If they simply showed up or overstayed a visa illegally, then it's actually totally reasonable that before they can be given permanent resident status, they should be demonstrating compliance with immigration laws by not being here illegally.
Yet again with Trump's bizarre mixture of a nugget of a reasonable (and popular) idea with a barrel of nonsense and chaos. It's the same as with tariffs. Tariff things produced by adversaries, that we are well-positioned to make here ourselves and stimulate a good domestic industry with good-paying jobs? Yeah, but also let's tariff a ton of things we need that we don't even freaking make or grow here, and against our geopolitical allies to boot.
This could be a big deal for Big Tech. I wonder how personal experience of Musk and Huang will play into how they react.
The cruelty is the point. They want the economic benefit of immigrants but also want them to live in uncertainty and without any easy path to settling down. Complete and utterly stupid.
Also, a lot of these guys are simply straight-up ignoring the news today. They got their bag and they believe it will keep them safe.
Did you really think the whites saw you as one of them? Were you so naive? Because you were "educated"? Because you worked in Silicon Valley or SF (you know California, the same places that Trump ranted against for years because they never voted for him)?
US&A has been the escape hatch for oppressive regime in China/Russia/... for many years, young people from there seek freedom in US, instead of fight for freedom in their own.
Individual freedom is great but collectively they made people who can't migrate have less and less freedom. Some expected US&A compensate that with trade, military and twitter, which all turned out to be disasters.
I'm sorry for anyone stuck in those processes, but for long term US&A giving up on Green card / dual citizenship is not necessarily a bad thing for the world.
Damned if we don’t allow people in and, apparently, damned also if we do allow some in
Your strange argument would actually support this policy: stop letting these people into the USA so that they stay in their own repressive countries and are forced to reform them.
Hundreds of millions of people from abroad shared that belief up until 2 decades ago or so. I don't think they believe it anymore. It's been like watching your awesome high school friend throw away their lives over time.
Hong Kong introduced new self-sponsored visas, Mainland introduced new high-tech visas couple months ago
Also if you really want to immigrate to a country you eventually probably want to become a citizen of said country right? USA has pathways for this (albeit getting harder with this new admin). However in China it's nearly impossible.
By 2029 the gloves will come off. The internment camps of today will be dwarfed by what comes next. If you think I'm crazy, look at what they've already said in the past. They are not kidding anymore.
The are other nits to pick with the analogy, but I’ll leave it at that
Let's not mince words. My heart goes out to everyone impacted by all this.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelt...
Stay on whatever visa you’re on -> apply for consular processing -> travel for interview -> enter on green card
Wait times to process applications depend on your country of origin and visa type. If you are an H1B from India that was already decades approaching never. Same for Brazil and elsewhere.
And that was before Trump. All that was practically halted.
Many comments are calling legitimate facts as “wrong”.
People don’t event know the difference between a visa and a permanent resident status and yet feel compelled to talk about foreign born people coming to America, “non- western” or “non-European” immigrants.
Do better HN audience. This is very disappointing.
I am no longer surprised, but still don’t understand why almost all members of Congress are wiling to just let their power slip away like this.
Just take a look at the categories of Green Cards available on USCIS' website[0], and think about how many of them will be unavailable if you're back in your home country.
* Green Card via Family? 18 months, minimum, for approval.
* Green Card via Employment? Well, self-deporting likely means the loss of said job opportunity, thus your ability to convert to LPR status
* via Special Worker? Here's hoping you're not an Iraq of Afghani national that might be persecuted back in said home country for cooperating with the US Government.
* via Refugee or Asylee Status, or as Victims of Abuse? Are we fucking kidding, here? Forcing refugees/asylum seekers/abuse victims back to their home countries is deliberately cruel, and I'm going to be looking for statistics on changes in approvals pre- and post- this policy change to make sure "special circumstances" are actually recognized as such
It's just a despicably cruel policy change that's so overtly xenophobic, it actually reveals the alignment of those reporting on it when it's not called out as such. It's the antithesis to legal immigration in that it all but destroys the process entirely, promoting more illicit behavior (dangerous and clandestine border crossings, exploitation of migrant workers, human trafficking, etc) in the process.
Fuck this regime.
[0]: https://www.uscis.gov/green-card/green-card-eligibility-cate...
Not long ago, new accusations came about, involving more superrich - see here https://wsvn.com/news/us-world/former-miami-beach-mayor-accu... and elsewhere, really just a few hours ago; and from the last few days. So here I am wondering ... how can there be an investigation in the USA, but even many weeks afterwards, they keep on finding more and more people that MAY have been involved here? Of course it is guilty-unless-proven-otherwise-in-court, but the key question here is why the investigation "reveals" more and more victims? Should this not already be revealed? Or is the investigation deliberately crippled?
Something no longer works in the USA here. The "we are against immigration" is just the carrot on the stick before the donkey. Or the "let's bomb Iran ... oh wait, inflation now goes up". This is literally an administration that worships chaos and executes pillaging while implementing chaos.
What this screws over is there was plenty of people from US visa waiver countries who decided K-1 was too hard and just flew over to US and got married. They would then apply for Adjustment of Status. That is big door being shut close because B-1 is non immigrant intent visa.
My room mate from college did this with UK foreign exchange student 20 years ago. She came over on visitor visa, got married and they got a lawyer to fix it all up.
If all of these folks are pushed out of the country right after their student visa expires, likely they are not coming back.
I really feel for immigrants that are less fortunate than me. we all just want to have dignity, find a job (anyway the low-paying jobs are done by immigrants) and provide for our kids. What's wrong with that? How is this taking advantage of our host country?
Frankly, the present discourse around African/Arab immigration seems to me to resemble a lot the kind of rhetoric around the millions of Jewish Russian immigrants who fled pogroms to Poland and western Europe a 120 years ago. I find the similarities quite striking. The blatant racism, the conspiracy theories, the fascist propaganda, all in order to whitewash (pun intended) a corrupt regime of thieves and sycophants. Absolutely disgusting!
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/18/us/politics/trump-afrikan...
the wildly corrupt double-standard is breathtaking
There is well documented historical evidence Elon Musk not only illegally overstayed a student visa, he also illegally worked while on that visa AND did illegal drugs publicly while on that visa
Destroyed USAID murdering millions, highlights the President is in the Epstein Files extensively, then six months later is flying on Air Force One, it's all a cruel joke against humanity
Being a natvist is an expensive proposition. Expect your retirement to decrease in real value and struggle to find acceptable healthcare as you age (healthcare in the US is increasingly staffed by immigrants, especially nursing).
It is gutter racism.
edit: I wish I could be surprised by the downvotes, but it's gutter racism and I'm proud to point this out! I would be never be quiet about a matter of ethics and conscience just because of startup accelerator social media popularity points. This directly influences many of our friends and colleagues in this field. It is vile, evil racism and directly topical for software startups.
edit 2: the list of immigrants and children of immigrants who have founded software companies that are the absolute backbone of US information infrastructure is embarrassing to write down. Anyone can search for the information, but it's harder to list companies not founded by immigrants or children of immigrants.
This screws over anyone who enters the country on visitor/temp work or student visa since those visas are not immigrant visa. You would be expected to leave the country and apply for GC overseas if you got married on one of those.
Prior to being able to vote, I watched one unsatisfactory candidate after another get elected to the US Presidency despite the obvious presence of a much preferable and more qualified candidate.
Still, even if I had voted and my preferred candidates had won, it's not clear to me that this would have changed anything. Our world is not run in public.
So they likely have to wait out the green card process abroad unless they secure a dual-intent visa like an H-1B.
There's also 75 countries that the US has shut down consular processing for so those people may be locked out getting a green card entirely.
You could go the fiancé visa route and stay in status while waiting for the green card.
I think what this policy is trying to avoid is the blanket “you can stay while processing even if you’re not in the country legally”
Its not: you get to directly address a shortage in your country without the burden of raising and training the person. Arguably, if you don’t mind morality, the immigrants are also easier to exploit. And all that + you get a free tax payer!
My reading is that Americans (but also other parts of the world) are 1) uneducated on this topic 2) racist and or xenophobic to the point of self sabotage.
Quite literally if county building was a video game where the xenophobia of the masses could be ignored, I would brain drain the shit out of every country, leaving myself stronger and the rest weaker.
The US has a naturalization-driven model of immigration, which is being tested by fast jet travel. It worked OK in the days when you had to pay a bunch to cross the Atlantic and you couldn't easily communicate with your relatives back home. But things are different now.
The citizenship model or naturalization model creates policy implications for accepting immigrants. New voters, new policies. Of course the people on the losing end of this policy shift become upset: https://arctotherium.substack.com/p/increasing-skilled-immig...
Let's saying you're dating somebody on a work visa, if you wanted to marry and sponsor their residency, would they now need to return to their home country to wait for the embassy?
The embassies reviewing applications put a LOT of weight on time spent in person, BUT they also require the US applicant to have domicile. So effectively, the only way to proceed is a long-distance marriage that could take years to process a visa for (remember: move abroad, and you could lose the domicile required to sponsor the green card).
So with our shrinking birthrates, our regularly documented & growing "will never marry" population, immigration effectively cut off, what does the future of this country even look like anymore?
The fact that they get to make this announcement is probably the biggest upside. Their base loves it. It makes people think they are doing something. There is an asymmetry in that if they quietly roll this back or it's blocked in court, it will generate only a tiny fraction of the publicity.
Probably not too controversial here to say that the economy wants these immigrants so good bet they'll keep getting hired.
It's a cruel strategy, but I think it's fair to say that it's far from certain it'll be a consistent one.
Don't let them troll you too much, stay strong.
And i dont get it, no actually i get cognitive dissonance whiplashfrom all that contradicting messaging. Millions of jobs will go due to AI, but millions of those unemployed must stay in addition?
In a country thats constantly portrayed as the worst on earth but constantly attracts the wretched of the earth. Who want the opportunities but not the melting pot. The recipe that produced the economy that allowed such luxuries must go, but those who detest that system must stay. If a set of opinions has no intersect why does it make a sound ?
My Eastern European wife and I recently faced the decision of how to go about getting her a green card. At the time we lived outside the US.
One option was to enter the US on her B1 visa pretending to have no “immigration intent” and then “change our mind” a respectable number of days later and apply for AOS. The process for this was 1.5 to 2 years. I didn’t want to do it for that reason and because I wasn’t comfortable with what amounts to visa fraud, but our attorney presented it as a pretty standard option.
The other option was consular processing. This wasn’t automatic. Our attorney contacted a few consulates in the region where we lived to see if any would accept our case (due to war the consulate in her home country wasn’t handling routine cases). We got approved for consular processing in Budapest.
I had to go once as the US citizen spouse to submit our application packet and do a pro forma interview. Then a few months later it was my wife’s turn to go to the interview.
The process, like any immigration process, was paperwork heavy and nerve wracking. The final interview was very simple and felt like a formality.
In that case once approved she received a visa that would be stamped upon entry to the US and this would count as a temporary green card pending receipt of the physical card.
All of this happened during the second Trump administration so I was expecting a hostile or at least adversarial process. But it was quite the opposite. Total elapsed time was about six months from initial attorney consult to entry into the US as an LPR. It would have been faster if our attorney was more on the ball getting our final interview appointment.
If I were to find myself in need of a green card for a foreign spouse again I would opt for consular processing if given the choice. Now that it’s required I imagine there will be a longer backlog.
Obviously if you need to do this at one of the consulates that no longer offers consular processing that’s a different story. I was fortunate that the Budapest consulate agreed to take our case.
In some ways that industry is losing a tool. Sponsoring a green card used to be the prize they dangle in front of the h1b to keep their nose to the grindstone.
So many great students will be off the market. This will affect to the whole tech space. No way they will be happy with this decision.
Most countries, you get a visa of some kind but you have no way to permanent residency at all unless you marry but you can keep staying there somewhat permanently.
Americans voted for this.
I did consular processing when I got my Green Card. It's the FINAL step fo the GC process. You don't need to be outside the US for all the other stages, in fact I think if you leave during some parts, it would be considered abandoning your application. It just means that while you're in the US, you need to schedule an appointment at the US embassy/consulate in your home country, and fly back. Then you go through the appointment and there on the spot you're approved or rejected. It's a big nerve wracking but unless you lied you will be fine. Then you fly back to the US.
For me CP was much much faster, on the order of months.
That’s a huge unsubstantiated claim.
F1 and h1 are non-immigrant visa.
American law only allows a person to reside in the country with one Visa type.
The green card is an immigrant visa - and the new visa is issued through an adjustment of status for those inside the USA (backlogged) or by consulates (nearly immediately).
So this is a good thing. It’s easy to get alarmed.
This is missing the point. The arbitrariness, cruelty, racism, xenophobia, etc. is A DESIGN FEATURE, NOT A BUG.
I hope this may help youngsters in this terrible situation understand what is happening. Since at least the 1980's, if not earlier, one American political party has been using racism as a part of their platform. They used to do this in coded "dog whistles" before. The earlier targets were mostly Black Americans (they still are, if you look at what the Supreme Court just did with their voting rights).
Now it is all out in the open. The racist beast needs to be fed continually with fresh targets. Gay Americans were another target group. More recently it is undocumented South Americans. The most recent target is .. foreigners (especially non-white non- Christian).
Don't look for logic and reasoning in all this, in the abominations. Take a deep breath, and a long walk. Evaluate if it is worth dedicating your life and career contributing to the beast, and living in constant uncertainty of your legal status, unable to travel, and so on. You are worth way way more than that.
However, the big question this will leave for future immigrants is 'What if this current administration is the prototype for future Republican administrations?'
There need to be thorough weekly video walkthroughs of all of the detention centers. Otherwise you can expect actual starvation at some point.
Just dropping this here: https://x.com/DHSgov/status/1970251208322621530
I read that it used to not be like this, that it used to be possible to renew the _visa_ itself from inside the US, but that got changed before my time. I can only imagine that the reason for that was that non-citizens inside the US are entitled to due process, but non-citizens outside the US are not. And denying a visa to somebody outside the US is therefore a lot easier than denying it to somebody inside the US, and essentially cannot be appealed.
When I applied for AOS form H1B to Green Card, I didn't have to leave the US. With this change, I would have had to. The only reason I can think for this change is that denials of AOS would now become unappealable. I hate this.
No, after 9/11 they passed a rule to always collect biometrics before issuing visas and validating them at border entry. The DoS facilities in the US did not have fingerprinting facilities but the consulates and embassies did, so they forced the change. Recently there was a pilot to allow it in the US itself.
In general the law applies equally to everyone associated with the US in any respect so you get due process (in theory) regardless. Specific laws may apply to different classes of people though (see 'enemy combatants').
Come back where you belong.
https://www.businessinsider.com/immigration-crackdown-housin...
Will sending these people away improve our economy? Because I doubt it. I mean, we've been doing mass deportations right?
Well... has the economy improved for you? Has your life gotten better after we dumped a few tens of billions into ICE? Because I'm still waiting.
When will that chicken come home to roost, do you think? I'd like to know so I can make a note of it and inevitably tell you "I told you so" when that day rolls around.
Maybe it'll be around the same time we get those tax refund checks from all the money DOGE saved.
That's not right and toxic for social cohesion. Your immigrant class should not be wealthier or have superior earning power to the native population. That's like a sociological time bomb.
Under Trump 1 she was fired because they wouldn't renew it and she lost work authorization. Her kids are citizens and she speaks better English than Spanish, she was educated here and is effectively fully integrated. But she's slightly brown, and Stephen Miller says we can't have that.
I can assure you I am intimately familiar with the entire process.
>> It means you need to fly back to your home country for a few days for the interview and then you get your GC on the spot.
Not necessarily. That's the best and most optimistic scenario. I know of people who have waited weeks, even months. It depends on a lot of factors. And now there will be a lot more people booking interviews at every consulate so expect wait times to skyrocket.
Having said that, most commentators here, including me, might not have the full picture of the situation - the scale of influx of current immigration, quality, tactics and loopholes used, and goals (universities as visa machines) etc. USCIS might have a different picture they are looking at, than most of us here. They also might have better visibility of the future needs of the businesses here.
I personally think this is the big secondary benefit that the administration is going for.
Forget the French, the new meme for cowards who retreat at the first opportunity should be the American Congress.
Many critical roles are filled with doctors who are here on visas because there simply aren’t American graduates who want those jobs. I’m talking about jobs being doctors in hospitals and towns and cities that are not the most desirable.
Many of those doctors filling these positions today are immigrants who are on visas. They want to get green cards and stay here. They end up living long term in those communities caring for patients in them over the years.
If this policy goes into effect it will hurt all of that. And actually many of these hospitals and less desirable areas are placed with lots of Trump voters too.
In general if someone has spent years working hard with a visa and is law abiding and contributes to the community I don’t understand the purpose of making immigration harder. And I especially don’t understand why you would make it harder for doctors and engineers and other educated people who are here on visas to get a green card.
Can someone explain the rationale?
Facts are just invented in these debates. Here is an actual fact: in the 2026 residency match cycle, about 6.5% of U.S. MD seniors went unmatched, resulting in approximately 1,300 to 1,400 U.S. MD students failing to secure a position initially.
I’m not talking about residency. I’m talking about jobs post residency. There are hospitalist jobs in areas that are in desperate need of doctors. And these jobs are staffed with doctors who are on visas. Outpatient jobs too. These jobs are in locations or hospital systems that are important and that American graduates do not want to go to.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-22/trump-to-...
> The policy change could impact hundreds of thousands of people a year and potentially reduce legal immigration further amid a sweeping government crackdown, according to immigration-law experts. President Donald Trump’s administration has introduced a series of restrictions affecting everyone from asylum seekers to students and highly skilled workers.
> The new rules generally apply to any foreigner who came to the US on a temporary non-immigrant visa, including students, employees on H-1B or L visas and visitors. The US awards about 1 million green cards a year, though roughly half of those are for foreign relatives being sponsored by an American citizen. Those applications are generally already processed outside of the US.
(POSIWID [The Purpose of a System Is What It Does])
Change of status was never meant for those without status in the first place or for tourists.
I would love be to hear an immigration lawyer's perspective on this.
Here's the memo directly:
https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/memos/PM-...
or is it effective all the way back at I-140 time where people would then need to spend years away from the US?
politics aside, do you realistically believe that you can view twitter and actually mentally carve out the opinion of a group of people in real life?
that's exactly the issue with twitter.
for one : you're polling twitter users (a TINY subsect of humanity), two : you're extracting opinion from those that seek to broadcast it (an outlier) , and three: twitter never self-exposes the world to a user, it selectively curates and amplifies, and fourth : it's one of the most gamed communications arenas in existence.
you're viewing the world through an itty-bitty twitter-colored monocle and making sweeping accusations across large cohorts, it's not an accurate portrayal of actual human opinion.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that Twitter / X noise is consensus.
If something seems irrational it’s usually a sign that you don’t understand the underlying logic. This behavior is totally logical if they aren’t worried about losing power.
>> admitted into the United States as nonimmigrants to depart rather than pursue adjustment of status. Such aliens are generally expected to pursue an immigrant visa and admission from outside the United States if they wish to reside permanently in this country.
H1-B was already a dual intent visa. Are they trying to create a new visa category?
Whatever they are trying to get to this is a big concern for all H1B employees.
Thankfully H1B is a small visa category.
So yes what you say is true, if what the President is doing actually is within the legal authority set out by the law.
If you're looking for some objective rationale for this change, you're not going to find one. This is simply designed to make GCs much, much harder to get and dissuade prospective immigrants. That's the only goal.
Straight-up nativist discrimination? This kind of technical measure would seem to be hard to sell to the MAGA base, compared to something more blatant? Or is this somehow a favour for their corporate clients?
I don't believe that's correct. H1-B is formally a temporary, nonimmigrant work visa/status which permits "dual-intent" (meaning a holder can be openly seeking permanent residence when applying for [or when on] such a visa without that dual intent being immigration fraud).
All that said, as a data point, when I got my working permit and working visa to legally work in China, I first had to fly back to America and get a "landing" visa issued, then fly back to China, where they then finally issued me the China working visa and China resident permit. So, I think globally, this is pretty common for process.
The way I read the new policy is that it will be applied to people who have violated immigration law in some way.
An alien’s failure to comply with the conditions of their nonimmigrant admission or parole and an alien’s failure to depart as expected are highly relevant to this analysis
And those on dual-intent visa are fine…
USCIS reminds its officers that applying for adjustment of status is not inconsistent with simultaneously maintaining nonimmigrant status in a category with dual intent.
It’s basically adhering to the laws on the books. If you’ve violated immigration law a high hurdle will be in place to use this special pathway.
However, if you’re in the US on a dual-intent visa (e.g. H1-B) then you can continue to use the AOS pathway. This includes temporary works on L or H visas. And includes those sponsoring their spouses on K visas.
Is that right?
Why can't USCIS shard it based on country within the US in a similar fashion?
2025, the cap was about 26,323 per country because the total visa pool was larger.
Important details:
1. The cap applies to: * Employment-based green cards * Family preference green cards 2. The cap does NOT apply to: * Immediate relatives of U.S. citizens * spouses * parents * unmarried children under 21 Those categories are uncapped. 3. The cap is based on: * Country of birth (“chargeability”) * Not citizenship. 4. In practice, countries like: * India * China * Mexico * Philippines hit the cap constantly, causing very large backlogs.
Simple example:
If 500,000 Indians qualify for employment-based green cards, but only ~25k–30k can be allocated annually under the cap system, the remainder wait in line. That is why Indian EB-2 and EB-3 wait times can stretch into decades.
Demand better from your government.
(And this still raises the question of why the consulates supposedly don't have this issue.)
As others have said, someone entering the US on a tourist or other nonimmigrant visa, then marrying a US citizen, is inherently committing fraud because the marriage demonstrates intent to stay. In the past, the US was nice about it and let people apply to adjust their status without leaving. This loophole is now closed.
Are you saying that in such cases, the US rules here are and should be that the married couple should live apart for years due to the bylaws of the USCIS?
As I said, this is inherently a violation of the commitment the visitor made when entering the US on a non-immigrant visa, as much as (say) exceeding the limit on the hours per week an international student can work.
>Are you saying that in such cases, the US rules here are and should be that the married couple should live apart for years due to the bylaws of the USCIS?
First, this is what the law has always said; there is a reason why non-immigrant, immigrant, and dual-intent visa types exist. The USCIS memo reiterates this, while clarifying that the agency will no longer grant the contrary-to-the-law leeway it has heretofore done regarding non-immigrant, non dual-intent visas.
