy, unless you really think that a person born in Tuvalu should have 130,000 times higher chance of a green card than a person born in India.
I personally think people (and capital) should be able freely move anywhere they want without having to worry about some arbitrary lines on a map but that's not the point, the point is no matter how you look at it someone is going to be "discriminated" against so a person from Tuvalu is either going to have a higher or lower chance than a person from India depending on whatever selection criteria you use.
Plus it'd be pretty hard to be an oppressive dictatorship (looking at you, California) if the people could just up and move to a less oppressive regime (like Arizona). Of course I'm (mostly) joking with my example but a CA->AZ mass migration is happening as we speak and nobody is calling for a wall on the border (yet). They can't put up massive apartment/condo monstrosities fast enough to handle all the new folks moving here and presumably they're finding jobs without too much trouble.
So, yeah, I think if governments had to compete to retain their "subjects" the world would be a much better place and people probably wouldn't need to relocate unless they really wanted to unlike today's multiple "migration crises" (their term, not mine).
There's a difference between displacing the local population (which you imply) and moving somewhere there's better opportunities (jobs, housing, &etc). As long as there's no coercion or violence involved then who's the victim if my new neighbor is from Guatemala?
Sounds fine, but what happens in the scenarios I actually outlined in my first post? It’s not about displacement, but simple overwhelming numbers. Would Japan still be Japan if tens of millions of people from all around the world decided to live there? Would Albania still be Albania if a hundred million people from China and India showed up? If everyone in California were suddenly matched 3:1 by Sub-Saharan Africans, what happens?
In terms of language, culture, social services, law enforcement, etc... you’re suddenly in a whole new world. I don’t necessarily think it’s wrong for Japan, to use a precious example, to wish to remain Japanese in terms of their language and culture. I don’t think it’s wrong for Switzerland to balk at the notion of a hundred million Americans showing up either.
If you remove all restrictions, it’s not just about having a Guatemalan neighbor; that’s just immigration as it is today. The US for example has absorbed millions of Mexicans, Central and South Americans without any real problems. It is after all, a drop the proverbial bucket. The issue arises when it’s far more than that, order of magnitude more, and all at once.
What would happen to Guatemala if a sizeable chunk of the US, or China, India, or Africa immigrated there? It would implode, socially, financially, and its existing culture would be consumed. If everyone who wanted to live in Hawaii or Monaco could just move there, both places would be environmentally and economically trashed. Immigration is necessary and human, and there should be more of it in most cases than we see today. That doesn’t imply that total freedom of movement is workable or desirable either. I’d no more want to live in a country with no immigration limits, than I would in a country with no immigration; both would be broken.