Second, the alternatives of 1) K-1 (fiancee) visa or 2) CR-1 (spousal) visa exist, and have always been the intended means for the person you mentioned in your situation.
The leeway meant that pretty much anyone, including illegal aliens, could obtain a green card (and be exempt from removal during the application process) by marrying a US citizen.
A US citizen is free to marry anyone, regardless of citizenship. There is no automatic guarantee, however, that the couple can both live in the US.
Your concept of "commitment" doesn't match the legal structure here. A visa is not a contract with the government. What is relevant legally is whether the information presented was truthful at the time of entry and of visa application.
> A US citizen is free to marry anyone, regardless of citizenship. There is no automatic guarantee, however, that the couple can both live in the US.
While you, like USCIS, may be correct that technically the de-jure rules state that there is no automatic guarantee that spouses cannot both live together in the US, the de-facto reality up until yesterday, for all of living memory is that YES, spouses are guaranteed to be able to live together.
I get to vote and he does not.
Edit: s/green card/H1B/
In the first case the paid taxes argument is pointless.
I believe the current administration, in general, appreciates those with $$.
Maybe that country still has some prestige somewhere else and people still want to apply but definitely not here. We've been watching the country sabotage itself and take a nosedive for a while now. The latest president is just the cherry on top.
I hope the rest of the world learns from this but I doubt it actually will.
The current administration is sending a pretty clear message to immigrants.
How could this ever help to build stronger industries or trade relationships?
If somebody hands you a shit sandwich you don't need to pretend it tastes good.
Well, we're continuing to find out. We haven't exactly scraped rocked bottom yet.
This move, like everything the MAGA administration does, will only weaken the US.
Even better for other countries, anyone the US produces who isn't a raging idiot, also are more likely to want to immigrate from the US.
A big argument for letting people emigrate is that they owe no real debt to the county where they are born, or the city, or anything like that. They aren't selfs owned by a nobleman. If moving increases their personal lot, why should we stop them?
India does not have the same opportunities that America does to have a good and successful life. This isn’t just due to the country being relatively poor but due to structural issues along with corruption. Then there are other issues too. Environmental issues. Too many issues to list.
It’s disingenuous to suggest that a families or individuals should stay behind to change this. Also isnt it a loss for everyone? If smart people come to America and take advantage of opportunities and accomplish things that help many people what good is it to say no to this. That they must stay in the home country and inevitably not accomplish as much due to all these issues. Even if Elon Musk and Jensen Huang had stayed in their home countries they certainly could not have accomplished the same amount they did in America. Both South Africa and Taiwan in that period lacked the opportunities.
Also what is the rationale behind an American saying to people not to come to America and improve it but to stay back? Individual Indians aren’t any different from individual Americans beyond their accent. The children of these immigrants are indistinguishable from Americans who have been here for generations (aside from skin color). I really don’t understand why Americans wouldn’t want the brain gain from having smart people come here. Also if a surgeon is operating on you would you care what skin color or accent they had? Doesn’t make sense to me.
An Indian’s greatest accomplishment in life is leaving India.
Now I'm not sure if you are allowed to re-enter after your interview before your case is decided/you get the visa but I would imagine so (if have valid visa), you would just need to exit again to get the visa later.
I believe the issue with what you're describing is that if you're on a temporary visa, like a student visa, applying for a green card shows intent of immigration so you cannot return to the US on a student visa.
If you have an H-1B already you may be able to do what you're describing. If you're a recent grad in the US this basically locks you out of trying to get a green card until you've already secured an H-1B.
False
You don’t need a job to apply for green card.
Valid visa, yes. But that’s easy.
> don’t know how this will play out for employment based categories
I am only talking about employment based categories if you refer to my original comment. I’d be curious to know what visa categories allow you to file for an employment based greencard without a job?
I'm not defending the policy, but I think that's one nuance being lost.
The idea that the US is not a country that belongs to its citizens, but some sort of abstract global entity that everyone in the world is entitled to is farcical, and it's coming to an end. The US owes absolutely nothing to non-US people.
If people don't like it that can go anywhere else (keeping in mind that other Western countries are starting to do the same) or, you know, stay in their own country? (Crazy, I know)
The US is currently at a recent peak of approx 15% immigrants, much as it was in the 1860-1920 period.
This is less extreme than, say, Australia at 25% population born overseas.
Vietnam. Middle America. Afghanistan. Iraq. Greenland. Venezuela. Iran. Now Cuba.
Stop it.
I don't get it.
Anyone is entitled an opinion, even when they're wrong.
But perhaps before posting, engage with intellectual curiosity and get informed.
Otherwise you're just posting a layman view that could easily be rebutted.
We've gone from perpetually punting the football on comprehensive immigration reform, to people saying, "Good, go back home, we don't want you here."
The same people who want to paint the Statue of Liberty gold seem to have no clue what it represents.
From: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services uscis@messages.dhs.gov Sent: Friday, May 22, 2026 6:59 AM Subject: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Will Grant ‘Adjustment of Status’ Only in Extraordinary Circumstances
WASHINGTON—U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services today announced a new policy memo reiterating the fact that, consistent with long-standing immigration law and immigration court decisions, aliens seeking adjustment of status must do so through consular processing via the Department of State outside of the country. Officers are directed to consider all relevant factors and information on a case-by-case basis when determining whether an alien warrants this extraordinary form of relief.
“We’re returning to the original intent of the law to ensure aliens navigate our nation’s immigration system properly. From now on, an alien who is in the U.S. temporarily and wants a Green Card must return to their home country to apply, except in extraordinary circumstances. This policy allows our immigration system to function as the law intended instead of incentivizing loopholes. When aliens apply from their home country, it reduces the need to find and remove those who decide to slip into the shadows and remain in the U.S. illegally after being denied residency,” said USCIS Spokesman Zach Kahler.
“Nonimmigrants, like students, temporary workers, or people on tourist visas, come to the U.S. for a short time and for a specific purpose. Our system is designed for them to leave when their visit is over. Their visit should not function as the first step in the Green Card process. Following the law allows the majority of these cases to be handled by the State Department at U.S. consular offices abroad and frees up limited USCIS resources to focus on processing other cases that fall under its purview, including visas for victims of violent crime and human trafficking, naturalization applications, and other priorities. The law was written this way for a reason, and despite the fact that it has been ignored for years, following it will help make our system fairer and more efficient.”1) Those who believe that every human born on this planet has a basic right to move to and live in, any country that they want.
2) Those who believe that the people who are currently citizens of countries around the world, have the right to set strict restrictions on who is allowed to move there.
These two schools are fundamentally at odds with each other. Some members of both camps will go to the extreme to enforce their position and demonize anyone in the other camp.
I wonder how this would work with a K-1 "Fiancé" Visa. Typically a K-1 holder can enter the country as long as they get married within 90 days, and then the family stays together while the I-485 is processed. Now what? Come to the USA, marry the US Citizen, and then you're banished back to your home country?
There's also the K-3 which lets the foreign spouse enter as a non-immigrant to keep the family together while the I-485 is processed. Are they getting rid of that entirely?
This is all totally bonkers, likely not well thought out, and pretty cruel to families, which is completely on-point for this Administration.
In SE Asia there's a whole cottage travel industry taking business and tourist visa holders on a quick trip out of the border in order to return to renew their visa (of course you can also pay for this service under the table).
The question buried in much of the detail: there is an indication this doesn't apply for H1B's and similar who work in the national interest or provide economic benefit (presumably substantial). Perhaps this allows an opening for at least some people.
Perhaps the people initiating this -- that is to say, almost universally either immigrants or the descendants of immigrants to the US -- would prefer something like the following version:
With silent lips. "Keep your poor, your tired, your teeming masses, too!
We’ve rewritten the laws, reframed the view,
To raise a middle finger straight at you.
Send your huddled refuse back to your own shore,
I lift my lamp beside the dead-bolted door!"
This government has a really bad reputation for taking one or two cases and making an example of them and then telling the other 98% they deserve it. I hope at some point this stops and someone rationalizes whatever is going on in my country
In recent years, they've combined yet another favorite, racism, to get that tasty peanut butter chocolatey goodness to get the base angry enough to go to the polls to vote based on that.
I hold on to hope that somehow, someday, we can overcome this nonsense. I have nothing to support this so I get in this sense it makes me a man of faith.
1. They desperately want to end all immigration.
2. They are too stupid to enact reasonable policies to achieve that end.
3. Therefore they resort to the blunt force tool of cruelty.
Whats the equivalent policy for other countries? Can you stay like you could prior to this?
Graduate visa's are the same for example, where you cannot apply abroad, so you must be careful not to leave the country between graduating and getting that visa.
How expensive is it?
I'll be honest as a naturalized citizen, I am shocked at how many people treat America as just a economic zone. They don't really consider this country to be their roots and don't assimilate into the broader culture. And I'm not talking about H1b, I'm talking about the O1s and L1s. They are so entitled and they are usually super well off in whatever country they come from.
It doesn't matter if they're a PhD or whatever, they might contribute via their employer or their own startup on a monetary basis, but I have also dealt with enough people who try to maintain one foot here and another foot wherever they're from.
We moved to the USA because the system of governance here and all the things it stood for were what motivated us to become Americans. It is our home and we have only our American passport.
Most of the so-called "highly educated" immigrant workers I meet have a spouse who won't become a US citizen so they can double dip in their origin country's low cost of living. It is kind of gross.
Just food for thought. I don't really like people who only seek to extract, if that makes sense. Doesn't matter if your TC is 1.2M or you raised 40M.
On visa forums this method is commonly discussed. By entering on an ESTA/B-2 with the intent to marry a US Citizen, they're committing immigration fraud, inherently. You would be denied entry at the border if you admitted to your plans.
The correct way to do this is to file a K-1 visa outside the United States, or marry outside then file a IR-1/CR-1.
This is so mind-boggling to me. Why do the poor keep defending the billionaires?
"Look how prosperous we got off your backs, suckers!" is the intended message.
It's taunting.
What happened was white people saw brown people coming in and got uncomfortable. That's it. The rest was just "fill in the blank" reasoning. Something something medicare, something something housing... eh yeah that's good enough we need immigration reform!
But that's been happening in the US for many generations now. That's just how the US works; we get a lot of immigrants and they become US citizens. If not them, then their kids. Yeah, welcome to America.
Well, yes. The current administration and the republican party as a whole are composed of fascists and thieves who steal from hardworking citizens like you and I to fund vanity projects like a ballroom and "Arc de Triomphe but bigger and gold".
They're shitting on the history of our country and all the people who have sacrificed to make this place what it is today, and they're doing it just to enrich themselves.
Frankly they are traitors and I hope that in time the wheel of history will deal with them as traitors deserve.
> The same people who want to paint the Statue of Liberty gold seem to have no clue what it represents
You seem to be lamenting political polarization and in the same breath making character attacks on one side of the isle. Pick one.
> Nonimmigrants, like students, temporary workers, or people on tourist visas, come to the U.S. for a short time and for a specific purpose. Our system is designed for them to leave when their visit is over. Their visit should not function as the first step in the Green Card process.
Do they consider H1B workers to be “temporary” for this purpose? It seems broken and cruel to force them to go back to apply when they’re here legally and could easily just apply here (assuming their visa is still valid).
In reality most people are somewhere in the spectrum of group 2:
* There are those who believe everyone economically net positive should be allowed.
* There are those who believe everyone who are a good cultural fit (for their personal criteria and biases) should be allowed.
* There are those who believe only exceptional people with rare talents should be allowed.
* There are those who believe people should only be allowed if they meet some definition of greater good.
* There are those who believe partner visas should be allowed/disallowed.
* There are those who believe only the wealthy people who'll spend or invest their wealth in the country should be allowed. (=various kinds of golden visas)
* There are those who believe no one except for certain race(s), nationality(es) or religion(s) should be allowed.
* There are those who believe no one should be allowed.
* ..Different combinations of above options..
* ?? (Many other possibilities)
This is an extremely small group of people.
Most of them pretend to be in the group to virtue-signal.
Same with homeless problem. We must not move/clear homeless camps (as long as those camps aren't next to my house, of course).
Most of the disagreement is where a given country should be on the spectrum of zero immigration and fully open immigration.
You can know we have the right to set strict regulations, and also object to driving smart hardworking people away from your country for no reason.
It seems obvious to me that there is no moral reason that some people should only be allowed to live in certain places.
But the crux of the problem is this - many of the immigrants we've been sold on as being "smart hardworking people" have not been that and often been the opposite. Your side seems incapable of grappling with the fact that it has fundamentally lost the trust of the electorate on this issue and seems entirely uninterested in doing anything to regain this trust by overhauling the way we filter prospective immigrants.
The Trump administration is not in camp 2.
The Trump administration, as this rule clearly illustrates, is in camp 3: Those who believe that the people who are not currently citizens of your country should never be able to become so, and should be punished for even trying.
The problem is not that the system is "strict" in the sense of holding an incredibly high bar. The problem is that the system is arbitrary - there is no process you can follow that will give you a high degree of confidence that you'll be allowed to enter, or even that a decision _will be made at all_ in a fair manner, no matter who you are (unless you're a personal friend of the administration) - as opposed to you being randomly arrested by ICE halfway through waiting for a decision. And even if there were such a process, you would have no confidence that it wouldn't change retroactively in another week.
It is laughably naive to believe that they are doing this in good faith out of any sense of strictly filtering immigrants. There's exactly one explanation that isn't transparently pretextual, and you and I both know what it is.
This is basically the longtime practice of countries like UAE, and historically it is categorized under camp 2; no need to create a third camp here. It’s not as if no foreigners ever in such countries become citizens – while most immigrants are meant to be guestworkers who eventually return to their own countries, there are still laws to confer citizenship on exemplary foreigners.
Or it has been, and cruelty is the point
Thats why they’re appointed a whole bunch of unqualified people at high positions. This is what happens in the mafia. Those people know that the only reason they’re there is because of the dear leader and not because of their competence, so purely out of self preservation, they will put loyalty to dear leader above every other principle.
Similarly gangs will get even low level people to commit completely unnecessary crimes. Because once you’ve committed a crime, they own you. You’re at their mercy, since you can’t run to the police anymore, without risking jail time yourself.
So you make a whole bunch of your residents criminals, so they’re unable to exercise their rights effectively without threat of being punished for a completely different reason that the government now holds against them.
They’ve started with immigrants because making them criminals is as easy as writing administrative memos, but the same incentives will lead them to start making criminals out of American citizens too. You can already see some of it with the way they’ve criminalized protest against Israel. The next step will be to redefine whatever acts they can as terrorism since Congress granted the executive tremendous power when it comes to terrorism. But they won’t stop there.
If that was true why even go through a whole process. To me it sounds like there is still an approval required meaning the person is not determined to be admissible yet.
FWIW K1s were never a great visa category. Doing an engagement party with a white dress and posting it on instagram could lead to a "go apply for CR1 instead" rejection.
K1 will obviously be an exception as substantial steps are generally taken at a home consulate.
An entire visa class is not “obviously an exception”, or it would be clear.
Department of Homeland Security is no longer processing Green Cards via AOS. That included UCSIS.
However the STATE DEPARTMENT is still processing it via Consular Processing.
The article makes it sounds like the US is no longer offering Green Cards which is false.
It very specifically lays out common exceptions to this, including for legal immigrants on dual intent visas and those whose only pathway to permanent residency is via adjustment of status.
It also wildly misinterprets the news to claim that the K-1 visa has been effectively ended, even though the memo specifically excludes it.
https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/memos/PM-...
https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/memos/PM-...
https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/memos/PM-...
In practice, though, almost all employers file EB GC petitions for only their current employees, not future ones.
This is not the case for transitioning from a temporary residence permit to a permanent residence permit, which is the best analogue to the USA’s Green Card. In most European countries, one does that within the country (and often within the same province one lives, at a regional office).
You make three applications with those fees divided slightly differently each time.
That’s without any legal fees if you need someone to help you prepare your application which will be ~£2k per application.
If you have non-British children or stepchildren (which is generally quite rare) it’s approx those fees per kid as well.
For most other European countries including Ireland the fee is <€500.
Pretty much all forms of permission to stay in the UK other than asylum can only be granted from within the country if you hold an existing long term status. So if you're visiting as a tourist you can't then decide to apply for a spouse visa or even a working holiday or student visa without leaving the country first. If you're already on a student visa or a work visa or similar you can change categories without having to leave.
The graduate visa is essentially an extension to the student visa with slightly different permissions - it makes sense that you can only apply to extend if you're in country and you view it from that lens.
The historic reason behind all this is that there used to be a substantial difference between being granted "leave to enter" and "leave to remain" (out of country vs in country applications). Leave to enter used to be granted by embassies etc and the foreign office, but leave to remain was granted by the home office. Now the home office handles everything in the UK centrally so the distinction is not significant.
No, it’s a win for the people who remain in India. Imagine if the Samsung founder had moved to the U.S. instead of founding Samsung in Korea.
> Individual Indians aren’t any different from individual Americans beyond their accent. The children of these immigrants are indistinguishable from Americans who have been here for generations
Maybe some, but on average no. My family is Bangladeshi and my wife’s family is pre-Revolutionary War American and the cultural gap is vast. Basic attitudes towards justice, freedom, order, civic responsibilities, time, family relations, money, government, food, etc., are completely different.
Concrete example: Bangladeshis places tremendous emphasis on formal education and credentials. Americans have a tradition of skepticism of those things. This difference persists even among American born Desis.
There is evidence to back this up. Cultural differences persist for generations in immigrants: https://www.sup.org/books/economics-and-finance/culture-tran...
But yeah people who don't live close to that specific spot should have 0 say.
The general logic has been that it’s really easy for people to say they want to marry a U.S. citizen, get approved to emigrate, and then change their mind after (the common term for this is visa fraud). So the government grants a series of visas for increasing lengths as you move through that process and prove that it is a bona-fide relationship.
A K1 visa is the last step before getting married, and stipulates that you get married within a short time after entering the country, after which you have to remain married for several years, prove you’re doing things normal married couples do (like live together), and then you can get your permanent residency.
So, in short, it’s not as clear cut as a one-time yes/no decision. You very much live within a prescribed framework for several years until the government is satisfied that your relationship is real.
(Source: personal experience)
One interesting note here is the case of DACA recipients. If they leave the country to adjust status it should triggers a re-entry ban unless they're granted parole (DACA are quasi-illegal but granted a form of amnesty as long as they remain in US). AFAIK parole isn't granted for US consular visits, so it's effectively banishment as punishment for trying to adjust their status to reflect their marriage.
> While aliens who were inspected and admitted or paroled may request adjustment of status, as a general matter the discretionary approval of such a request is extraordinary given Congress’s intent that aliens should depart once the purpose for which they sought parole or nonimmigrant admission from DHS has been accomplished.
Your "extreme" is commonplace.
The UAE and the US (as of the last year and a half) don't (just) have strict immigration laws. Instead, they have corrupt and abusive immigration systems which operate outside of national and international laws.
Again, the local laws allow for conferring citizenship on exemplary foreigners, which does happen, and so such countries fit easily into camp 2 by which a country has the right to choose who and who not it wishes to make citizens.
I think you can apply for an AOS to a different dual intent visa which could then allow you to apply for a green card if you meet the requirements for that visa.
Maybe something like if you get married while visiting, but even then I believe you need to apply for an adjustment of status to a marriage visa and then apply for a green card.
The IR-1/CR-1 that you describe is how a spouse would apply from outside the country.
Me, I'll continue doing what I want kthxbai.
Having all countries open the borders to anyone (ignoring security risks for the sake of the argument) would mean all poor people would emigrate to rich countries and strain the economy, while their home country would collapse from lack of workforce.
but governments apparently have roles which are not directly related to collecting taxes to lay sewers, and I think we should maybe be questioning those. and of course there are economic consequences to the population varying, and things start to unravel at both extremes of density.
from this perspective the US was a very good competitor in the attraction of talented citizens. sadly we won't really have a good accounting of what was lost.
Skilled labor immigration is great for everyone involved, and bad only for the countries that suffer the brain drain.
But it's not zero-sum. The damage to those countries from losing talent is smaller than the benefits to the immigrant, their new country, and ultimately all of humanity.
Except those countries continue to decline and eventually become a global issue. India is on the cusp of a water crisis which is going to turn into a massive refugee crisis - how different would the situation and institutions be if the top 10% of the population hadn't been siphoned off?
Or would you rather condemn me to life in a corrupt, dangerous country even though I have everything it takes to build great things and make the lives of other humans better?
That moral argument against immigration, especially coming from an American, is DOA.
And from the perspective of the home countries, you're basically telling whoever happened to be born in a shithole that their only choice is to fix it themselves.
That's a pretty big qualifier!
> The damage to those countries from losing talent is smaller than the benefits to the immigrant, their new country, and ultimately all of humanity
Isn't it the opposite? Creating wealth and technology in India helps a billion quite poor people. Creating wealth in the U.S. helps 300 million already rich people.
It's created by an entire ecosystem that allows a project like that to be conceived and executed in such a way that has benefited the entire world, including the poor in India.
It's a big qualifier, but like I said, it's not zero-sum.
No economist will argue that limiting skilled labor immigration (or any immigration, really!) is an optimal policy for improving the lives of the poor elsewhere. It just doesn't work that way.
> However, maintaining lawful status in a dual intent nonimmigrant category is not sufficient, on its own, to warrant a favorable exercise of discretion.
Which basically means that, applying AOS while being in dual-intent category is not favorable and you will have to prove extraordinary circumstance for a simple i-485 AOS on H1B. Lacking the extraordinary circumstance, your application may be denied.
What this basically means for millions of people on H1B (especially from countries like India is), they have to go for consular processing. And given the lack of appointments in India and delays they are facing - you could be stuck for months to years and no company is going to wait for you while you go through the process. So leaving would definitely disqualify them.
H1Bs should jump the queue why? You're arguing that the family of US Citizens should be considered behind temporary immigrant workers with no family ties to the United States, and you should be exempt from the requirements they face.
I am just pointing out this affects all employment visa types.for countries with long delays in counselor processing this effectively kills any chance of getting Green card because no employer will wait that long.
Footnote 20: However, maintaining lawful status in a dual intent nonimmigrant category is not sufficient, on its own, to warrant a favorable exercise of discretion
Every single EV company in the US wanted to be like Tesla, it was like an idée fixe, most of them failed miserably compared to BYD.
EV and solar investments in the United States were on par with and exceeding china, they were gutted after republicans attacked the solindra investment for political reasons.
China is itself moving up the value chain and specializing.
That being said, I do think we have learned the hard way that outsourcing manufacturing destroys the ecosystem and supply chain that drives innovation. Simply put, invention happens where the work is being done
If you read "the current US administration and their voter base" it sure feels like hate.
I used to visit the US a lot. I haven't been for a long time and as long as the current regime remains in place I'll spend my time and money in places where I can be sure not to be mistreated.
That's not because I fear I would be hated in the places I would actually visit, but because I have no interest in being at the mercy of US immigration. It doesn't matter that the risk isn't great - it is high enough and the potential consequences severe enough that it's put the US in the same category as high crime third world countries for me in terms of risk.
Already 20 years ago it was more stressful to go through immigration in the US, even as a white man from a rich country, than in dictatorships like China. As it stands now, I wouldn't hesitate to visit China, but I would hesitate to even transit the US.
It’s just facts but they’ve been boiling the frog and doing so many idiotic and horrific things at once that people have completely checked out.
This is assigning intent without evidence, as is common in tribal politics. A non-charged assessment might use the phrase "abrupt cancelling."
We cannot create a better republic without constructive discourse, and we cannot have constructive discourse when we default to characterizing the views, concerns, and actions of those we disagree with as rooted in moral failure. Even if it is true from time to time.
Unfortunately, the norms of discourse are pretty much gone. This is terrifying in the long-term.
posted 7 years ago but applies far more broadly now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAbab8aP4_A
If you jump straight in with claims against me that I’m -ist and -ic that’s going to be more difficult.
You are calling for constructive discourse and yet your response is an accusation of dishonesty. A non-charged assessment might use the phrase "without presenting evidence".
Not because we aren’t open to it, but because they insist that if you don’t utter the correct shibboleth you’re not worth talking to.
“Without evidence” vs “without presenting evidence”.
Batshitcrazy.
https://www.businessinsider.com/new-green-card-rule-wont-aff...
If you aren’t lucky enough, you’re just screwed.
https://fam.state.gov/fam/09FAM/09FAM040213.html#M402_13_5_B
Seems extremely clear to me.
Nobody said "non-white" and it isn't even implied because a significant proportion -- 35-40% of Australian Permanent Residents (US green card equivalent) -- come from EU/"White" countries.
The suggestions above are consistent with my request for you to review the HN comment guidelines.
Your comments degrade the discourse at least as much as you think mine do.
The other line of argument is again the fault-tolerance I mentioned above, maybe see Taleb or distributed systems. Maximizing efficiency has trade-offs in resiliency. Yes it might be less efficient for there to be 3 ecosystems in 3 countries instead of 1, but its more resilient to shocks. We saw the risks of highly efficient but single point of failure supply chains materialize just a few years ago during the pandemic.
It's also pretty obvious that the tech companies being in the US benefits the US more than other countries. The big salaries are in the bay area, the tax revenue goes to the US, all the ex-Googlers founding new companies found them in the US etc.. So of course Google being founded in country X would benefit country X more than it being founded in the US.
Exactly. Obviously it’s better for China that BYD and Huawei were founded in China rather than the US. It’s better for Korea that Samsung and LG were founded there instead of the U.S.
It wouldn't have been able to do it without US companies, and it's not particularly a model that can be replicated that easily, though in general, economic policy that focus on exporting goods indeed tend to be the most successful.
Still doesn't mean the US should be preventing Chinese from immigrating here, so it's just utterly besides the point.
Developing countries have structural reasons for why they are underdeveloped. This is a very complicated topic, and one for which there is no shortage of academic interest. I suggest starting from William Easterly's "The Elusive Quest for Growth".
I quote here from the book review MIT Press:
> What is necessary for growth is that government incentives induce investment in collective goods like education, health, and the rule of law
What's Easterly's qualifications? Has he ever successfully improved the economy of a developing country? I'd rather learn what LKY or Park Chung Hee or heck even Deng Xiaoping or Pinochet had to say.
Wrong again. They're locals and overseas-born immigrants.
The United States was a British colony where demand for raw supplies led to an organic development of railroads, coupled with technological transfer from businessmen in the UK hoping to capitalize on this nascent market.
Textile manufacturing was still a thing and we were in the very early innings of the global Industrial Revolution. The two world wars that destroyed Europe were also immensely helpful to the insulated US.
Why are you asking me questions for which there are easily available answers? Honestly, you might as well have asked an LLM.
Stop looking for evidence that only confirms your biases and start trying to disprove your hypothesis. Only when there's nothing left to disprove can you claim your hypothesis _may_ be right, though you can't ever know for sure.
By the way, immigrant labor was a massive force behind US industrialization so you're just totally lost at this point. Industrialization has always depended on interaction with rich economies. From capital flows to technology transfer, export markets, immigration, empire, or trade networks. No major industrial power developed in total isolation.
If you want to know Easterly's qualifications, just read his Wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Easterly
Being ignorant is a choice.
Pinochet is one of several autocratic rulers who put in place frameworks that resulted in economic miracles in their countries.
Especially in Asia and Latin America, I don’t think there’s a single country that tried democracy before economic development that didn’t end up a failure. I’d rather be a Chinese living under effective authoritarian capitalism than an Indian living under dysfunctional social democracy.
> If you want to know Easterly's qualifications, just read his Wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Easterly
So he’s never done anything? He’s never built an economy or part of an economy?
> Being ignorant is a choice.
Indeed. And confusing credentials for knowledge is a choice too.
Essentially they're trying to change the rules by aggressive re-interpretation of the existing legal framework, and not actually changing any laws or regulations.
I don't follow all of it, but it seems to be arguing that the "ordinary consular process", leaving the country and applying for a visa from abroad, is the long-established default, and that "adjustment of status", where your immigration/green card status changes while you're already in the US, is merely an extraordinary exception and "a matter of discretion and administrative grace." Even though applying for a green card while in-country (an "adjustment") seems like the only sane and reasonable process.
It feels goofy watching them marshal decades of prior case law to try to frame this as just a "reminder" rather than admitting this is a real change. (Since changing laws is harder I assume)
“Adjustment of status” is an option at the discretion of the administration (8 USC 1255(a)):
> The status of an alien who was inspected and admitted or paroled into the United States … may be adjusted by the Attorney General, in his discretion and under such regulations as he may prescribe, to that of an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence
Note the “may” and the “in his discretion.” Basically, if the government really likes you, it can change your status. But that doesn’t change the primary purpose of the H1 visa from a temporary worker program into a permanent residency program.
All the memo is saying is reminding USCIS officers that adjustment of status is an act of administrative grace and applicants aren’t entitled to have their status adjusted. That’s always been true.
If you want to make that argument, you have to confront the fact that H1 is by its terms a “nonimmigrant” visa for people who are “temporarily” in the U.S. 8 USC 1101(a)(15)&(a)(15)(H). While adjustment of status was possible, it was never intended to be a de facto immigrant visa that typically leads to permanent residency.
Note the law does also have immigrant visas which are designed to lead to permanent residency, such as E1 visas: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/visa-inf...
Like you, I tend to think this is a ham-handed move, but like one of the sibling comments, I also have to acknowledge that it’s common for other nations to require change-of-status applications happen outside the country. For example, Japan requires this for some (but not all!) visa modifications.
Also, I’ve seen otherwise reliable sources making unsupported claims about this (e.g. “Existing applicants will lose their ability to apply again if they leave the country”) that aren’t clear from the minuscule amount of information that has been released so far.
As usual with these debates, the content is far more heat than light.
Needing to leave to convert a normal working/spouse status to PR is not the norm anywhere.
H1B is only 36 years old. The Immigration Act of 1990 always meant it to be a temporary status, which is why it is so easily imperiled.
The fact that it's "common in other countries" is entirely irrelevant to what the United States does.
It's not even clear it's common in other countries. Japan is notorious for being insular.
This is a garbage move by this administration that flies in the face of decades of precedents _in the United States_.
Every time my Canadian work visa expired I had to drive over the border, enter the US, turn around and drive back to start the new one. The border guards call it “flag-poling” because you do a U turn around the flag pole.
When I went from work visa to permanent resident I had to do it, in January, in Alaska, at -44 degrees and nasty ice on the roads. That border required 30km of driving through no man’s land before I got into Alaska. I asked the Canadian as I was leaving if I could just u turn his building and come back right now, and he was very firm I had to enter the US, even if for just 20 seconds. Nasty drive, but all ok
Or, we can be honest, and acknowledge these actors have proven themselves to be irrational. What is happening is that an end-goal is desired, and then the trump administration is working backwards to make it happen.
They also were not called visas, but permits. Visa is for entering the country, permit is for staying.
This new policy is different than the "flag poling" you've described. The new guidance requires immigrants to return to their country of origin, then apply for the change in status, and wait in their country of origin while the change in status is being processed/considered which can take many years. If the status changed is approved, they can move back to the US.
Neil Gorsuch's mother had to resign in disgrace as the EPA administrator under Reagan in a case that ultimately became what was called "Chevron deference" [1]. Chevron deference meant that when Congress wrote ambiguous statutes, courts would defer to the interpretation of the agencies responsible for enforcing them. Almost 40 years of laws were written with this standard in mind. Critics claimed Congress should be explicit but they know this is bullshit. Congress simply doesn't have the bandwidth to pass a law every time an agency wants to change a regulation and they know it. This is all about deregulation so companies are free to poison the air and water without fear of prosecution or lawsuits. It would allow, for example, a Federal circuit judge in Amarillo, Texas to issue a nationawide injunction on pretty much anything where before Federal judges had to defer to agencies.
It has been Gorsuch's life mission to avenge his mother's humiliation. Overturning Chevron became a mission of the conservative movement and they finally succeeded in a case called Loper Bright [2]. As an aside, Gorsuch really should've recused himself from the case. A consequence of that was that the Supreme Court accepted an interpretation that executive agencies should be government by the Administrative Procedures Act ("APA") instead. So that's been the law of the land since Loper Bright. That creates a number of problems:
1. To change an agency rule now requires a complicated process unde rthe APA of proposing a rule change, getting public comment and generally following a statutory procedure. This administration that wanted Chevron overturned never does that. So under Chevron they probably could've done that. Now? Any memo like this can be challenged for failing to follow procedure. There have been cases where USCIS has had temporary injunctions imposed on them for this reason: the judges are saying USCIS is likely to lose; and
2. This memo is relying on a Supreme Court case that considered adjustment-of-status ("AoS") an act of "grace". Well, that precedent was set under Chevron. Chevron no longer applies. So which is it? Do you want Chevron deference or don't you? You can't have it both ways;
3. Millions of people have open cases under the previous rules and interpretations. Courts are likely to take a dim view of a retroactive rule change like this. New cases filed after this memo was released may not enjoy the same protections; and
4. There are people who cannot or should not leave the US to consular process. They may have incurred unlawful presence that will then get them a 3 or 10 year bar from returning. This bar may well apply if they have to consular process instead of do an AoS. Some people may not be able to leave (eg asylees). The wait time to get an interview at a local embassy or consulate varies wildly. In some cases it's already more than 12 months. If you add over a million current AoS cases to that, the wait times are going to explode. But the cruelty is the point.
Also, decisions by consular officials have very limited ability to be challenged in court. That's also the point.
This will be challenged in court. I think it will make it up to the Supreme Court as early as the next term and this court more than any probably in history bends over backwards to let the president do whatever he wants.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_U.S.A.,_Inc._v._Natura....
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loper_Bright_Enterprises_v._Ra...
For example:
> Overturning Chevron became a mission of the conservative movement
Chevron’s biggest proponent was Justice Scalia!
> A consequence of that was that the Supreme Court accepted an interpretation that executive agencies should be government by the Administrative Procedures Act ("APA") instead. So that's been the law of the land since Loper Bright.
Executive agencies have always been governed by the APA. That’s why it’s called the “Administrative” Procedures Act.
> To change an agency rule now requires a complicated process unde rthe APA of proposing a rule change, getting public comment and generally following a statutory procedure
That’s been true since 1946. That was the whole point of the APA. Chevron itself arose out of an EPA rule making under the APA.
You’re completely mistaken about what Chevron was about. It was just about whether courts must defer to agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes, or whether they get to decide the interpretation themselves.
This feels like it might be the actual motivation of the Trump admin to do this change. The cruelty is indeed the point.
Bush W. and his father's single term.
Biden and his family's troubles with the federal government.
Musk and gestures broadly at South Africa
Trump
I'm sure the list goes on.
On one hand, I'm so relieved that I have been able to dodge everything that the administration has been throwing at immigrant (legal and illegal alike), trying to see what sticks, like mass deportations, border wall expansion, visa restrictions, asylum crackdown, H-1B cuts, and chain Migration Ban.
On the other hand, we cannot apply for citizenship for 3 more years, even though me and my wife have been in the US for combined 25+ years, and paid over $100,000 in taxes last year alone, and it's jarring to imagine what the administration will come up with next to make the process less straightforward than it seems.
Most disturbing is the fact that a lot of people I know who climbed the same ladder will go out and cheer what the administration is doing.
Since USCIS is blocking Adjustment of Status, and the Department of State is blocking green card emission for citizens of 75 countries, this means that if you are from the following countries you are effectively banned from getting a Green Card:
Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Bhutan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Burma, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Colombia, Cote d’Ivoire, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dominica, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Fiji, The Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyz Republic, Laos, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Nepal, Nicaragua, Nigeria, North Macedonia, Pakistan, Republic of the Congo, Russia, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, and Yemen.
[1] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/News/visas-news/i...
On the other hand I've always wondered if most of America's competitive advantage at driving tech innovation hasn't simply been through capturing the ROI of other more social minded countries investing in public education. It could be a massive long term benefit to Europe and Asia especially if they get to keep the talent they created, and more globally distributed innovation seems like it could have some benefits to global welfare.
That they don’t is entirely their own fault and they deserve to be brain drained. “Talent” are people with agency and not possessions subservient to national interests.
It helps that a decent portion of the population hates and/or is fearful anyone different from themselves. That is what's allowed for these even more draconian and brutal measures.
If you have filed I485 and they fail to process it before your current visa expires (D/S ends like F1 OPT). Then what? You just have to leave, abandon AOS and re-apply for CR1?
It’s insane that the simplest immigrant pathway; spousal green card could take 12+ months and may now require temporarily moving and being separated. Guess I actually will be paying $4K for a lawyer (plus the 3-4K just to file the USCIS forms).
I wish they would just have a simple fast lane for the 100% legal, non-complicated case.
For clarity here, I don't think this is a great direction. A massive strength of America has always been its ability to draw immigrants. People that are willing to leave their families, cultures, etc behind are generally a cut above the average and it shows. The US is being, in a word, stupid and we are already paying the price for it and will for generations to come.
A number of people, especially in tech sector, legally stay in US while their GC is being processed. They have kids born in the USA. If such people were to leave USA to seek green card:
- the kids must first get visas to their parent's countries
- once reaching the other country, consular offices now have multi year wait lines for getting an appointment with a office to even hear your case.
- parents may stay in that country but what if kids run out of their visa? A number of countries offer citizenship via parents e.g. Indian parents can obtain Indian citizenship for their kids but it also means letting go of the kids' US citizenship. And what if the parent's country does not have such mechanism?
It's completely illogical that a person must first stay in a country for 5 years to become eligible for a green card and then leave for x years to get a green card to come back !! this is just a tactic to get non-immigrant visa holders out of the country.
Far from a loophole, applying from inside the US is the only reasonable way to apply for a greencard. Depending on the country of origin, there may not even _be_ a US consulate, and where it exists, the wait can stretch into years, and the odds of approval much lower. You can't reasonably get a job at a US firm while being physically located somewhere else and on the other side of an uncertain and greatly attenuated greencard application process. That's just not how this works.
Whoever thought of this is either intentionally malevolent or inexcusably incomprehending of the immigration process.
Instead we're doing exactly the opposite, cutting down on legal immigration as well. Making it hard for me to believe that it was ever about illegal immigration at all.
The bottom-line is that she thinks the J-1 / au pair program should be discontinued.
Your wife's experience is an outlier, not the fact that she speaks English.
Gemini gets this correct: “The H-1B visa is a nonimmigrant classification that allows U.S. employers to temporarily employ foreign nationals in ‘specialty occupations’ that require highly specialized knowledge and at least a bachelor's degree.”
The requirement of being permanently obligated to pay us taxes on global income, if you have any kind of global mobility, is not worth it when you look at the situation objectively. The US is the only country that requires this, and signing up is voluntarily.
So while US immigration continues to act as though people will jump through any hoop they put up in order to be granted the extreme privilege of being able to live in the country indefinitely, it’s worth realising it’s not the 70s anymore and thats a goal many people are no longer optimizing for. In fact the opposite - the most talented people I know are all planning their lives to not settle long term in the US.
Does anyone know if this mean that I as a US citizen, who has a spouse who has already applied/submitted their application (but has been waiting while the government drags its feet on it for over half a year), will now need to say goodbye? Things were already getting blurry when we moved quickly to get things in when we saw the winds in 24....
This is all so terrifying.
What matters here is how your spouse entered the country, what visa they are on, how soon you got married after they entered the country, their entire immigration history and whether or not they've accured any unlawful presence.
It seems like people who are on so-called "immigrant intent" visas (eg L1, H1b) might still be able to ordinarily adjust in the US. What this will affect (if it isn't struck down) is people who entered on a visitor's visa or a student visa (both of which are not dual-intent) and then got married and filed for adjustment. Those people might be forced to consular process if this stands. People who have already filed when this memo was released might still be able to adjust. We really don't know until this gets tested in court.
But interestingly there are work visas that aren't dual-intent (eg TN, E3). Those people may not be able to adjust with consular processing if this stands. That's a big change. It may force them to adjust to an H1B first.
“A spokesperson for US Citizenship and Immigration Services, however, told Semafor that H1-B visa holders and high-skilled workers might not be affected in the near term.”
Source: https://www.semafor.com/article/05/22/2026/trump-orders-gree...
So any further spokes-person-ment is just more of the same -- no rule of law, just what we decide today or tomorrow.
Everything set by precedent from 1952-present is out the window.
If the person adjusts status in usa, there are more possibilities for appeal etc.
It basically means a huge percentage of these people might never come back. Once you go back to your home country, life moves on. Your plans change. Your path changes. And that could be terrible for the economy.
Hundreds of thousands of people either wouldn’t enter the local economy, or they’d be delayed for a very long time. I really don’t see companies being okay with that. Think about all the students who are ready to enter the job market. Instead, they’d have to go back home, wait for a visa, and only then come back. That kills the speed of the economy and makes hiring way more unpredictable.Or at the very least, it would seriously slow things down.
Despite being able to show 10 years of consistent working history with income far exceeding the minimum, because I didn’t have a job lined up in the US (who would, or could, in that scenario?) we had to ask my wife's elderly parents to sign affidavits of support to prove I wouldn’t become a "public charge".
There were several times where we felt so insulted by the process, the length, the cost, the targeting from scammy law firms, that we almost gave up. People who have never been through the legal immigration process don't quite understand the amount of work it requires and stress it causes. I feel for the thousands of people who now have little certainty over their futures, and it feels necessary to say: people who come here to contribute their skills and experience don't all come along on an H1-B/L1, nor do they only come from white or european countries.
Come to the EU instead, we want more STEM people.
That may sound harsh, even hyperbolic, but we teach a really whitewashed version of slavery in schools, like these were just laborers who worked the fields but just happened to be owned by people. That couldn't be further from the truth. Conditions were normally horrible. The conditions captured people were kept in in Africa, the Middle Passage, the slave auctions, the living conditions, the physical violence, the loss of language and culture, the destruction of family units and, last but certainly not least, the industrial-scale, systematic rape of enslaved people for centuries, easily numbering in the tens of millions of victims.
But I have to object to the implication that the EU is somehow free of any of this. Like the UK, France and Germany (in particular) don't have far-right to neo-Nazi movements threatening to take over government.
Also, ask any average European about Romany, Syrians, Turks, North Africans, Arabs, Muslims in general, Polish people or Russians and there's a decent chance you won't get American-style racism, you'll get almost "scientific racism". I'd posit that a decent number of Europeans are only 1-2 steps away from taking phrenology seriously.
You will hear arguments like "they don't assimilate" or "it's cultural not racism", just as you would in the US.
Unfortunately the country in that dream no longer exists. I now avoid jobs that require travel to the US. As a non-American it makes a lot more sense to focus on building up the tech centres closer to home.
Arguably it was never perfect and the ugly bits where there, so a lot of that is about an image it projected to the outside world.
You know it is the land of the free when you have to give them access to all your social media accounts at the border. I have heard stories of fellow countrymen being held for weeks without hearing any cause. So yeah, no thanks.
Maybe if you restore the rule of law and have the current, president, supreme court justices and representatives removed in 20 years or so.
Bigotry and xenophobia has brought the downfall of the US empire, for real. It was always more about who believed in it than it was for real. The US had an ugly history that it tried to ignore for the passt hundred years and at some point unsurprisingly it comes back to haunt you.
Unfortunately tilting towards fascism outweighs those.
Nothing new there, but under the new rules the former is no longer an option and you'd need to leave immediately. On the plus side consular processing tends to be cheaper and often faster (AOS and all the approvals vs the consular processing fee and a plane ticket).
The system sorely lacks reform to align the legal fiction with reality, which is precisely why this news release may sound entirely sensible for the uninitiated.
The game has changed.
You have ICE officers randomly abducting people off appearance alone and then detaining them for days if not weeks. If you were a citizen the whole time, cool who cares.
No one in America has any rights.
That aside, even as someone who's been in this country for generations, I've been exploring options to leave.
America is behind most of the developed world in terms of standards of living. I was in Asia for a while and I felt a fraction of the fear I constantly do at home.
It's not getting better.
If it looks like 1930s Germany and quacks like 1930s Germany, get as far away from that duck as you can.
Where did you move to and what are you doing now? (I'd love to hear from anyone else who's left too)
Genuinely curious, what does taxes have to do with it? Everyone pays taxes, legal or illegal in some form.
I don’t think paying your dues should make you more likely to get through the pipeline. After all, you paid those taxes because you made good money, which is what people come here for.
All things that we should be supporting if we are indeed wishing our nation to prosper.
A plurality of Americans don’t pay federal income taxes, so we’re essentially turning away someone who is building up our country.
It's popular trope from the GOP that immigrants are an economic drain on the US. They get free <insert whatever you want>, so the US must throw them out to save money.
You mean they’ve contributed generously for the compensation they’ve earned?
Of course it's just not true. Like most current Republican talking points, it's plainly fabricated; it's an outright lie. But, since a lot of people believe it, it's useful to reminder everyone that its not the case.
If the US, a country with a too low birthrate, throws out even the best kind of migrant (namely the kind that generates a lot of value for the country), you're going to be in deeper shit than ever before for decades to come.
Now I agree that paying taxes or not should have nothing to do with it.
I'm being facetious of course. I hate what maga is doing to our wonderful melting pot.
If I was you I’d choose to be a multi-billionaire instead and keep my race.
I always joke that all naturalized (citizens) immigrants automatically become republican. I say it in earnest because effectively all naturalized people who I know side with anti-immigration, except agaisnt people they know, but none of them take my "joke" seriously.
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/trump-administr...
Also a consular interview has no appeal process. A denial stands unlike AOS.
I left my home country for a better life.
If the country I moved to was going downhill, I’d be looking to move again. I already did it, so I know it’s worthwhile.
If one paid 100K+ in taxes I assume one had opportunities to make such high income by being in US which one can be thankful for.
> On the other hand, we cannot apply for citizenship for 3 more years, ...
I am sorry but I am just seeing too much of an entitlement here.
Sounds like you may be a good candidate for Trump's gold card.
I'm being fecitious of course, but I'm just pointing out that thinking of citizenship worthiness in monetary terms is something the president has already considered.
I never considered illegal immigration, nor will I ever - I value predictable outcomes.
But looking at these new rules, I can't help but think that it really punishes people who want to play by the rules and sets the price for ones that don't to approximately $15k.
Actually, it kind of make sense why only the most desperate try to get into the US , people who have something to lose are naturally repelled by the bureaucracy.
Now it doesn't seem viable at all. Meanwhile, anyone who shows up illegally is merely "undocumented", and half of US politics consists in coddling them (the other half in enforcing existing immigration laws capriciously). Even for someone who's quite pro-immigration like myself, that's just bizarre. There's no way this is a functional system.
Most of the people in my circles don't want to go to the US anymore. I suppose I'll ride it out and see what comes next (after 2028 at minimum). If I ever make it, I'll have spent many of my productive years outside the US, since I wasn't welcome during those. Weird system.
I don't see the problem, and I'm not even American or Trump supporter. It just makes sense.
I don't really understand the position of many comments which seems to be somehow "We should be welcoming the world" but like why? Why wouldn't you prioritize your citizens first especially seeing the job loss lately?
It's not about rights, it's about keeping your promises.
"Join the army and get a green card" -- oops did we say that?
But then we have only been fair weather friends (see how we treated pretty much any one who put their lives on the line) so I'm not very surprised at what's happening.
My personal preference would be to allow nearly unlimited legal immigration but strip welfare programs for all. In this way we allow anyone and everyone to become an economic participant, voting participant after the naturalization process, and mitigate those immigrating purely for handouts.
But I haven't thought through this policy well. Maybe there is something this seemingly solution is missing.
Stripping away all wefare because of immigration is a bad bad bad idea.
What about long term immigrants who end up disabled through no fault of their own? Or who get cancer? Or who end up having a child (who is an American citizen) and that child is special needs and the immigrant can't manage a full time job and care for their child? If they get pregnant and end up on bed rest or with a traumatic birth that takes them out of the workforce for a period of time?
There are ways to end up needing to rely on welfare that aren't due to laziness or a desire for handouts.
If the answer is 'kick them out', I'd be worried about what we're teaching our American kids watching. There are two lessons they could pick up, and neither is good for their moral development or sense of self. The first is that anyone who lacks the ability to work has no value, and that will engender greater alienation and isolation as they place all of their self-worth on their ability to earn money. They'll look upon the elderly, children, and caretakers with disdain (Interestingly, this probably won't help the birth rates either...). The second is that they are protected but those people should be disposed of when they're not useful. This will make them arrogant and introduce the idea of dehumanizing other groups, which will further the cracks of division in our society.
So, whenever you think about purely capitalistic policies with no social policies, we just have to be okay with having a large number of babies and toddlers starving on the streets in front of us.
When you hear about republicans cutting $900 billion from Medicaid, and millions of families losing coverage, that means children. Almost 50% of Medicaid recipients are children. Most of the other 50% are their parents. So millions of children now do not have healthcare. Your post advocates for millions more to lose coverage. That translates to children dying and having lifelong disabilities from otherwise preventable illnesses.
The other inevitable outcome of policies like this is exploitation of women. It might start with “voluntary” sex work, but it becomes a bigger business that invites true exploitation and rapidly leads to human trafficking. Btw, that “voluntary” is there because it’s usually a choice between sex work and spiraling into homelessness and poverty - so not super voluntary to begin with. And we’re not even counting women more women who stay in abusive relationships because they are fully dependent on their partner for sustenance and shelter.
All that is to say that anytime advocate for a certain set of social policies over another, it’s usually informative to look at how they impact the most vulnerable in our society. Start with kids, then consider disabled and women. And finally ask why we’re generally okay with men starving on the street but not toddlers.
What do you mean seems too. The biggest proponents of immigration routinely ask "who's going to work the fields?" As a call to allow immigration. I don't know how to interpret that as anything but importing an underclass.
Poor choice of words. Illegals are not citizens. That's the whole point.
> have no recourse if they're exploited
The recourse is to go back. In the era when you could just immigrate to the US just by getting on a boat (before the Immigration Act of 1924), about 1/3 of immigrants went back to their home country if they did not make it in the US.
See:
> From 1908 to 1932, 12 million individuals migrated to the United States. Over the same period, four million returned to their source country.
-- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00144... (you have to pirate it to view the full thing)
But now, the expectation of leftists is that the government is somehow supposed to help the failed immigrants.
It take tremendous effort to immigrate, legally or illegally. Anyone telling you that they are lazy is obviously lying.
That doesn't make any sense. If you want "cheap labor [that] can't complain about mistreatment," you want a weak border, not a strong one, because a weak border creates a larger pool of illegal immigrants to draw from.
A strong border, at a minimum, reduces the supply of illegal immigrants, and may even push the employer into hiring people with legal immigration status who can complain and sue over mistreatment.
> It helps that a decent portion of the population hates and/or is fearful anyone different from themselves. That is what's allowed for these even more draconian and brutal measures.
I'd put it another way: a large part of the population has been put under a lot of stress and pressure, while simultaneously being intensely conditioned to not blame the people actually responsible. That stress has to go somewhere. Don't blame the little guys, even if you find them contemptible because they're not from your culture. Blaming the little guy (for "hat[ing]...anyone different from themselves") is another aspect of the conditioning that protects those actually responsible.
A larger pool with more rights and less fear of being deported. That means it's easier for them to pick and choose the jobs they do or even to start their own businesses.
They could, for example, form a union without the fear of deportation.
Look, if this were all about stopping illegal immigration, there are very fast paths to doing that. A prime one would be punishing not the immigrant, but the employer of the immigrant. Fine every farm in the US that employs an illegal immigrant and you'd quickly see the number of those jobs being worked drop.
But that's not what ICE is about which is why they and legislators haven't done that really basic enforcement.
Heck, at the start of this admin, Trump had to pull back ICE from raiding farms because the business interests of the farmers collided with the xenophobia of Steven Miller.
They have "flooded" the US borders because in the first Trump term, Trump instituted a policy of having applicants for all sorts of reasons to have to stay in Mexico before they can be accepted.
That's the primary reason why there are now huge encampments at the border. They weren't there under Obama, Bush, or Clinton.
> why don't people stay in their own country or go somewhere else?
A lot of people are asylum seekers, and a lot of that reason they are seeking asylum is US policy which has destroyed their home nations. The best example of this being the likes Venezuela, Cuba, and Haite. The US putting international trade embargos on governments it doesn't like, plunging them into poverty, creates a bunch of refuges.
Some people are simply seeking a better life. Some have bought into american propaganda about how awesome the US is to live in. Some people are simply trafficked into the US for the explicit purpose of being exploited. (In fact, that's the majority of human trafficking in the US [1]).
Also, allowing farms and construction companies to find cheap labor is a reason for a weak border, not a reason for a strong border.
It's all over the map. A lot of countries are easier to visit. Becoming a citizen, however, is difficult for most countries.
> Also, allowing farms and construction companies to find cheap labor is a reason for a weak border, not a reason for a strong border.
You are mistaken in thinking this is a normal labor market. The reason it reduces prices is because it weakens the ability for labor to negotiate. A strong border with internal enforcement makes it easier for a farmer to tell a day laborer "do this, or I'll call ICE on you". How well do you think a day laborer can negotiate a raise in that circumstance?
Consider, for example, the fact that farmers aren't employing US citizens or documented workers even though they are infinitely more abundant than undocumented workers. Why do you think that is? What mechanism is making the undocumented worker cheap and the documented one expensive?
A fast path to documentation and more rights lets more people in, but it also increases the labor costs because the workers are able to negotiate in the market.
Today's news make this crystal clear: the current admin does not want citizens marrying outside the country, regardless of how quickly the marriage rate among US population is falling.
Immigration policy in the current administration (which seems to be driven by Stephen Miller) is not based around legalaities, it's based around cutting immigration as much as possible because that's what satisfies Trump's voter base. These people do not care if you 'did it the right way'. They have an atavistic hatred of foreigners.
White immigrants are fine with this administration.
"All but 3 of 6,069 refugees taken in by Trump are White South Africans"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2026/05/22/trump-south-a...
I get being out of the country for the initial application (the consular officer in Sydney explained that it typically had to be filed by the sponsor, while the sponsor was in the US and the applicant was overseas, so that there was "no" concerns on coercion, etc.), but this... oof.
> Guess I actually will be paying $4K for a lawyer (plus the 3-4K just to file the USCIS forms).
And then of course the $85 biometrics fee every time you talk to USCIS, which could be multiple times in the process.
> Guess I actually will be paying $4K for a lawyer (plus the 3-4K just to file the USCIS forms). I wish they would just have a simple fast lane for the 100% legal, non-complicated case.
It would have been cheaper, and faster, for me to have come here from Australia on the visa waiver program (which says "no marrying a USC"), married my partner, said to USCIS "oops, my bad, can I stay anyway?" and go through -that- process, than the proper K-1.
I've seen so many people who call their cases "simple" or "straightforward" but 2 minutes of fairly superficial questioning reveals there are actually huge minefields or deep, fundamental flaaws in their case. It's way cheaper to have a lawyer from the start than it is to screw up her case and then get a lawyer involved once she's in removal proceedings, which is a very real possibility.
So here are some base questions to ask:
- How did you get your citizenship? If you were born here or got a green card through an employer or parent, that's fine. If you got it from being sponsored in a previous marriage, that's what USCIS calls a "pivot case" and you will have a high level of scrutiny;
- Did you know your wife prior to her coming to the US? If so, USCIS might take the position that this was a scheme for her to come to the US and adjust status rather than consular processing and the burden of proof that it wasn't is on you;
- It sounds like your wife is on OPT. If so, she completed her studies, which is good. USCIS hates cases where someone comes on an F1, doesn't complete their studies and get married. They can accuse such people of committing immigration fraud;
- How soon after her last entry to the US did you get married? Too quick (generally under 60-90 days) and USCIS may accuse her of misrepresentation, which is a huge problem;
- Did she make any visa applications and misrepresent her status to you?
- Did she make any misrepresentations to CBP about her relationship to you when entering the US?
- Did she ever violate the terms of her F1 visa? For example, working without authorization;
- Has she been married before? If so, were there an I130 filed for her previously?
- Has your wife ever been arrested, charged or convicted of any crime other than traffic ticket citations? This can be a far bigger problem than you realize even if it's something "trivial" where she gets probation;
- Did she apply for an F1 for one school, come to the US then change schools? If so, USCIS might take the position she did a misrepresentation.
Also, anecdotally, USCIS seems to be taking advantage at interviews of people who don't have a lawyer by threatening the citizen to withdraw the case or by getting the citizen or immigrant to agree not facts that aren't in evidence or aren't true and then using those facts to deny or delay the case.
Are you prepared for the interview where the officer may separate you and then compare your answers?
There's more to an immigration attorney than just filling out forms. A good attorney will prepare you for the interview and identify (and hopefully solve) any potential issues before they become issues. People generally make bad witnesses. I'm reminded of the "do you know what time it is?" scene from the west Wing [1].
I'd strongly advise a lawyer.
> Did you know your wife prior to her coming to the US? If so, USCIS might take the position that this was a scheme for her to come to the US and adjust status rather than consular processing and the burden of proof that it wasn't is on you
Depending on status, per my lawyer, the assumption is that the visa is valid based on the initial application process. The burden on my "fixing" things, despite divorce, etc., was on USCIS to show that it wasn't sincere. That means they -did- ask for evidence (bank statements, insurance policies, financial instruments, cosigned leases, etc.) but they had to show that those "didn't sufficiently show an authentic relationship".
> Did she make any visa applications and misrepresent her status to you
This can be a challenge, but not usually a problem. After my visa was granted I started interviewing from Australia for jobs. When I did get a job, my new employer through a HR mixup set wheels in motion for a H-1B for me, which I hurriedly told them to cancel as I didn't need it.
> Are you prepared for the interview where the officer may separate you and then compare your answers?
Definitely will, not may. We faced questions like "what night is garbage night and who takes out the trash usually", "how long have they been working in the field they are currently employed in" (not just how long at current job). "Are both their parents alive, where do they live?" etc.
A lawyer is, especially now, a solid investment.
We live together and spend >90% of our non-working time together so I can't imagine an interview being a problem.
As you can see, besides maybe the "crime" of taking an international vacation, our case is as simple as it should be.
> Also, anecdotally, USCIS seems to be taking advantage at interviews of people who don't have a lawyer by threatening the citizen to withdraw the case or by getting the citizen or immigrant to agree not facts that aren't in evidence or aren't true and then using those facts to deny or delay the case.
I mean that's really the issue. USCIS appears to be intentionally adversarial.
The explicit purpose of this is to reduce legal immigration, and reduce the number of people becoming citizens.
There is no world in which the same racist, fascist administration doing this does anything remotely like what you describe.
I don't think this is "racist", even Europeans are in the same boat to apply as far as I know, those are mostly white, I don't think racist is the right term here. Isn't America already heavily mixed?
I suppose little matters from the before days, but I've only been a permanent resident for 2 years so maybe this timeline helps: https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Green_Card_Application#Timel...
Even the current right wing party CDU doesn't seem to want to make migration harder, but when the extremist party AfD gets voted into office, an already highly damaged balance will break.
Sad how people become so detected from reality that they make their society irrelevant and destroying a lot of wealth in the process.
To me it feels like the US pretends they don’t need immigrants when:
1. The overwhelming majority of current US residents were immigrants themselves at some point in the last 150 years (only natives were there, everyone else immigrated from somewhere)
2. The US wouldn’t function without illegal immigrants
3. Every country is short of workers in one domain or another. Encouraging immigration in these domains (see how Canada does it for instance) would be the smart move. But instead… yeah let’s make it even harder across the board
EU countries are working on imigration rules that would allow for bringing imigrant labour without ever extending citizen privileges to them. A sort of permanent uderclass. This is what voters want at this time.
I am German and honestly can't wait to move to the US once I get a suitable H-1B offer. I already spent 8 months in Boston for a research stay, and back then the doomer mentality among natives was wild to me. From an outsider's perspective it’s crazy to watch. Life, and especially the ceiling for what you can achieve, is still 10x higher in the US than anywhere else.
I think people in the US severely underestimate how stagnant it feels in Europe and other continents right now. We are basically just stumbling from one crisis to the next, without any strong leadership (the US two-party system definitely has its advantages here, as you're able to charge fullspeed into one direction instead of not moving at all).
If you actually want to build ambitious things, the friction here is exhausting. And instead of being rewarded for high output you get taxed to death to prop up a system favored towards an aging/declining population. It's essentially a massive boomer tax. Younger workers have zero political leverage to change it because our demographic is just too small to matter at the ballot box.
Sure, the US definitely has its ugly sides, but if you want to work hard and actually capture the upside of what you build, it's still the only game in town. Even if that means jumping through all the hoops the current gov throws in your way.
I hope I can call myself an American one day.
> Younger workers have zero political leverage to change it because our demographic is just too small to matter at the ballot box.
Because:
> can't wait to move to the US once I get a suitable H-1B offer.
But not if you want to build solar or wind energy. Then you get rekt, no matter what the law says.
I think that this is only true to some extent. There are many successful engineers and scientists who work in Europe that earn good money and live well. Especially if you're a researcher, Horizon grants provide really good opportunities to collaborate with people from different countries
I think you haven't applied to remote jobs. Almost all of them only hire within $country.
Because money and taxes, both of which are unchanged due to this policy
And boy wait til you find out how other countries treat immigration and visas. You'll be shocked to learn they're also super racist and don't give everyone citizenship at birth just because of being there!
They are, in your words, very stupid countries
This is not true, India has something called “Overseas Citizenship of India” which is technically not a citizenship even though the name says, but its a life time visa available for US citizens of Indian origin. And you don’t have to give up US citizenship
The OCI card is better thought of as a green card that you have to reapply for once at the age of 65.
It provides the ability to live and work, with some minor restrictions, but none of the typical benefits of citizenship that wouldn't come with permanent residency in the US.
The bigger issue honestly is that the kids may already have grown up in the American culture and fluent in English and it could massively disrupt their education and well-being to throw them into another system somewhere else, depending on how they were raised and whether they are fluent in the language of the country of their parents. In many cases they are not.
I'm curious: If these changes aren't designed to be harmful in these ways, then what do we imagine is the intention?
So what’s a pregnant immigrant to do ?
This is wrong. There is no minimum time in the country for a green card. You are thinking of citizenship. That is different.
You are incorrect. What you said is technically true in that there is no statute that requires it, but in practice, OP is correct.
It varies depending on the country of origin, but in the case of immigrants who hold citizenship from India, which is the country OP mentioned, you can likely expect to have to wait that period or even much longer before becoming eligible, unless you have a way to otherwise jump the queue.
HN is now filled with agenda pushers peddling obvious fake information about the US.
In this situation, wouldn't the kids already have citizenship of their parents countries?
Also the USA used to have weird rules about young mothers not transferring citizenship automatically (which the whole Obama birther myth relied on).
Trump is a distractor and can make a whole country forget about <insert recent insanity>. Passing a judge is a minor detail here.
Of course it is stupid to talent-leak your country but he just needs you to forget about $LATEST_SCANDAL. That's the value for him. Trump doesn't care about the future of US.
And distracting does not take skill. It only takes a mind poisoned to the core. He will throw anything in his chaos machine to extract wealth. And US has an endless supply of those juicy valuables and values that you can sacrifice and shed.
Let's see what next week has in store!
Here's a short and incomplete list: USA, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile.
The logic is that the culture is what makes you part of the country, not the blood in your veins.
The other side of that logic is that you're not guaranteed citizenship to the country of your parents. It certainly isn't automatic.
What you are saying used to happen but not anymore.
What is minimum qualifications? Enough to get an interview?
Thats obviously extreme but given the abuse in the status quo it’s hard to defend what was going on and whine about this now. Some folks are obviously angry, but that anger is better directed at those that were abusing the system not those trying to fix it.
Ironic that liberals turn into libertarian boot likers for mega corps when it comes to immigration.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/23/us/politics/trump-legal-i...
like it was simple and easy before that. Now it becomes borderline impossible
All because he was a massive loser in middle/high school, and like most bigots, his hatred is rooted in needing to have someone "beneath" him. So he based his entire personality and life around hating anyone not straight, white, male, and "American" so he could feel better about himself.
It is amazing how many people have been killed from all the policies he's been ramming through, simply because of a huge inferiority complex.
It's also a bit sad how every generation of immigrants turn around and pull the ladder up behind them.
Yep. You're kind of in jail.
It doesn't mean that you cannot, it just means that it might complicate your already complicated application. So if a family member dies, maybe... But that's it
"Nonimmigrants, like students, temporary workers, or people on tourist visas, come to the U.S. for a short time and for a specific purpose. Our system is designed for them to leave when their visit is over. Their visit should not function as the first step in the Green Card process. "
I read this with the assumption that "nonimmigrant visa" applies to every category of visa listed here under "Nonimmigrant Visa Categories":
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/visa-inf...
Edit: the policy actually indeed mentions dual intent categories:
> USCIS reminds its officers that applying for adjustment of status is not inconsistent with simultaneously maintaining nonimmigrant status in a category with dual intent.
It does it in a way that will, for sure, cause confusion though.
[1]: https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/memos/PM-...
From https://www.uscis.gov/green-card/green-card-processes-and-pr...,
> Adjustment of status is the process that you can use to apply for lawful permanent resident status (also known as applying for a Green Card) when you are present in the United States. This means that you may get a Green Card without having to return to your home country to complete visa processing.
This phrase is one of those viral ear worm kinda things tossed into so many conversations, it doesn't actually mean anything at this point it's so overused.
Those weren’t services for the benefit of the immigrant. Those were a service to the US citizen who sponsored them and had to sign up to be on the hook to take care of their welfare.
The government was very clear to my spouse that she could divorce me the second her application was granted and I was still on the hook for any welfare she may end up needing.
This is just being anti immigrant. The same way they talk about illegal aliens and then you find out they really mean legal asylum seekers because they don’t like the process.
Or when they use the phrase Heritage Americans to discount recent immigrants.
Or when they just straight up say we have too much legal immigration.
The only surprising thing about this change in policy to me is that they are still keeping a veneer of not being racist on it, instead of just being as open as they have in other cases.
Practically every country has pathways to permanent residence or citizenship via non immigrant visas, including the US.
Why? Because it makes practical sense. You can be living in the US on a H1 visa for 6 years, and at this point you could have a wife, kids etc, so it makes sense to have a pathway to residency where you don’t have to leave the country at that point.
Also, it's quite hard to become a permanent resident/immigrant even without the obstacle of this being categorically prohibited. My family, for instance, overcame some very low odds of success to make this happen (highly educated, both PhDs, for what it's worth).
I have learned that most Americans, probably through no fault of their own, have absolutely no understanding of how their own immigration system works. The options for legal immigration were _extremely_ limited and byzantine, and have been for decades, long before Trump.
I cannot be this calm about the administration that is all about the chaos and harm. Thank you for writing what I can't.
But it’s not supposed to be extremely common to apply for a green card on an H or J visa. Those visas are explicitly “nonimmigrant” visas for people “temporarily” in the U.S. who have “no intention of abandoning” their foreign residence. Read the statute: https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:8%20section:1.... It’s subsections (a)(15), (a)(15)(H)(i)(b) and (a)(15)(J).
The people who thought of this are trying to return the practice to the actual intent of the law. The law was sold to the American public as a temporary worker program. It was not billed as a pathway for permanent residency.
If the intention was to limit the number of people becoming permanent residents, then they could have done that explicitly. But by doing it this way, they are just fucking with people. And the talent that built our tech will take all their knowledge and skills back to their home country.
If the intention is to strengthen other countries by stopping their brain drain, then this would be a good move.
Your approach would be more correct in a civil law system, but there are no pure civil law systems anywhere in the world. In actual civil law countries, once there is an established interpretation of the law, it usually cannot be changed without legislative action.
Then the administration can say yes or no, in the same way that they can say yes or no to someone applying from abroad.
For IT jobs - why can't you?
Not to mention what does the company do for the I-9. The emploee has no authorization to work for a US company.
Have you not been paying attention?
This is usually just for the final issuing of the GC, and where USCIS approval has already happened (for instance, on an EB1A).
People frequently do this so they don’t have the travel restriction. Source: I just did it.
It's relatively unusual. 84% of EB1s adjusted rather than apply at consulates in the last quarter USCIS released data for. Maybe it made sense for your circumstances.
https://ohss.dhs.gov/system/files/2025-07/2025_0725_ohss_leg...
It's always weird to me to see confusion/uncertainty such as this.
It's intentionally malevolent. Obviously. MAGA types hate immigration. They make a lot of noise about illegal immigration, but the fact is that they hate all kinds of immigration (unless you're white-looking and conservative enough). Anything they can do to make it harder for non-citizens to stay in the US is exactly the point for them.
And more the better if they can sow fear and threat of cruelty while doing it. That's their playbook. It's MAGA 101.
The policy specifically calls out immigration violations as the problem. It doesn’t seem crazy to me to restrict the benefit of AOS in the US to people who have NOT committed immigration violations.
In addition, the policy specifically calls out that AOS in country is entirely appropriate where immigrants hold dual intent visas. This would include H1-B (skilled workers and family), L1 (corporate transfer) and K1/3 (spouses of citizens).
This is a long winded way of saying you're right with "intentionally malevolent"; this is the next step in a pretty transparent plan.
They might as well mail it to your home. That’s what happens today.
So that's kind of the point, to make the system arbitrary and capricious. It's to make the lives of immigrants more difficult.
For example, when one applies for adjustment of status ("AoS", meaning the I485), there are several things you can also apply for, most notably an Employment Authorization Document ("EAD", I765) and/or Advance Parole ("AP", I131) to allow you to travel.
In years gone by, you'd get the temporary documents in 3-4 months typically and your green card in under a year (after filing the I485, not for the entire process, which can be substantially longer).
So this administration has seemingly started a process for marriage cases where you file an I130 and I485 concurrently (the I130 is to prove you're free to marry and you have legally married, the I485 is to adjust status) where USCIS will approve the I130 but then just sit on the I485, not approving or denying the case, and never issue the EAD or AP so you can't work. Lots of people can't afford to not work for 1-2 years while this all plays out.
But that's the point.
Also, there are rumors that Palantir is getting invovled here. Rumor is that USCIS is sitting on I485 approvals while they wait for a new system to come online that will let USCIS look at way more data, likely including social media data, to find reasons to deny cases, so they don't want to approve cases before it's available. This is uncofirmed but there's a lot of anecodtal data for approved I130, no decision on the I485.
For marriage cases, this administraiton clearly wants people to consular process instead because the administration has broad powers that can't be challenged to simply withhold visas to nationals of certain countries and those bans can't be challenged in court, as per Trump v. Hawaii [1].
This is a problem for people who have made asylum claims because they realistically can't use the passport from whcih they've claimed asylum (if they even have it) and they certainly couldn't or shouldn't go back to their home country. A separate rule generally requires people to use the embassy of their country of birth. Again, that's to make life difficult.
It's not clear to me yet how this rule change affects those on H1Bs that want to adjust. Is the Trump admin going to require H1B holders to leave the country to adjust? That's going to create problems if so. The asylum case and the home country embassy rule mentioned above are two big reasons.
It’s the former: intentionally malevolent. Trump cabinet members, including Stephen Miller have said this is exactly why.
Everything anti-immigration under both Trump terms comes directly from the fascist Stephen Miller. From blocking Muslim countries to trying to end birth right citizenship.
Of course he has full support from Trump who usually lies about knowing fascists he's had lunch with or tells to "stand back and stand by."
And endlessly lies to demonize immigrants. "They're not sending their best." "They're eating the cats and dogs."
SPLC has an article on Miller if you want to waste your time.
https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/stephen-...
It surprises me a lot. You can be a politician making a career on a hatred of immigrants, but your prosperity is bound to the prosperity of USA, so why to destroy it? It cannot be just malevolent, it is plain sheer stupidity. It seems to me even worse than roman elites fighting their civil wars while Rome itself was crumbling. They were in a situation of a tragedy of commons, stupid but understandable. But USA politicians really going against immigration is just something else. You can always look tough on immigrants while not hurting brain drain from all over the world.
There were dumb rumors that Trump is a Kremlin agent, but now I don't think they are so dumb. It is not enough to be a fool to inflict so much damage to USA.
Every part of the MAGA platform is a smokescreen of outrage, intended as cover for policies that favor the ultrawealthy.
An aware and motivated population legislates and taxes their way out of the establishment and perpetuation of dynasties; this has been done in the past.
Six weeks and 255 Euro later, it was in my hand. I have to “renew” it every ten years, but that’s only because the card needs to match my US passport number (and means I don’t have to carry that book around); there’s no interview or document gathering.
The whole system of US of needing to leave the country to even renew visas is absolutely bizarre and does not have analogues in most other countries (at least EU/UK)
Perpetrator of misinformation or victim? Ignorant or malevolent?
Not really.
The answer is: have a fair, transparent and function system.
Then - yes - you can totally 'increase' (or decrease) as needed.
'Increase a bit' likely the right thing to do - but it's a completely separate question.
But throwing Green Card holders out is completely insane, grabbing people out of church and schools and putting them into detention without oversight is cruel and inhumane.
The national debate is insane.
Just basic, normal, reasonable policy and process.
That's it.
Like DMV level stuff.
Then you can adjust the numbers one way or another.
The numbers need to go up.
China, in particular, has an "elite overproduction" problem. We should be welcoming every English-speaking Chinese STEM degree holder with open arms.
Anyone, from anywhere, with a STEM degree and a job offer from a US company, should be in this country. Period.
America needs to be the leader of the knowledge workforce world. We also need a vibrant and wealthy tax base and consumer base.
If we don't do this, China and other up-and-coming nations will increasingly start to displace us, which puts all of our workers at a disadvantage.
So, the idea of illegal immigration as a vice worth cracking down on and punishing has not been consistently applied by the people publicly condemning it (like this current administration), meaning there is a very real sense in which the distinction between illegal and legal immigration is not real.
Those that jumped through all the hoops above bar, paid their dues in a messed up system where they bit their upper lip and got through it, and have been extremely frustrated at others trying to game the system.
E.g. https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-we-ha...
> And by the way, I want to make – I want to be very clear. I’m not just talking about illegal immigration, we have way too many legal immigrants coming into this country, too. 1.5 to 1.6 million legal people coming – Ilhan Omar came in legally and she hates the country. She’s a sleeper cell infiltrator of the United States representing Congress. She hates the country. She hates the west. She should be deported back to where she came from, Somalia. Go run for City Council in Mogadishu. The country is not enriched by people like Ilhan Omar.
A lot of those people had no issue with ICE bullying and detaining legal immigrants.
What do you think they mean by "100 million"?
This new policy is no different and is a trap to kick out and never accept back more non-white immigrants.
You can't be serious.
People who fraudulently or illegally come in have had it easier. And I was in the top 1% earner, built things that everyone here on HN has used. I’ve contributed a lot and struggled to get recognized. People don’t know how much of a mess this is. They claim they want smart people to come to the US. The system isn’t setup for it.
Miller's ilk is ascendant in this administration and their Court has blessed their approach to discrimination.
1. Illegal immigration is bad, and we should do more to reduce it.
2. Immigration (any kind) is too numerous. Eg someone could say "Nashua, New Hampshire is now 17.2% foreign born and I think that is too high." Within 2. there are multiple separate reasons to have the position. One could think that its bad for assimilation, or one could be upset that the Nashua school system's budget increases are almost completely due to having to hire more ELL staff to accommodate the rapid rise in non-English speakers in a school system that used to be almost entirely English speakers. I'm sure there are more complicated examples but I hope that one is easy to understand.
3. Immigration (any kind) is used to lower wages of the working and middle class via labor and program abuses. At the low end, this used to be a leftist talking point (the kind Bernie Sanders once talked about). At the high end, it is grousing about H1B abuses. Despite many agreeing that th program has large abuses, H1Bs are legal immigrants.
Your idea of an "easy solution" doesn't remotely correspond to a solution for people who think #2 or #3. Even for #1, someone who dislikes illegal immigration does not necessarily want more legal immigration, though that used to be a very common view (eg, Bill Clinton in the 1990s, I think George Bush too). If a person believes #3, increasing the number of legal immigrants may simply increase the corresponding abuses.
n.b. the text above is descriptive, not normative.
Otherwise we could just get rid of immigration law and then everyone would be a legal immigrant.
First, a lot of the immigrants that people complain about now are only immigrants because the US fucked up their country. Venezuela is the poster child for this. There are consqeuences to destabilizing other countries for American corporate interests.
Second, companies like illegal immigration. It allows them to pay people sub-minimum wage in horrible working conditions and if the workers every complain, you just call in ICE to deport them. You pay a small fine for employing undocumented migrants and the next day hire a new batch. You probably even have avoided paying wages to the deported workers.
Third, a lot of attention is paid to people who sneak into the country. This is the minority. Also, "entering without inspection" (that's the legal term) is a civil infraction (unless you've previously been deported; then it's a crime), much like a traffic ticket. You technically aren't a criminal if you do this.
But the majority of undocumented migrants are visa overstayers. They get a legal visa to come to the US, often a visit visa, a student visa or a temporary work permit (eg J1, H2A, H2b) and just don't leave.
And to answer your implied question, it's not about illegal immigration. It's about white supremacy and the exploitation of labor under capitalism.
Yes, and that's a big part of the motivation for this policy of forcing people on temporary visas to physically leave the US in order to apply for permanent residency. It prevents people who get a temporary visa and plan to overstay that visa and nonetheless apply for some kind of pathway to permanent residency in the US from being able to do that.
There's xenophobia almost everywhere: Just look at South Africa this year.
The irony is that if anyone thinks they are going to solve this problem - I have a bridge to sell. If GoP solves this then they are going to lose of the biggest talking points in next elections. I can see this being challenged and drama played out for long time saying "other side" is not letting them move forward with it.
All the while the "extraordinary" Green Card will actually be "ordinary" - done by greasing POTUS palms. Because POTUS and his supporters are hell bent on turning America into a third world low trust country.
Let's say hypothetically the UK increased its population by around 3 million since 2020, including one particular influx designed and implemented by Boris Johnson to suppress wage inflation, which had a direct effect on the lower end of the job market for the native population. You could also easily argue it led to a direct surge in popularity of the far right party Reform.
Purely hypothetical of course...
You'd consider that a good thing?
Imagine if we began processing immigration applications at a rate ten- or a hundredfold of what we currently do. Imagine if just about anyone could get in, barring things like people with actual serious criminal records, etc. Imagine if when you got in via that system, you got some kind of long-term resident visa, which required you to pay an additional tax for, say, the next 10 years. Also imagine that this long-term resident visa gave you a path to citizenship, on condition of permanently renouncing all other citizenships you might hold. In other words, imagine that becoming a legal immigrant was far less onerous in process, but slightly more onerous in official requirements.
Such a plan could be framed as encouraging immigrants who want to "put down roots", and that kind of immigration is much more plausibly spun as beneficial, because people who move to a place to live permanently do not want it to be sucky. By making the process simpler but applying clear costs (e.g., extra tax), it also gives people an easy to way to demonstrate that they want to do things the right way.
Also, making the process more straightforward makes it much more politically palatable to deport people who violate it (which will still happen). A large part of the "bleeding-heart" leftist perspective towards immigrants stems from a sense that many people who immigrate illegally do so because "they had no other choice". If the bar to legal immigration is lowered so that it becomes a live option, this argument is harder to make.
Stephen Miller is upset he never got to experience that.
Immigrants from Europe will some how get an exception depending on their skin color. Same goes for South Africans
Usually when I find out someone’s making that deceptive claim and call them out on it they quickly admit that they don’t think asylum is/should be legal
But an inconvenient process change has you clutching your pearls and crying "bad faith"? Yikes.
Also, the fascism isn't enforcement, lol, and you know that. I hate people who try to be cheeky and dishonest and hope nobody is paying attention.
No, I know you've talked with people on the left. The problem is pouring tens of billions of our taxpayer dollars into ICE while they:
1. Do fuck all to improve the economy
2. Cause violence in our cities for no discernable gain
3. Have already shot and killed numerous American citizens
4. Regularly violate civil liberties because they have zero accountability
I mean, listen: you've won. We have the secret police, we've been deporting people left and right.
Well... is it better? Did it magically fix the economy like dumbass Republicans told you it would? Or is everything still shit?
Same shit as DOGE. "Ohh we just have to cut some stuff! Get those greedy Dems and their welfare state!"
Well, we cut it. Okay where's my check? Right guys?
Oh... or were we just duped. And maybe the reason you, and others, can't admit it is because your ego is bigger than your need for self preservation?
USCIS doesn't have the authority to just unlawfully deny a case. It can be challenged in court. They can make your life really difficult. For example, they can put you in removal proceedings if you're an overstayer with a petition that they unlawfully deny and then you're out of status. So now you have to go to immigration court, where the odds are stacked against you, and either get your case approved there or get removal proceedings cancelled. And the administration is holding certain people in removal without bond even if they've been here for decades. And some people, like those on ESTA, have waived their right to see an immigration judge at all.
They prefer what's called "consular processing" (applying outside of the country vs "adjustment of status" in country) is that it takes way longer and the administration has way more power to arbitrarily deny your case, as is the case with certain current banned countries. The Supreme Court ruled the president's power to limit visas to certain countries can't be challenged. The case was from the first Trump term. It's called Trump v. Hawaii [1].
But one thing they are also doing, which is evil, is taking advantage of people come to a USCIS interview without an immigration attorney. They separate the couple and threaten the US citizen that they're committing fraud and to withdraw the case or they get the immigrant to admit things that are false or they just outright deny the case on faulty grounds because people aren't knowledgeable enough to fight back without a professional. It is evil.
This means nothing if there are no real consequences in terms of change in behaviour. Every country has their own priorities, and looks like the US decided to move on from pax-Americana.
Source?
Where have you seen this documented? I haven't, and the only government statement I've seen about this was fairly clear that the change is for new applications.
I am genuinely asking. I have friends who are going through the process.
"Forcing green card applicants to leave will render many green card applicants’ ineligible because, when they leave the United States, they will trigger the 3- or 10-year bars on receiving an immigrant visa based on accrual of unlawful presence."
You are correct about this.
> H1B is also non-immigrant visa, but it is dual intent visa meaning it doesn't have that requirement
You're incorrect about this. The concept of "dual intent" doesn't exist in the Immigration and Naturalization Act. It was created by executive fiat. H1Bs, like other non-immigrant visas, still requires non-immigrant intent. It's different only that it has two carve-outs:
Subsection (b) excludes H1Bs from the "presumption" of immigrant intent that applies to other categories of aliens. Subsection (h) provides that applying for permanent residency "shall not constitute evidence of an intention to abandon a foreign residence" for H1Bs.
So H1Bs must still have non-immigrant intent. It's just that they are carved out of certain presumptions that would automatically establish immigrant intent, which would lead to denial of their visa. It gives the executive flexibility to essentially look the other way when an H1B applies for a green card. But it doesn't confer any legal rights* onto the H1B. The administration can at any time decide that you actually have immigrant intent and yank your visa.
I can only assume that's accidental. You're the 17th most active person on HN, so I'm certain you've seen an overwhelming amount of evidence of how skilled immigrants are immensely beneficial to the US economy.
The H-1B is not the only path to a green card. There are many ways, every case is different, and pretty much all of the paths suck, even if you do everything right.
This decision only makes all of those paths worse.
That's irrelevant. "Justice" means following the rules. Congress gets to decide the immigration laws. Congress has never created a real system for skilled permanent immigrants. The term "H1B" actually comes from 8 USC 101(a)(15)(H)(i)(B).
Subsection (a)(15) literally defines the term "immigrant" to exclude people in the subsequent subsections, including (H)(i)(b). Subsection (a)(15)(H)(i)(b) then reiterates that the category is for someone "who is coming temporarily to the United States to perform services." Congress didn't hide the ball.
It's just an example of how the immigration laws have been a bait-and-switch for decades: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/electi...
Reason? Because banks don't want to deal with the mandatory annual reporting of the "US Persons" to US government on regular basis.
Their solution? Don't have a "US Person" as your client.
- The USA passed a law called the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which mandates that any bank doing business with Americans overseas must report certain information to the USA: https://www.irs.gov/businesses/corporations/foreign-account-...
- When anyone anywhere in the world opens a bank account, the bank asks if you have ever been a “US Person,” and if you have been, then you need to provide documentation about whether you currently are or aren’t (typically showing a USA passport or proof of having renounced USA citizenship)
- For banks that will work with Americans, they have to report basic information back to the USA every year, which includes highlights like your contact information, tax ID, account numbers, end-of-year balance, etc.
- Americans also must self-report this kind of information via the FBAR (Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts, technically FinCEN Form 114), which isn’t too horrible to fill out other than the fact that you file it through FinCEN’s clunky BSA E-Filing system, which still wants you to install Adobe Acrobat Reader like it’s 2010.
- FATCA is primarily annoying to banks because they already have to comply with CRS, the Common Reporting Standard, which is basically an international standard developed by the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) where participating countries automatically report each other’s residents’ financial information. The kicker is that the USA never actually joined CRS, so banks have to run a whole separate FATCA process just for a relatively small number of Americans living abroad, which is a big duplication of effort.
Also, your other 'facts' are incorrect. The US for example has the highest amount of disposable income per family, has a lower tax burden (despite your complaint about it) then almost all developed countries, and there is one more (small) country with global taxation.
If you're a US citizen living abroad you get a Foreign Earned Income Exclusion of $130,000 for 2025 taxes. So if your income was $130k you'd pay zero in US taxes. You potentially also get to deduct housing costs and get a credit for foreign taxes you already paid among other things.
If you're paying a "major portion of your income" as a US citizen living overseas you're probably pretty dang wealthy. Go wipe your tears with your bands of $100 bills.
Many countries have higher rates than the US and have reciprocal treaties to avoid double taxation. In practice it means many people end up paying zero taxes to the US. Of course it will depend on the country you want to reside in, but then what's the point of seeking out a US passport?
There is actually a list with metrics https://greatcountry.org (disclaimer: my pet project)
#27th
I would say some of the indicators are a little odd.
Some of them are questionable in terms of capturing the spirit of the idea ("violent crime" being the same in the UK and the US is a surprising one to me for example. It's capturing serious assault per 100k, but is then not considering murder as violent crime. You have murder later, but maybe combine / group them?).
Some are confusing because they are not clear politically: everyone wants less violent crime, but I don't know your politics and so have no idea which direction you have weighted net migration and asylum/capita.
I guess these immigrants must be stupid.
The US has a lower standard of living than basically all OECD countries.
To use a sports analogy, the US is last place on the pro league ladder, while also being first place on the “everyone else” ladder.
> A refused green card application might be the end of being ever in usa.
Do you have evidence for your other claim? The main thing you need to prove for a non immigrant visa or VWP is that you won't overstay or have intent to immigrate at the time of application and upon entry. Otherwise it's up to the consular officer like usual. You would need to declare the refusal/denial of course.
What will get you denied is "inadmissibility" if you don't submit a waiver. If you're inadmissible that usually means some serious violation and you've got other problems.
As far as I know, people have been successful in re-applying for EB green cards after being rejected when they've assembled a better packet.
People are deemed to have immigration intent for small things like they don’t have enough ties to their country of residence. An application for immigration is definite proof you had intent to immigrate. You can wait like ten years, but time doesn’t work in your favor (immigration gets harder every year, people get older and handcuffed elsewhere…).
1. Decisions by consular officials largely can't be challenged (with some exceptions). Decisions by USCIS can be challenged in immigration court and/or federal court, depending on your case;
2. Thanks to Trump v. Hawaii, the president has the broad power to ban the granting of visas to people overseas. There's currently a ban on 39 countries. That cannot be challenged. It can be challenged in the US;
3. When you apply for an immigration benefit in the US, the USCIS field office that deals with it is determined by where you live. It used to be the case that if you were outside the US, you could get an embassy appointment in the country you were residing in. This administration changed that such that you can only use the embassy in your country of birth/citizenship. So, if you're a Kenyan citizen living and working in France, you have to go back to Kenya for your consular interview. That might take wait times for getting an interview from 1-2 months to 1-2 years, depending on the embassy. It's also a huge hassle and expensive, possibly;
4. The GP is correct here. When you apply for any immigrant visa, meaning you or a spouse, sibling, parent, child or employer files an I130/I140 for you, you've demonstrated what's called "immigrant intent". That means that for people from many countries they are unlikely to ever get a nonimmigrant visa ever again. USCIS thinks you're tryign to sneak into the US to adjust status rather than consular processing. They also think if you enter the US, you won't leave. Obviously citizens of Norway are treated differently to citizens of Nigeria. I'll let you ponder why;
5. If you accrue unlawful presence in the US (for which the rules are complicated), you may get a 3 or 10 year bar on returning to the US. In addition, because you have overstayed a visa (or have entered without inspection), you may simply not ever get another visa again anyway. It's unclear from this memo if the 3/10 year bars will apply here. We won't know until we see how it's implemented;
6. Certain people may be in limbo because they don't have the option to leave to consular process. I'm mainly thinking of people who have made an asylum claim. There are people who have filed for asylum in 2015 who don't have a ruling on that case yet. 11 years is a long time. They might meet someone and get married and then seek to adjust. This is a complicated process that comes with its own perils but generally they adjust status and then withdraw their asylum case or, in some cases, seek cancellation of removal from immigration court. Do they have to leave? They may not have travel documents. They can't really go back to their home country. This may create a situation where they can't adjust and they can't leave so they're in limbo. Also, if the asylum office decides your asylum case was "frivolous", you may have a permanent bar on ever receiving an immigration benefit. That's much more difficult if not impossible to challenge overseas;
7. What makes you inadmissibile isn't necessarily serious. It can be a simple mistake. For example, if you marry a US citizen then working without authorization is forgiven (mostly; it's complicated) but you have to be really careful how you answer questions on the forms and to officers. So you might answer "no" the I485 question about working without authorization even though you did a few Ubers 7 years ago, which is forgiven, but you've now made a false claim and that may make you inadmissible needing a waiver. A good lawyer will argue that it wasn't "material" but this USCIS much more than any previouis is having a stricter interpretation of any of this;
8. As another example, "crimes", particularly "aggravated" crimes or crimes of "moral terpitude" can make you inadmissible. But what are those? There are guidelines but there's some grey areas where USCIS has discretion. For example, being convicted of a crime with a potential sentence of more than 365 days will make you inadmissible. But sentencing guidelines can be whack such that if you speed as a 16 year old, you might get charged with something and, not knowing any better, get offered a deal for probation on a crime of reckless driving that can technically be up to 2 years of jail time by the sentencing guidelines. Well, guess what? You're now guilty of an aggravated crime and can not only have your green card denied, you can be denaturalized and deported. No, this isn't a made up example.
IANAL but I know what I know and, more importantly, I know what I don't know, which is a lot. But what's particularly frustrating to me is the people who have no idea what they don't know. The above just scratches the surface.
The US government should not give permission to anyone at all to set foot on US soil, unless the mass of existing citizens of the US are comfortable with that person eventually voting as a citizen on what the composition of the government should actually be. And as a US citizen, I am not comfortable with letting the vast majority of people in the world - many of whom are scrambling for any legal opportunity at all that will let them legally reside in the US - vote for the government that passes laws that affect me.
Why? Aren't L1 and H1B "dual intent" visas?
So why would you need to leave the country, if you couldn't figure out why you don't want to issue one in the year+ it takes to jump through the hoops
Just a fun fact, getting a green card means signing up for ten YEARS of tax liabilities in the US. And those 10 years start, AFTER you relinquished it...
Pick any other developed country and the process is generally fairly simple. With some you can just apply for a temporary work visa (possibly without a job) or just apply to immigrate. If you stay in many places long enough on a temporary visa you pretty much get residency and ultimately citizenship.
Beyond what's possible, the time frames for doing anything with US immigration is ridiculously long. Like if you, as a US citizen marry someone overseas it can take upwards of 4 years to get a green card for your spouse and they won't be able to visit the US at all in that time. Why? Because filing a marriage petition means you've shown "immigrant intent" so you'll never get a visit visa (B1/B2) again. Also, the president may well just ban your country from getting any visa. 75 countries are currently on that list.
It's also incredibly easy to make a mistake at some point in the process and that may end up getting an approvable case denied or, worse, you end up with an improvidently granted benefit that cannot be repaired, even if it was an honest mistake.
It's pretty normal not to be able to look for work on a tourist visa in most countries - are you suggesting this is unusual? As far as spouses, they used to have an incredibly asinine system where they told you your spouse _could_ work, without sponsorship, if they got a special form, but getting this form was de facto impossible. It was a very Irish approach, in retrospect. The campaign to fix this was, eventually, successful. (https://reformstamp3.wixsite.com/home)
But out of the pool of people who come from poor countries, who don't have jobs lined up in the U.S, and aren't here on a skilled worker visa, a large fraction of them will end up relying on welfare benefits.
Family-based visas are a huge loophole in U.S. If you look at most of the immigrant ghettos in the country, they're fueled by family reunification. In my own extended family we have several people, who came here based on my dad's sponsorship, who are a drain on the government. (The sponsorship commitment is basically never enforced.)
Later, I was recognized for that potential benefit. Last December, I became a citizen.
Framing it that way is backwards and anti-democratic. Democratic citizenship is something the government "owes" you because it is imposing control on your life. It is not some kind of magnanimous gift of club membership, you already deserved to have a say in what's being done to you.
That's why most Americans (and their children) have never once been required to "prove" that they are "beneficial", and it's why people the government is controlling in jails are still citizens rather than objects.
My salary in the UK was many multiples of this guideline, but _earning potential_ is not considered. Pragmatism is not really a service offered by USCIS, it's too political. To be on-topic: this move will disincentivize smart but not-yet-wealthy people from immigrating to the "land of opportunity". It was already harder than it had to be.
Best moment of the process.
The craziest bit I found was the GC interview where they test your spousal relationship. Expected questions like "What side of the bed do you sleep on?", "Who takes out the garbage?" -- instead they spent 30 minutes interrogating my wife about the military base she was born on and spent the first 6 months of her life at ("Who was the commanding officer at the time?"). It was like something out of a KGB script.
Notably, and very relevant, the UK recently made it substantially harder for UK citizens to bring over spouses to the point that even teachers don't meet the income thresholds necessary to qualify.
Australia is more expensive AND takes longer than the United States for the equivalent spousal visa.
This seems entirely reasonable. You had as much time as you could have liked to apply for jobs after deciding to try the USA. Fortunately you were able to take advantage of an alternative that didn’t require that.
I’m not really sure what you were going for writing that. You think 10 years working in country A should entitle you to a work permit from country B?
> nor do they only come from white or european countries.
Why should that matter? If country B decides to only allow white and / or Europeans to apply to live and work in country B, that is entirely fair. It’s not people-from-outside-country-B’s privilege to decide what country B does or doesn’t do.
Discrimination is a human right.
You would also have enough time to actually enjoy life, not just work till death/health issues come in some empty prestige rat race.
Where else would people get opportunities that could match the United States? I can't think of any country that would even come close.
Please don't. Europe has enough ethnic tensions. At least the US is built to be an ethnic melting pot. It's much better to go there.
It's unfortunate there's friction to the process, but it's by design. 15% of American citizens and permanent residents are foreign born, the highest it's been in 50+ years, so people are successfully making it through the process. Ideally we'd have better levers to (1) modulate the rate of immigration, (2) simplify the process of legal immigration, and (3) still somehow limiting illegal immigration, quasi-legal immigration, overstays, etc. This is not the ideal solution.
> it feels necessary to say: people who come here to contribute their skills and experience don't all come along on an H1-B/L1
Do people migrate to "contribute their skills" to a foreign country, or to improve their lives? Maybe I'm a cynic, but I suspect the vast majority of people throughout history have migrated to improve their lives, not to altruistically benefit a foreign country. And that's fine, that's normal. It's what motivates people, and the U.S. has a long history of being shaped by ambitious people, especially immigrants, who wanted to improve their lot in life.
> nor do they only come from white or european countries.
I don't know if that's necessary to be said, because who thinks that? In recent decades, 85%-90% of immigrants to the U.S. are not white. >90% if you include undocumented immigrants. The trajectory of America from a white majority to white minority country is fueling at least some of the immigration backlash today. But I think for most people, it's a feeling (right or wrong) that jobs becoming harder to find, houses are becoming harder to afford, and more and more people are competing for fewer resources.
Is it though? This administration doesn't exactly have a track record of decisions based on carefully thought out policy implications.
I think the two are often linked.
> I don't know if that's necessary to be said, because who thinks that?
Effective January 21, 2026, the Department of State paused all visa issuance to immigrant visa applicants who are nationals of seventy-five countries. The overwhelming majority of the affected countries are not predominantly white and are not European.
People come to improve their lives.
Their employers hire them to improve their lives.
Both end up better off!
These are not mutually exclusive. I want a better life, and I also have career ambition and skills that I'm willing to deploy in a place that will give me a better life in return.
You can't migrate to Arab countries easily if you come from sub-Saharan Africa. Is that "Arab nationalism"? No, it's just countries enforcing their borders and immigration policy. Effectively what pretty much every country does. You can't immigrate easily to most countries, it's the norm, not the exception.
> (h) Intention to abandon foreign residence > The fact that an alien is the beneficiary of an application for a preference status filed under section 1154 of this title or has otherwise sought permanent residence in the United States shall not constitute evidence of an intention to abandon a foreign residence for purposes of obtaining a visa as a nonimmigrant described in subparagraph (H)(i)(b) or (c), (L), or (V) of section 1101(a)(15) of this title or otherwise obtaining or maintaining the status of a nonimmigrant described in such subparagraph, if the alien had obtained a change of status under section 1258 of this title to a classification as such a nonimmigrant before the alien's most recent departure from the United States.
What does the text in italics mean? It's there because having an intention to abandon your foreign residence makes you ineligible for a nonimmigrant visa, including H1B. All 1184(h) says is that a petition for permanent residency cannot by itself be used as "evidence of an intention to abandon a foreign residence" for purposes of renewing your H1 visa.
That's all "dual intent" means. It's a fiction where you can keep saying "I intend to go back home after my temporary work in the U.S."--which remains a fundamental requirement of H1B status--and the government can't point to a permanent residency petition as evidence that you are intending to stay in the U.S. permanently. The law doesn't give the H1B holder any right or expectation of being granted permanent status.
The law does have immigrant visas for people who can come here and say "I want to work here and seek permanent residency. I'm not intending to go back." H1B isn't like that.
you are, obviously, interpreting the law to fit your narrative:
""The fact that an alien is the beneficiary of an application for a preference status filed under section 1154 of this title or has otherwise sought permanent residence in the United States shall not constitute evidence of an intention to abandon a foreign residence for purposes of obtaining a visa as a nonimmigrant described in subparagraph (H)(i)(b) or (c), (L), or (V) of section 1101(a)(15) of this title or otherwise obtaining or maintaining the status of a nonimmigrant described in such subparagraph"
All this means is that you, indeed, can be dual intent and apply for permanent residency while holding a H-1B, like generations of Americans have done before ourselves.
Some stats I found online report that ~60% of greencards are granted to people already living the US. This memo makes it seem like that route will now be much harder. So while its true that the law as written has always been true, they're definitely pushing for a change that will result in past behaviors no longer being true.
Except it is completely contrary to how the immigration system has worked in the US for decades. It is absolutely standard for people who are already in the US on other types of visas to apply for Green Cards.
The immigration act of 1999 very clearly created it as a temporary visa not a stepping stone to a green card. That's a modern invention.
Also, are those people not the exact demographic that so-called "anti illegal" Republicans should want? They're highly educated and desirable, not welfare queens right?
I will repeat my point. You have been lied to. The Republicans do not give even a single shit about what is legal and what is not. What they desire is less brown people, and then they work backwards to justify it. Any other interpretation is just not reasonable at this point, with the evidence we have been given.
Which is a perfectly fine thing by the way. I can't see anything wrong with it. If the Americans want fewer "brown" people in their country, that is entirely their prerogative. It's their country, after all.
I am from India. Indians themselves have preferences for the kind of people they'd like to allow to immigrate to India. Bangladeshi muslims are not desired, whereas Tibetans are welcome. Intra-regional migration is a problem within India itself, with certain populations being seen as less desirable in certain areas.
Perhaps the "brown" people can work on fixing their home countries so that they wouldn't have to emigrate in order to enjoy a better quality of life.
For example O-1 is not affected because O-1 is not considered a temporary visa in US law.
O-1 also has no cap. The USA can take in unlimited O-1 immigrants.
So capital flooded to the US.
So we all have our own theories.
The real question remains "What's best for America right now ?"
Actually the opposite. There were severe restrictions to emigration. They didn’t want people leaving the Soviet Union (or the satellite states) and going to the West. The Berlin Wall for example. Things weren’t so rosy behind the Iron Curtain.
But no, US citizenship, like everything else in this country, a cost.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/16/travel/renouncing-us-citizens...
And if you have unforgivable student loans because you believed the k-12 propaganda, then you can never "leave". You might be done paying them by the time you, uh, die.
Having to go abroad when a visa/PR has already been granted is totally pointless. Green cards are mailed to your home in the US right now.
Additionally, Japan has a very clear and straightforward process to convert HSP Visa (Highly skilled visa) to a permanent residency.
It can be done in 3years for most and to 1year for the high level candidatures (PhD profiles).
This is very far from the current H1B shitshow.
I mean, that's true as far as it goes, but HSP is one special visa amongst many, and they're not all so easy. Also, Japan is currently in the middle of its own dramatic restructuring of the immigration system related to HSP, including a number of new requirements that would drive critics of the US system to apoplexy (i.e. language fluency requirements).
Overall, the Japanese system looks a lot more conservative than the US one, though the sanity and consistency level is far higher.
Japan has a selective immigration system where the profiles JP gov considers as "necessary" are made easy to immigrate, and the others not so much.
One can disagree with the method, but at least it is consistent.
Near that, half of the American tech (and associated GDP) is constructed highly qualified immigrated engineers on H1B visas, and still the US gov openly shit on them.
> US system to apoplexy (i.e. language fluency requirements)
JP mainly just put some Japanese language level requirement on the HSP visas related to roles with communication. That honestly does not shock me.
There have been over 100,000 children separated from their parents in the United States due to immigration enforcement since 2025.
The feature story in the linked article is about a now 2 year old whose parents were not there for them beginning to walk or talk.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/18/us/brookings-institution-...
Now, you could absolutely argue that whatever the intent of the amendment was, it still protects the present-day state of Chinese mothers having zero ties to this country popping over for a few months and giving birth to a fully-fledged American citizen, because the law says what it says. That's a much better argument than saying that the Civil War was fought for the right of transient visitors or illegal immigrants to this country to birth citizens, because that's just absurd.
Because it takes so long, in practice the issue is that for anyone to sponsor you, they want you working for them during that time, and so that's why it often looks like someone gets an H1B and then "graduates" to a green card.
Immigrants come to the US with a variety of financial situations. Some immigrants are blatantly scamming welfare systems designed for poor Americans or are outright committing fraud (this is much of what is going on with the federal investigation and charges of Somalis in Minnesota). Other immigrants are paying taxes comparable to what American citizens would pay (this is probably the case for most people on H1B visas in the tech industry).
> The cruelty is indeed the point
What's the difference between this and just outright saying that enforcing the law is cruelty? After all, nobody enjoys being punished, even if it's for breaking the law.
I don't want people to be unlawfully present in my country. Enough people desired that same outcome that, through the democratic process, we have laws controlling immigration. There has to be consequences for breaking that law. It absolutely cannot be the case that anyone can break the law and then have it not matter on the grounds that to make it matter would be cruel. What even is the point of the rule of law?
The issue of taxation without representation had far more to do with the founders’ status as Englishmen and British subjects than their status as taxpayers. Paying taxes by itself was not a sufficient qualification for political representation. Felons, minors, and women were also required to pay taxes in the 1770s, despite not being able to vote. Immigrants who believe that the taxes they pay entitle them to this representation have bought into a falsified version of American history that was popularized during the Civil Rights Era.
United States Congress, “An act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,” March 26, 1790:
> Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof on application to any common law Court of record in any one of the States wherein he shall have resided for the term of one year at least, and making proof to the satisfaction of such Court that he is a person of good character, and taking the oath or affirmation prescribed by law to support the Constitution of the United States, which Oath or Affirmation such Court shall administer, and the Clerk of such Court shall record such Application, and the proceedings thereon; and thereupon such person shall be considered as a Citizen of the United States.
Part of the noise around this topic is that the administration just announced something vague with no detailed guidance, which leaves the door open for bad-faith interpretations by everyone.
When is a good question but can't be answered without an additional "Where".
With so many tech layoffs now it would be nearly impossible for most roles to claim there’s nobody else available, and under the current administration the historical games are no longer just flying below the radar. That hasn’t stopped some companies from still trying though.
Unfortunately, they do stir the populace in a cadence long enough that prior examples are are only fragments of memory.
More unfortunately, however, is that the time it takes to heal from such governments is similar to said cadence.
Trump is a distractor and can make a whole country forget about <insert recent insanity>. Passing a judge is a minor detail here.
Of course it is stupid to talent-leak your country but he just needs you to forget about $LATEST_SCANDAL. That's the value for him. Trump doesn't care about the future of US.
And distracting does not take skill. It only takes a mind poisoned to the core. He will throw anything in his chaos machine to extract wealth. And US has an endless supply of those juicy valuables and values that you can sacrifice and shed.
Let's see what next week has in store!
You'd be lucky today if that literal jail was IN the USA.
The process is very straightforward - without advanced parole or a valid visa you can’t come back in.
Or if you’ve violated immigration or criminal law you run the risk of being detained.
But that’s how the system is supposed to work.
Includes H and J. The letters used to refer to those visas comes from the subsections under 1101(a)(15)
This is a pretty broad swath of immigrants - H visa (worker and family), L1 (corporate transfer and family) and K1/3 (spouses of US citizen or green card holder).
What this limits are the truly temporary visitors - tourists, students, etc
https://archive.is/QKk0l#selection-923.73-930.0
https://dgcjnpzq7j07id.archive.is/QKk0l/41e225be79dbd90e86c6...
Poor people from the countries you mentioned won't be let into the countries with strong safety nets so, you can compare what it's like to be a poor Swede and a poor American but a poor Venezuelan has a 0% chance of becoming Swedish.
A well off Swede would likely make significantly more money in the US and doesn't really benefit much from the social safety net anyway, aside from healthcare, which, despite the price, is also better in the US.
Anyone in the world who is looking to leave their home country for more opportunity probably has the US high up on the list of places they'd consider going to that they'd actually be able to go to..
1. Master degree holders increased from 57.0% to 71.5%
2. Average wage increased by ~30% (estimated from the massive drop in the number of applications from the lowest category.
3. The balance has shifted from foreign workers to students in the US (F-1 visa), because they are exempt from the $100K fee.
I actually wish HN covered this, as many people were complaining about H1b being abused by abusive software companies bringing in cheap labor. About how hard it is for students studying in America to stay in America, etc.
But now we can't actually discuss a topic without attributing it to a person, so if it's attributed to Trump, all discussions become a shitshow.
Maybe it’s a New York thing.
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
There are reasons beyond the cultural history or being a country of immigrants. Much of the innovation of the US over it’s history is due to immigrants. From modern physics, the telephone, the Internet, mRNA vaccines, etc. 46% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by Immigrants or their children. 44% of billion dollar tech startups are immigrants.
Without immigration, the US would have negative population growth, which is economically probably a disaster. We’d have to achieve impossible levels of productivity to support the larger aging populations. Additionally the job losses you mention are mostly in Technology, Finance and Government… sectors that aren’t exactly dominated by immigrant labor.
Being protectionist doesn’t typically work out from a cost and labor perspective. We already have shortages in farming, construction and health care labor, which are often populated by immigrants. So overall, we’d have more unfilled positions, which would result in higher prices, etc. Native born Americans just don’t seem to want those jobs.
Nobody knows what the population growth rate would be without immigration. The two are interlinked; ceteris is not paribus.
> We already have shortages in farming, construction and health care labor, which are often populated by immigrants. So overall, we’d have more unfilled positions, which would result in higher prices, etc.
Letting the price of labor in those industries find natural market equilibrium is fine. For agriculture especially, labor is a pretty small part of a product's final cost, anyway.
> Native born Americans just don’t seem to want those jobs.
The price of labor aside, have you ever worked a job where you're surrounded by an ethnic clique? I don't blame anyone for not wanting that.
People care about this because it is arbitrary and capricious and runs counter to decades of established practice.
If the US is so "exploitative", we should be keeping illegal immigrants out for their safety.
And democrats only halfway want to fix it. If they actually succeed, they also lose a drum. And have to pay more for chicken and oranges.
Making non-immigrant visa or work permits easy to obtain would be trivial (relative to other gov endeavors). But we don’t. I’m left to conclude the political elite on both sides like it this way.
The H1B system was stupid. That doesn't justify any of what the Trump admin has been doing.
All this FUD in this entire post is disheartening.
The job board is inevitably going to devolve into one of those scenarios.
In principle, I am 100% with you. Pragmatically however, it's significantly more complex.
all laws, including immigration laws, should be enforced consistently and universally, and without bias. and the laws should be changed to make it much simpler and easier to immigrate especially if you are able to already secure employment, housing, and health insurance.
> If I walk into your house uninvited, that’s trespassing.
Sure.
What happens if your kid invites round a friend of theirs you don't like?
What happens if you are a kid and your sibling does?
What happens if you rent out a room to a lodger, and the lodger invites someone over?
What happens if you're a tenant in a rental, and the landlord sends in an emergency plumber?
Remember, every single migrant working illegally in your country is someone that another person in your country wanted to employ; if you're in the US, most of those employers will be selling you your food and your houses, which most of you seem to like, while some were South Koreans making data centres which you personally may hate but your pension funds love.
What the lower classes are concerned about is the value of their labor relative to others’, while the upper classes are concerned with getting a good deal by avoiding increases to the labor-cost floor. Bribes/subsidies and offered scams, have worked so far.
If the federal government, as an institution, were genuinely concerned about illegal immigration, it would have a different set of tactics. Start by punishing the sources of capital (fewer people), then property owners (more people), and only afterward the laborers themselves (many people).
What I see is a combination of class warfare and political theater, not a sincere effort to enforce the law. The law is incidental, made obvious by the exceptions the administration has had to carve out for certain industries.
Out groups are always the initial targets for these movements, but as time goes on any form of dissent will cause narcissistic wounding and will be treated accordingly.
When I heard the crowd roar every time Trump said “we’re going to kick them out” I knew exactly what the crowd was cheering. Trump never used those moments to say “but America is a nation of immigrants and we celebrate their contributions”. He wanted to rile up a crowd while maintaining a fig-leaf of “oh it’s only illegals who are evil”
You don’t have to have a PhD to understand the appeal and consequences of nativist populism — just the slightest understanding of history.
There's a reason no other country on earth tries to do this.
Boo hoo double taxation. Normal people get double, triple, quadruple taxed all the time. I get (at least) double taxed every gallon of gas I pump. I get quadruple taxed just having a roof over my head. My labor gets FICA taxes (a collection of multiple taxes), payroll taxes, federal income taxes, and potentially state income taxes. Your million dollar stock trade hit a few different tax jurisdictions, boo hoo. Miss me with crying about "double taxation" nonsense, it's a phrase rich people use to make poor people feel sorry for them.
> consider the cost of compliance
Oh so sad wealthy people have so many bags of money they can't keep track of them all themselves. Sounds terrible. Maybe they should sell all those assets and give the money away and rid themselves of such hardships. Send me a message, I'll take those struggles off your hand and relieve you of such burdens.
> the frequent impossibility of saving for retirement
You're already clearing more income free and clear from a US tax basis than most US households do. If you find it impossible to save for retirement after making probably far more than $130k (remember, the standard was "a major portion" of your income) then you should really think about how fucked the vast majority of your fellow citizens are.
It's pretty tone deaf complaining about how heavy all these bars of gold are.
Seems like it's a ploy to get all the undesirables out of the country, then it's "oops your application was denied, or it takes years to be approved, you can't come back. Sorry not sorry!"
For (1), I think that a good discussion with any business owner in a migrant-dominated field will tell you that hiring foreigners is done to keep costs low and avoid Baumol's law. As a result, locals don't want to work in such fields, reinforcing the need for migrants.
[0] https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/uploads/default/original/2X/9...
Hours worked: https://cphpost.dk/2025-06-18/business-education/career/inte...
Not true as Europeans are not concerned.
> how that could be
It doesn't have to be like this; for instance, you could require that migrant workers earn at least 2x the median salary to get a visa. It would avoid the whole exploitation of third-world workers paid a subsistence salary to save on costs.
Do you know a country that does this? ... Danemark! https://www.nyidanmark.dk/pl-PL/You-want-to-apply/Work/Pay-l...
> A consequence of that was that the Supreme Court accepted an interpretation that executive agencies should be government by the Administrative Procedures Act ("APA") instead.
Executive agencies were always governed by the Administrative Procedures Act. The law was created in 1946 for the purpose of governing executive agencies.
OP is completely wrong about what Chevron and Loper Bright were about. Agencies have always had to do rulemakings with notice and comment to promulgate regulations. Those rules obviously have to follow the statutory law.
Chevron was about what happens when an agency action is challenged in court and the statute is ambiguous. Chevron says the agency gets deference from the court in deciding what the law means. The court has to accept ghr agency’s interpretation as long as it’s reasonable.
Loper Bright says the court has to decide what the law means itself, just like it does for any other law.
More broadly, this isn’t even a “conservative” versus “liberal” issue. Scalia was the biggest champion of Chevron and Gorsuch authored Loper Bright. Both were/are Federalist Society guys. This is an internal disagreement among conservatives about whether agencies or courts have the last word on what statutes mean.
> The comment is misinformation. For example:
>> A consequence of that was that the Supreme Court accepted an interpretation that executive agencies should be government by the Administrative Procedures Act ("APA") instead.
> Executive agencies were always governed by the Administrative Procedures Act. The law was created in 1934 for the purpose of governing executive agencies.
So this seemed like the most ChatGPT comment, particularly because it made factual errors (eg APA was 1946 not 1934) but, hey, at least you corrected it. Maybe it was run through ChatGPT after the fact? I found this [1]:
> The U.S. doesn’t have a real statutory pathway to permanent residency for skilled immigrants. The current H1B to Green Card pipeline is built on a legal fiction papered over a visa program that was the word “non-immigrant intent” written all over the statute.
> Gemini gets this correct: “The H-1B visa is a nonimmigrant classification that allows U.S. employers to temporarily employ foreign nationals in ‘specialty occupations’ that require highly specialized knowledge and at least a bachelor's degree.”
Gemini, huh?
So back to the merits. Let me quote the actual decision [2]:
> Held: The Administrative Procedure Act requires courts to exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, and courts may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous; Chevron is overruled
This was what "Chevron deference" actually was: presumptive validity of agency interpretations vs what we have under Loper Bright where the APA is the only way of changing agency interpretations (other than Congress passing laws, of course). So, under Chevron, the USCIS could issue this memo and courts would've had to have largely deferred to the agency interpretation. Now they don't have that defense.
Or, to put it yet another way, it's what I said.
You should probably disclose your politics here. I'll use as an example this George Floyd comment [3].
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48244638
[2]: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf
Your comment meanwhile is still fundamentally wrong about the most basic facts: “A consequence of that was that the Supreme Court accepted an interpretation that executive agencies should be government by the Administrative Procedures Act (‘APA’) instead.”
The whole point of the APA was to govern executive agencies. So you’re wrong about the most basic premise of your post.
> This was what "Chevron deference" actually was: presumptive validity of agency interpretations vs what we have under Loper Bright where the APA is the only way of changing agency interpretations
Incorrect. The APA allows agencies to proceed in two ways: rulemakings and case by case adjudications. Agency interpretations can arise in either context. You don’t need a rule making to change an interpretation. You only need one to change something that was already a rule.
> Gemini, huH?
Yes, I quoted Gemini as a rhetorical device. “Even Gemini knows” that H1B is a temporary immigrant visa, not a pathway to permanent residency.
And even if they were truly non-immigrant, who cares? If someone comes to the US, does good, useful work, and stays out of trouble, I want them to be given the opportunity to stay permanently. You may not, perhaps, but, well... I don't care.
> The so-called "non-immigrant" visas are really not that. "Non-immigrant" has a specific legal meaning
The legal meaning here is the same as the common usage. For example, H1B is defined as someone “who is coming temporarily to the United States to perform services.” The words here are being used in their ordinary way.
> And even if they were truly non-immigrant, who cares?
You should care that the actual operation of the immigration system reflects the laws Congress actually passed through the democratic process. Congress didn’t have the votes to pass a permanent immigration pathway back then, and it doesn’t have the votes today.
If you want to make your case to change the law, be my guest. There’s zero appetite for it in the GOP, and very little willingness to use political capital on the issue by Democrats. Think about the fuss Democrats have made over deporting illegal immigrants. But they’ve said almost nothing about Trump’s attempts to restrict legal immigration.
You have plenty of historical examples of this, most prominently slavery being legal.
It's ok to defend a thing, but just because the law says so is very rarely a good argument.
> Any person born in China whose parents are both Chinese nationals or one of whose parents is a Chinese national shall have Chinese nationality.
> Any person born abroad whose parents are both Chinese nationals or one of whose parents is a Chinese national shall have Chinese nationality.
> But a person whose parents are both Chinese nationals and have both settled abroad, or one of whose parents is a Chinese national and has settled abroad, and who has acquired foreign nationality at birth shall not have Chinese nationality.
- "Settled abroad" means having unrestricted, legal permanent residence. Recently, it was clarified that the two-year conditional US green card does not count, for example.
- Due to an "interpretation," as this law was written pre-handover, the "settled abroad" limitation sentence does not apply where (one of) the Chinese parents is a HK/MO resident.
- A parent from HK/MO pre-handover, or Taiwan, is still a Chinese citizen and will transmit citizenship to their children.
If both/the only Chinese parent is a mainland or Taiwan resident, not settled abroad, the child would get a Travel Document to enter mainland China. They cannot get a visa to do so inside the foreign passport. Foreign passport can still be used for HK/MO/TW.
The child cannot get the ordinary red Chinese passport (unless they "resolve the conflict" by abandoning the other citizenship). They can, IIRC, still get a resident ID card if their parents still have hukou and register them?
In your scenario (not overseas citizen at birth), the child does have a regular red Chinese passport. Because they live overseas, they can get a permit from the Chinese embassy inside the passport to visit HK/MO, and they can also get an entry permit from the Taiwan authorities to visit for two weeks at a time, which is a loose leaf paper.
If one Chinese parent is a permanent resident of HK/MO, the child generally gets both Chinese nationality and HK/MO residence. Thus they are issued a full HK/MO passport. These passports still cannot enter the mainland directly, so they can ALSO get a Travel Document OR first visit HK/MO and then apply for the Home Return Permit using the domestic procedures.
Administration trying to force somebody out of the country to apply for a work visa just after they finished their 3 year training ("Ausbildung") on a training visa.
Before, the mother was not allowed to bring her child (10 years old) even though legally she had the right to do so. Fighting for a year, then paying a lawyer to solve the problem within a few weeks.
All while we are in desperate need of those people. In healthcare and other security as well.
It's madness as well and unfortunately people fail to realize both sides of the story, only seeing one of them.
https://www.uscis.gov/laws-and-policy/other-resources/unlawf...
Note particularly the following:
> Asylees and asylum applicants: Generally, time while a bona fide asylum application is pending is not counted as unlawful presence.
So unless there's currently a huge backlog of people staying here illegally who are somehow eligible for green cards in spite of this fact, the government changing it's policies to require new applicants do so from overseas is not itself causing these applicants to violate immigration law.
> ICE was/is putting them in jail while they appear for immigration hearing at courts.
You’re talking about a completely different set of events.
This policy change was just announced, and it has nothing to do with things that happened months ago.
- Argentinians in particular are over 60% of Italian descent.
- The richest man in Mexico was born to Lebanese immigrants.
- The chief military leader of the Chilean war of independence was born to an Irish immigrant.
- Peru had a president who was born to Japanese immigrants.
These countries have all, at various times, had an influx of overseas immigrants whose birthright citizen children rose to high stations in society.
https://refugeerights.org/news-resources/new-data-shows-visa...
With the raw data from 2023-2024 here: https://refugeerights.app.box.com/s/bizdcdev37oknqdwg8p93afi...
USCIS doesn't publish data on consular processing times, but even AoS processing were backlogged 3+ years. https://www.uscis.gov/green-card/green-card-processes-and-pr...
The majority of consular offices are, in fact, backlogged.
You want a better life, the country providing it is arbitrary as long as it accepts the currency that you can provide for that better life by your skill set.
If it was altruistic you would emigrate because you believe in the country you are emigrating to even if it meant your life was worse.
There is nothing wrong with that. I'm selfish, you're selfish, the government is selfish, everyone in the host country is selfish. It's human nature. We all want good lives. That's the reason a transactional economy exists. It's good for the country's GDP and overall economy to welcome outside talent, and that outside talent enjoys being rewarded for their contributions, and over time, their new place of residence becomes a part of their cultural identity. That's how things usually work.
Not everyone is a saint.
> If it was altruistic you would emigrate because you believe in the country you are emigrating to even if it meant your life was worse.
Reality check: 99% of people would take a better life over a worse life. And there's nothing wrong with that. The entire world is built with this as a base assumption.
Also, reality check: Life in the US kinda sucks unless you have a well-paying skilled job or a lot of money. In either case you'll be contributing to the economy.
My comment was about why this was not a “it’s both” type of situation. So just own your motivation for what it is—you emigrate so you can get a better life in a new country than you can get in your old country. That’s honorable enough.
And it seems you agree: people don’t move to a new place to contribute their skills.
They move because of the potential upsides for themselves.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/22/what-we-k...
100M is closer to the Total number of nonwhites including citizens than the number of immigrants legal or illegal.
Personally I have no problem giving people at a minimum permanent status if they decide to add to our declining population. I like to imagine when I'm old and weak someone there to provide my medical care.
I'm not picky on where their parents are from.
The French are virulently racist against Arabs and Muslims. Most of Western Europe is racist against the Romani, as well as against most Eastern European ethnicities (yes, even though they would be considered "white" in the US). It hasn't historically come up quite as much as in the US because most European countries are more homogeneous than the US is, but with the increase in migration—and particularly in asylum-seeking emigration from war-torn areas—it has become much more salient in recent times.
Japan is also racist, varying from moderately to horrifically depending on what the target group is.
These forms of racism don't always look the same as racism does in the US: for instance, the Western European bias against Eastern Europeans, IME, largely shows up as a widespread belief that they're lazy, and the bias against Romani is that they're seen as dirty, smelly thieves.
90% of all anti-immigrant sentiment, anywhere, is rooted in racism of varying types. Plenty of studies have made very clear that immigrants contribute more to the community and the nation, and have lower rates of crime, than people born in the country.
It is true that when a wave of immigrants first arrives in a new country, they take up more government resources for a period of time, because they literally have not had a chance to find jobs. But once that happens, they are likely to be working at lower-status, lower-paying jobs that the locals mostly didn't want in the first place. And once they have jobs, they aren't just somehow "taking up jobs that locals could have": they also create demand in the local economy, which creates more jobs. Because "number of jobs" isn't a fixed quantity.
And finally, in case you have been hiding under a rock for the last decade of American politics, this anti-immigrant sentiment is explicitly aimed at nonwhite immigrants. To the point that ICE routinely targets people based on the color of their skin, wholly disregarding their victims' status (many are legal immigrants or even citizens), and Trump actively seeks out white South Africans who want to come to the US.
You should distinguish between the American model of immigration, which has long been the beneficiary of positive selection effects until recently, against the European model (which seems to be more relevant to the GP), which unfortunately seems to have been designed for the exact opposite.
It's trivially easy to find research from Europe that consistently shows immigrants and descendants of immigrants as having higher rates of criminality than the native population. Even a pro-refugee source has to admit that immigrants in Denmark commit crimes at a level 2-3x higher[0].
And taking a step back, your statement on immigrants contributing more than the native population is absurd on its face. Why are immigrants immigrating to begin with? To seek a better life. Who made a better life possible on the other side of the fence? The native population. The degree to which immigrants, especially to the US, outperform the native population, you're just looking at the aforementioned selection effects; you're comparing the cream of the crop of one group to the median of another.
[0]: https://refugeeswelcome.dk/en/information/focus/crime-among-...
It's known that some EU nations such as France will have majority of Arab & Muslims in a few decades, this is a valid concern as we are talking about a potential replacement of culture, it has nothing to do with racism. Currently it's at 33% as per this source (Citizens coming from immigration): https://www.frontieresmedia.fr/societe/demographie-33-de-la-...
You wouldn't want to go in Japan and see that it's majority of Muslims, the same as you wouldn't want to fly to Qatar and see that it's a majority of French, it would feel out of the place and somehow disappointing as nations maintain their charm and alignment by actually having an identity, with the globalization of everything nowadays, we are streamlining the world as if we should all behave and believe the same things, at this stage, I don't think the world is ready to be entirely aligned on values. Some countries don't even recognize some fundamental rights that we take for granted, it's not about them being right or wrong, it's just not compatible.
I wouldn't want my daughter (of course she can, she is free to do as she pleases) to marry a Korean, or even a Japanese, or even someone who is Muslim, for reasons that it wouldn't align with our family values, all my friends are from different ethnicity/nationality (I live in SEA so I'm an immigrant, from EU, it took me 12 years to get a residency, and this is normal, I wouldn't want this process to be easier) and this isn't a racist take at all imo, just a recognition of difference of beliefs and even preferences. Actually in Asia we have no problem talking about color, ethnicity and especially difference in behavior depending on nationality and so-on. What I'm stating is exactly the same sentiment across Muslim nations, Indians, Koreans, Japanese..., they want to marry their "own" and give jobs to their own in absolute priority, the rest is secondary, it's not about racism (it can be for religious reasons only, which has nothing to do with racism, it's valid).
Regarding ICE, I'm just familiar about it when I sometimes check US news, but from what I understand it's just an agency that is made to arrest people that remain in the country illegally, to me entering a nation illegally or overstaying your welcome is definitely a crime, I don't really understand why people wants illegals to remain in the country, isn't that unfair for all the ones actually following the local laws & immigration regulations? I don't know, never it would cross my mind to just cross the border to Singapore or Thailand illegally, I would know for sure I'm committing a serious crime doing so. If ICE is arresting US citizens of course the agency needs to be prosecuted for it for sure, that's clearly wrong, but is this a decent percentage? Errors happen all the time in all fields of the law, it's not realistic to think we can enforce something at scale without some unfairness. Where I live, immigration deports all the time overstaying aliens and I really don't see anything wrong with it.
Again, this isn't from a US perspective so I don't really know the mindset of Americans, I however have many American friends that have similar opinions.
Edit: I just checked the statistics regarding ICE deportations [1] and it does seem that the number was higher during 2012 (Obama as per my search) era (record amount of deportations than recently, it doesn't seem to be a last decade issue but more like an always issue, but I just don't really understand what is the problem with deporting people that don't follow laws, that seems just rational.
Also, how do illegal aliens actually work? Doesn't it push employers to also break the law because they don't have a legal status?
[1] ICE Deportations by Fiscal Year (2000–2026): Fiscal Year Deportations Notes 2000 278,921 — 2001 189,026 — 2002 162,059 — 2003 168,767 — 2004 201,311 — 2005 256,066 — 2006 280,944 — 2007 319,258 — 2008 369,635 — 2009 389,834 — 2010 392,862 — 2011 396,906 Peak year 2012 409,849 Highest in the dataset 2013 368,644 — 2014 315,943 — 2015 235,413 — 2016 240,255 — 2017 226,119 — 2018 256,085 — 2019 267,258 — 2020 185,884 — 2021 142,750 Lowest in recent decades 2022 141,171 — 2023 243,735 — 2024 280,000–300,000 Range (final figures vary) 2025 300,000
This is incorrect in the US.
Even so, you're "having trouble" acknowledging a singular fact that calls a claim into question? Is two facts the magic number? Three? Why is one insufficient?
It'd be more effective to offer an actual reason.
Notably, the exact same UK visa you used has been made substantially harder to get since you applied.
I am very familiar with the US, UK and Australian immigration systems. The US is the easiest, cheapest and fastest of those 3.
Which is nonsense, it applies to all non immigrant visas such as work visas. But it’s a line you’ll see various people try to claim as if this isn’t devastating to every spouse of a us citizen who now can’t get a greencard without leaving their us based job and family.
It can be simultaneously true that immigrants to the U.S. from both advanced and developing nations both experience a higher standard of living than their countries of origin.
Immigrating to the U.S. with an advanced degree in an in-demand field: you likely will experience a higher standard of living.
Immigrating to the U.S. from a developing country without a particularly in-demand career: you likely will experience a higher standard of living.
And yet everyone here in SF has been mugged. Everyone has to deal with the poor air quality, crime, traffic, and a million other factors that impact daily life even when you are rich. Little paid time off, very short maternity leave.
I went back to Australia for the first time in 10 years, and even the guy stacking shelves at a liquor store had 8 weeks of paid leave, owned his own home, had a project car (a big V8), kids going to university, excellent healthcare even if he quits, etc etc.
Ordinary guy, better quality of life than many rich Americans.
Australia is having the exact same situation with housing as most of the cities in the US right now and Australia lacks the rural population where things are affordable so this seems incredibly unbelievable to me.
People who have done everything by "following the rules" are now seeing the US backpedal on what was promised to them via an administrative memo published by USCIS at the behest of the president—not through new legislation enacted by Congress.
I don't know where you're getting your information from, but it's factually incorrect.
And as someone else said, "justice" does not mean following the law. That's the definition of "legal".
It's important to anchor these topics at a certain level of understanding of Law and Economics to discuss optimal policy, otherwise we'll just talk past each other with uninformed political views.
Read 8 USC 1101, specifically subsections (a)(15) & (a)(15)(H)(i)(B). The statute classifies H1Bs among the "nonimmigrant aliens," and states that the category is for someone "who is coming temporarily to the United States to perform services." Does that sound to you like it was mean to be a pathway to permanent residency?
There was never a "promise" in the law. Instead, there were a set of USCIS practices and procedures that amounted to nothing more than writing down what USCIS was currently doing. But USCIS never had authority to turn what Congress created as a temporary worker program into a permanent path to citizenship.
I'm sympathetic to people who put their eggs in the H1B basket. As an immigrant, how are you supposed to understand constitutional law and limits on executive power? But the fact is that the modern H1B regime was created almost entirely by executive fiat and it can be undone by executive fiat as well. (All the 1990 Act did was undo some presumptions but left the executive free to decide at any time that an H1B has immigrant intent, which is a basis for visa revocation.)
You should listen to this NYT podcast on America's immigration system and how its operation in practice is very different from what voters thought they were getting: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/electi...
> The four sources of federal and state law are (1) constitutions, (2) statutes and ordinances, (3) rules and regulations, and (4) case law.
https://guides.law.sc.edu/c.php?g=315539&p=10379907
With that in mind, do read CFR 8 § 245.1 Eligibility: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-8/chapter-I/subchapter-B/...
More broadly please read https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-7-part-a
This amounts to much more than "writing down what USCIS was currently doing". This is a specific source of law. These regulations are legally binding as Congress has authorized the agency to issue them.
There's also plenty of case law from USCIS-related adjudicative reviews, meaning specific precedents set by judges who hear cases related to immigration.
After reflecting on your comment, I hope you're not trying to force an argument that any person who's requested an adjustment of status is somehow illegally present in the country, because that would be woefully incorrect.
I also don't appreciate the patronizing remark that I somehow fail to grasp the facts because I'm an immigrant.
I'm not sure why you think people who were born outside of the borders of the United States of America do not understand how liberal democracies work.
Do you actually think immigrants have no concept of constitutional law and limits on executive power? Do you think that knowledge is somehow protected by a magic seal that prevents me from ever obtaining it? Or do you think other countries do not have constitutions or a system of checks and balances? Do you know how many years I've spent studying nations in general and the US specifically? Do you know how many comparative studies I've written? Do you even know what my specific qualifications and degrees are? And I can do this in 5 different languages.
You're way out of your depth and your bias is showing.
https://www.reuters.com/world/sweden-tighten-citizenship-rul...
The rules now are tougher than US rules for citizenship. Sweden (like e.g., Norway) has a 8 year wait vs US's 5 year wait.
Sweden has minimum income requirements, none in the US.
[1] https://www.migrationsverket.se/en/you-want-to-apply/live-wi...
https://www.boundless.com/immigration-resources/how-long-doe...
Funnily, I had a German friend complain about this change and then I came across this Reddit thread.
Many European countries actually adopt a similar policy. Off the top of my head, the Netherlands requires those who want to become a resident to obtain an MVV visa from a consulate abroad, even if you are already in the Netherlands legally, except for a small list of allied countries.
Germany also has similar rules, forbidding short stay individuals from becoming a long-term resident without interviewing abroad. It also ensures that any individuals who are denied are already abroad, without the need to enforce their departure.
If you want a white hegemony, move to goddamn Sweden and leave us alone. That's not the US and to suggest otherwise is anti-American and ahistorical. If you clearly hate what this country stands for, then please do yourself and everyone else a favor and leave. Jesus Christ.
Wrong. Australia imports foreigners at a rate of 2:1 against local births.
That replacement.
Overall a positive impact so long as you’re not the group being replaced.
Are there any examples of white-minority countries that have worked well for white people?
That said, importing smart engineers and entrepreneurs from the world is so absurdly beneficial for the US that... I can't find words right now.
White people are, and have been, target and killed in those place.
The accusations is just racism. The fact that Trump gave extra fast visas to white South Afrikaans makes you think that there were some racial reasoning there.
In the last decades the whole world is more global.
What is wrong if white people want to help other white people escape persecution?
White South Africans, white Zimbabweans too, have been executed.
It’s like the dark skinned people in South Africa looked at what happened in Zimbabwe and decided they wanted to live in shit too.
Now the rest of the Western world seems to want to follow suit.
But new world is getting pretty old now too.
> But new world is getting pretty old now too.
I'm sorry, the new world still has a few hundred years to go before we can even consider it old. It's not even a pre-teen by the standards. I mean we only discussed Europe. But the pyramids were older to the Romans than the Romans are to us.
The old world is... old
Canada has it since the 1950s only.
> is an astonishingly rare policy
>> common in "the new world"
> Nonexistent in Europe
> the developed world
Please, for the love of god, just read the comments you're replying to. It's like the absolute bare minimum requirement.
Does anyone have data on what this percentage is? Seems like it could be 55%:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/647123/sharply-americans-curb-i...
The problem at this point (and not just the US, throughout the west), I don’t think a pollster even needs to slant their question. So many people have been taught that lens over 100+ years of politics.
It’s why I am happy to be Irish American: we never forget a slight, so I am a living vessel for the stories of every time one of my great-grandparents was treated poorly for being a dirty, non-white papist piece of jetsam.
Wonder if we’ll get a third world war that we stay out of until halfway through and then pile on at the end.
That's an ignorant thing to say. Even in democratic western countries, it can be very difficult for the average person to institute change even at a local level. If you have to battle corruption or war on top of that, it could be impossible. For example, would it be fair to say that a Sundanese villager should just fix their country as PMCs being hired by the UAE(and others) are committing genocide? Or would you consider that reasonable to flee the country in search of a better life?
We have to admit there are lots of cases where people can't just "fix" their own country as there are complex geopolitical issues that a normal person, or a group of normal people are not able to fix. If Americans want fewer "brown" people in their country, the idea should be to promote global economic and political stability so that people can reasonably make their countries a better place, not to just tell them to go away and fix their own problems.
This is a real head scratcher. Some of the biggest Trump supporters I interact with at work are people of color, from countries the adminstration has labelled "shitholes" - they would never be allowed to visit - let alone immigrate - today. I guess once you get yours everyone else can go to hell.
The question is what was the intention of the H1B program when the law was enacted by duly elected legislators? It was never sold to the public as a path to permanent residency. It certainly wasn’t sold to the public as a system where each H1B granted would lead to citizenship, followed by bringing several family members with them through uncapped family reunification visas.
And the US has proven me correct over and over again in that assessment. Will watch with great pleasure the brain drain your country will face, and I honestly hope your economy will completely collapse.
We should increase the number of immigrant visas and make it straightforward what the process is to get a green card like what one would see in other countries like Canada and Australia.
Meanwhile, non immigrant visas should remain non immigrant and very restricted criteria for changing status (eg. marriage) without reapplying abroad.
However, ignoring family-sponsored routes, it is extremely difficult to get an immigrant visa in the first place, usually requiring years + $10k+ of fees to work your way up to it. You also need a sponsor to pay the fees (legally, you can't pay it yourself). Therefore, the vast majority of people start on a non-immigrant (temporary, restricted employment) visa and eventually ask their employer to sponsor a green card.
When people say "if you wanted to immigrate, you should just get an immigrant visa", they usually assume any other route is a hack or loophole. But it's actually the most common way to immigrate by far. You can, of course, interview for a job from abroad and ask the employer to directly sponsor an immigrant visa, but they'd have to wait years (best case) until you could actually step foot in their office. Plus they'd be forking over thousands in legal fees for an employee they haven't even seen in person. Nobody would do this, so the commonly accepted way is to bring an employee over as a temporary worker first and then apply for a green card while they're in the country.
By the way, the same checks apply for immigrant visa applications both inside and outside the US. You might think that employers are scamming the government by turning purported temporary immigrants into permanent ones, but the exact same qualifications checks, eligibility requirements, waitlists and quotas apply if you do the process inside vs. outside the US. It's entirely possible, and common, for green card applications to get denied (and the applicant's location doesn't factor in to this).
As a practical matter, all these immigrant visas pretty much entail a greencard soon thereafter. In other words, to get them is about as easy as getting a greencard in the first place, give or take, more or less.
The discussion here is really about legal workers, students and others on temporary visas who convert to permanent status.
this is a good example, because let's say someone is here on a student visa or temp work visa, falls in love and gets married. without the ability to adjust their immigration status they now have to leave the country - probably for years - to apply and hopefully get a greencard. Good luck making that marraige work.
Seems pretty brutal to me though.
They let me in, but had me sign something that I would leave within 30 days.
It also means that if you came here fleeing persecution that you might not be able to return.
As far as Canadian law goes, there are two factors at play in the parent's events;
* NAFTA work permits are applied for at the border, on entry; they operate differently from the 'normal' work permit streams.
* Permanent residence is conferred at the border, but the application process can happen either inside or outside the country depending on the stream. There are also limited 'inland' options which evidently have expanded (https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/se...) in recent years.
In neither case does Canada have a blanket rule that an applicant must leave the country during the whole of an extended application process, and even 'abroad' processes can often be carried out while an applicant is living in the country on other status. (It can get awkward if a consular interview is required, though.)
Unlike the US, Canada is generally comfortable with 'dual intent', where intent to apply for permanent residence through legal channels is not disqualifying for other sorts of statuses.
It is actually really bizarre that the USCIS would essentially take the applicant's word without any vetting before this memo.
It’s just how things are done.
Well, I'm apparently not in the imagined conversation you're having. Seems insecure to pre-bake an out for a hypothetical.
Never rejected systemic racism exists, but calling everything racist without substance (and accusing people of ignoring system racism without support) erodes meaning.
I suggest reviewing the HN guidelines for comments. If you disagree with them, this forum may not be for you.
But if you only help based on the colour of the skin... That's a little bit racist.
Also, as far as I know there is not persecution in South Africa. Trump used photos from the wrong conflict. And there are really bad things happening in Africa... but not to white people
> However, the law provides several exceptions where you can apply for the new residence title while staying in Germany with your current permit. These exceptions allow a switch from a temporary purpose (like studies) to a more permanent one
Boundless seems like knowing a guy in the neighbourhood who helps you fill out immigration forms, typically called "notarios". Some will call themselves "paralegals" without working for an actual lawyer. It's a scammy business.
So here's the general process.
1. Petitioner (US citizen or LPR) files an I130 and I130A for their overseas spouse. That requires a lot of documentation to prove your status, that it's a bona fide marriage, biographic information for your spouse, proof that you're both free to marry (ie evidence of previous marriages and that you're divorced/single);
2. USCIS spends 12-15 months processing this. It then gets sent to the National Visa Center ("NVC") who spend another 3+ months looking at the documents, after which you're "documentarily qualified" ("DQ");
3. At this point, your foreign spouse can now make an appointment with an embassy or consulate for an immigrant visa interview. Depending on their country this may be realtively quick (within 1-2 months) or really long (12+ months);
4. The foreign spouse will need to get a medical exam done to check for vaccines, communicable diseases (eg TB), etc. This has to be done within a certain period of the interview;
5. The interview happens and the officer asks whatever they want to ask. If it's approved, your pay the fee and your passport is stamped. You're given a packet to hand over to CBP when you enter the US. It can be denied. The officer may ask for more information, which can add months of delay. Or it can go into a limbo called "admin processing";
6. The spouse travels to the US and is now a permanent resident, assuming CBP lets them in (they have discretion not to btw). You may then have to wait for months for your green card and you're waiting for that to get your SSN so you can work, get a bank account, get on a lease, etc.
It's more realistic to say this will take 2-2.5 years and maybe take 4+. In that entire time the foreign spouse won't get any kind of visa to visit the US so if you want to be with your spouse, you need to live in another country or visit often for a very long time.
So how can go wrong? Lots of ways. Here's a non-exhaustive list:
1. The foreign spouse's entire immigration history is under scrutiny. If they visited their then partner(before getting married) and didn't tell the embassy or CBP about that, it can raise misrep[resentation] issues. and may just cause delays;
2. If they've ever applied for a visa and been denied, this too will be scrutinized;
3. Ideally you only need a police report for the country you live in (to prove no criminal history) and that's relatively easy to get. It might not be. Or you may need it for a bunch of countries if you've lived in multiple over the previous 5 years;
4. USCIS gets to decide where your interview is going to be. Prior to this administration, that could be where you were living. For example, if you were from Mali but living and working in the UK, then you could schedule it in the UK. Now the administration has decided you must be interviewed in your country of birth. If that country has no US embassy (eg Afghanistan) then maybe your country of residence can be used or it might be a country neighbouring your country of birth;
5. What if you applied for asylum from that country? Let's say you are from belarus but claimed (and received) asylum in the UK. You might spend a year trying to tell USCIS that you can't travel to Belarus for your interview;
6. How did the US citizen (or LPR) get their green card? Was it through marriage? This is what USCIS calls a "pivot case" and they view it harshly, particularly if, for example, a Ghana man was married in Ghana, travelled to the US, got divorced in the US, married a US citizen, got citizenship themselves, got divorced and then married somebody else from Ghana. USCIS is increasingly taking the position that this may well be immigration fraud, arguing the man had multiple wives, the divorce was a sham and the second spouse was their spouse all along. It's up to you to prove that's not the case. In this administration that can lead to revocation of their green card or even denaturalization;
7. Was the foreign spouse ever in a cultural or religious marriage? This gets real tricky because what counts as "married" and "divorced" varies by country and, depending on the country, can be hard to prove. Also, some countries have a lot of falsified divorce decrees (eg Nigeria). This can add months as you have to prove they were free to marry;
8. The president may come along and decide to ban visa issuance to your foreign spouse's country. USCIS seemingly takes the broadest definition of this. So if you were born in one of those countries OR have ever had citizen, you're covered by the ban. There's no judicial recourse for this, thanks to Trump v. Hawaii. If so, you're just in limbo probably until Trump leaves office;
9. The black hole after the interview can be "administrative processing". This can mean anything. It can mean something as simple as "we don't like this case". IIRC I heard that 85% of cases in admin processing ultimately get approved but the case may sit in limbo for years and may take a court challenge to resolve it;
10. If you end up taking too long after your interview, your medical exam may expire and you have to do it again. Hopefully the embassy officer asks you for an updated copy but they don't have to be that nice;
11. Between the interview and coming to the US things can happen that USCIS or CBP argue are of material interest. Maybe you get charged with something, even if it's just a traffic offense. You might not fill out the forms correctly. You might not even be aware of it. It might not stop USCIS or CBP making a big deal out of it; and
12. CBP can arbitrarily decide to deny you entry at a port-of-entry even with a valid immigrant visa stamp in your passport for pretty much any reason.
I dare you to find any marriage immigration benefit that's as capricious, arbitrary, time-consuming, restrictive and Byzantine as the US system.
But everyone has healthcare. Everyone has university. Minimum wage is way, way higher than the US. Employee protections are huge (at will employment is criminal). Even the worst jobs have great paid time off and maternity leave. Overtime is paid, by law. Working 60 hours a week is unheard of.
Quality of life is much, much higher.
Speaking as an Indian: "brown" people's countries are "brown" people's own responsibilities. If their countries are messed up, they should also own the task of fixing them.
Other countries can feel free to pitch in if it suits their interests, as you say. But the primary responsibility for our motherlands is with ourselves.
> that a normal person, or a group of normal people
We just have to become not-so-normal then!
>Other countries can feel free to pitch in if it suits their interests, as you say. But the primary responsibility for our motherlands is with ourselves.
Yes this would make sense if the US & other countries had a policy of non-intervention. When the US & its allies are actively destabilizing these countries, you can't turn around and be like oh now its your fault your country is messed up and you are solely responsible to fix it after we bombed, invaded, or otherwise economically destabilized the region. The long term solution to stop people from immigrating to the US for a better life is to promote political and economic stability in those countries, ie. not bombing them, invading them, removing their leaders, promoting trade with them etc.
I live in Canada and the US is actively trying to destabilize my country through threats of annexation, disregarding trade deals and implementing tariffs, promoting separatism. What can I do to stop the US from doing this exactly? If the US ends up destroying my country, is it my fault? am I solely responsible to fix it?
Which Americans? Whose country is it that "their" is referring to here?
Attitudes like yours - justifying entitlement without holding its corruption accountable - is why people have to leave their home countries: their own insufferable countrymen.
Folks from communities of color in the United States I have generally experienced as trending conservative in their values (Oakland notwithstanding). Trump being a 'tough guy' and a 'macho' is often well-received.
Also, for many folks, Trump has long been seen as something to aspire to and someone to emulate. Trump sells a very American and New York image of success, many people believe they want the life he has (notoriety, money, cars, beautiful wife, mistress, good-looking kids, glitz, etc). The Apprentice was a big success for a reason, it sold a version of reality many people wanted to believe in.
So yeah. People don't believe in race. They believe in money and power.
Which is why it is nonsense to say banning immigration is anything other than anti-American.
The idea that it would be a crackdown on illegal immigration was an essentially greedy belief that legal immigrants, especially Hispanic, would be elevated in status. Of course nothing could be further from the truth. Their skin color, their language and their community all mark them as targets for harassment.
It will be very hard for the machismo cultures to accept that they were deceived so they'll vote for Trump again.
Sounds they truly have become naturalized Americans
The best explanation I've been able to come up with is that insecure and fluid middle classes, unsure and anxious of their social position but certain that it's not too high, need someone to stomp on, to feel that at least there's someone who's even below them.
They're in the US precisely because they have the same sentiment about where they came from, and don't want the worst of their origins to follow them. I assume they are also fully assimilated into American culture.
The U.S. passed restrictive immigration laws in 1921. The foreign born population dropped to under 5% by 1970 (compared to 15% today). The decade on either side of that was a golden age for Silicon Valley.
A green card is literally not a visa
In other contexts, it literally is.
A green card like a visa can be revoked. Citizenship gets a bit more interesting with the current administration.
Today I learned. Before this thread, I was under the same impression as bluesea.
EDIT: Wash. is actually a top 8 destination in the US for Mexican immigrants, with an estimated population of 250-300K people, so not huge but definitely sizeable!
I don't mean to minimize any negative experiences you've had. But as a lifelong American, I've never heard anyone make a negative comment about Mexicans. Even in online spaces like X where there is a lot of racism, it's usually not directed at Mexicans.
If you look at Trump's famous comment about Mexicans in his speech from 2015, he actually points to Mexicans in the audience and refers to them as Mexico's best people. The media cut that part out, of course. (I'm not a Trump supporter.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apjNfkysjbM#t=3m25s
TRUMP: "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best -- they're not sending you [points at unidentified people off-camera] -- they're not sending you -- they're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs; they're bringing crime; they're rapists and some, I assume, are good people."
But it seems like the most natural interpretation.
The most obvious, good-faith interpretation of this quote is that Mexico has a mix of good and bad people, like every country, and the ones immigrating illegally tend to be bad. The fact that the media didn't even consider this common-sense interpretation contributed a lot to Trump's popularity.
What an absurd statement on its face that comes from a place of extreme privilege. I am a brown-skinned man in America and I lost count of all of the times people that look like me have been denigrated and lambasted in this country.
Oh boy, here we go again. I even said "I don't mean to minimize any negative experiences you've had" and I'm still getting the privilege discourse. You are really determined to prevent the Democrats from winning elections, aren't you?
Even assuming I am privileged, then what I'm telling you is that privileged white people like myself aren't shit-talking Mexicans behind their back. Wouldn't that be relevant information? Why would it be an absurd statement?
>brown-skinned
That's not the same as Mexican.
When was the most recent time this happened to you in person? A recent, representative concrete example would be a lot more compelling that performative outrage.
It can't be online. White people catch lots of crap online too: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G88oMOwWAAIqBUp?format=jpg&name=...
But let's not kid ourselves: if the US instituted a CEFR B2 language requirement [1] for anyone on an H1B visa to gain residency, it would be an absolute shitshow.
[1] This is the new Japanese language requirement.
Do you think I could not pass that test?
Well, I don't know you, but you've missed the point entirely so...
It would be a shitshow because of the politics of it. I am certain there would be plenty of people who could pass, and some who can't.
Also, it's obviously my assumption.
+ "Give these people jobs before you give it to the Chinese." is just slightly racist, I'm not saying it's entirely objectionable, but you could just say 'non-citizen'.
+ It's way harder to hire someone on H1B than a local. There is a reason they are being hired. 1500+ SAT is nice but it's not magic entry point for a job.
There are definitely some kinds of jobs - 'Plain IT' where Tata and some Indian companies are just 'India First'. That's H1B abuse.
But by and large, that's not the case.
It's better to consider 'tightening up the program' if you think it should be, as opposed to making very broad considerations.
'Broad Brushstroke' stopping of these programs will definitely hurt the US.
If you can’t train a 1500+ SAT and instead need to import non citizens to fill your jobs you have failed as a society.
Recent college grads have had a harder time, but is slowly improving again [1]. All college grads are around 3% which is usually considered full employment. It was so easy for so long, any reversion to normal is met with the sky is falling. We haven't really seen that yet. The job market is also much much larger than big tech.
In my own experience trying to hire people, it's hard to filter real resumes from fakes/garbage. I have to think this issue is making it slower to hire recent grads.
[1] https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market#--:...
Frankly EO is just a sign of a developed nation.
2) "Anyone, from anywhere, with a STEM degree and a job offer from a US company, should be in this country"
Since when did citizenship become about 'Economic Production'?
The vast majority of the people of the world don't agree with this - and this is kind of one of the roots of disagreement over migration.
Yes - surely 'educated migrants' are good and helpful, but that's only part of the equation.
3) "If we don't do this, China and other up-and-coming nations will increasingly start to displace us"?
Displace you how exactly?
All of this hints of 'Nationalist Industrial Capitalism' with hints of fear mongering. "But China's Gonna Get Us!" ... listen I get it - but this card is played a bit too hard, too often.
Also absent is the fact that there's a need to help refugees etc.
The US surprisingly takes surprisingly few refugees in from conflicts zones, even those it calamities it participates in.
Consider that a 'Nation' is a 'Community' - not a 'Business Centre' and that education and economic competitiveness are just parts of that consideration.
Ultimately, it's a choice, and those points are not invalid, but probably should be contextualized in the grander scheme of how most people define their communities.
This is a bit myopic, partly because it diminishes Chinese capabilities - they're definitely ahead in a few areas, notably battery tech, advanced manufacturing, and in some product categories like robotics, (arguably EVs) and they have demonstrated leadership in industrial capacity for many others, like Solar Panels, other things. They're less than 1 year behind on AI (admittedly, they 'distill' and do a lot of copying but there's legit Engineering going on).
When you put that altogether, and the pace of progress, it's formidable.
China does it with 'domestic talent' whereas US R&D and 'Tech Exceptionalism' would literally not exist without outsiders, who make up up to 1/2 of the primary innovations, companies etc.. Tesla, Nvidia, OpenAI, Google - so many critical people from Europe, Asia etc. None of the 'Godfathers of AI' are American (which I find odd actually). Europe in particular makes a ton of primary contributions which are leveraged by others.
It's not a reason to say 'anyone from tech can be a citizen' but immigration has to be recognized as a critical ingredient, maybe the most critical.
Even if true (and it's not), what even is your point? Do you not think people that work and pay taxes should get any benefits? Do you think it's ok that people are exploited if they're immigrants?
It's not like undocumented immigrants even get welfare or other social programs, but they do have to pay taxes. Interesting enough, they even commit 50% less crime than citizens.
To think these people can't be exploited and that it's trivial to return to their home countries shows a lack of critical thinking.
For example, many of these people flee countries that have dire situations directly caused by US interventions over the past decades including most of Central and South America.
The list of countries that have had their democratically elected leaders overthrown or were otherwise destabilized by the US and its corporate elite is long and well documented.
False. Medicaid is US state-subsidized health insurance, which undocumented immigrants are eligible for:
"Children (0–18 years old) can get full Medi-Cal coverage, no matter their immigration status. Adults (19 and older) are currently eligible for full Medi-Cal coverage, regardless of immigration status. Starting on January 1, 2026, adults who do not have Satisfactory Immigration Status (SIS) will no longer be able to enroll in full Medi-Cal. If you already have coverage, you can keep it; just make sure to renew your coverage during your renewal month."
https://www.dhcs.ca.gov/medi-cal-immigrant-eligibility-faqs/
(Medi-Cal is the California version of Medicaid)
>For example, many of these people flee countries that have dire situations directly caused by US interventions over the past decades including most of Central and South America.
Not everything is the fault of the USA.
Chile, one of the most famous examples of American intervention, is now one of the wealthiest countries in Latam: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-mean-income?mapSele...
Polls showed most Panamanians approved of Operation Just Cause. You can see after the operation in 1989, Panama's median income started ticking upwards: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-mean-income?tab=lin...
And when the US intervened in Venezuela recently, Venezuelans were dancing on the streets.
As an isolationist, I'm against American interventions. Our track record is mixed at best. But the idea that every world problem, or every South American problem, can be blamed on the US somehow is a vast oversimplification.
Federal medicaid funds do not go to illegal immigrants. If a state wants to cover them they have to do that out of state revenue.
Since medicaid is partially state funded and mainly federally funded that's what opens up the door for states to have different rules for eligibility (expanding beyond the federal standard). However, the states have to cover the excess when they decide to do that.
The idea that the US is composed of true Americans that have been here since the beginning is an outright Republican fantasy. A delusion to make white immigrants feel better about themselves. But it's just not true.
This has always been a country composed of immigrants, and it's always something we've been proud of. We have long been the melting pot. To think otherwise is anti-American, and you do not belong here.
Isn’t that comparative?
If you are in the EU then the US seems like a holy grail because pay is higher. If you have dual citizenship you can probably avail of the EU safety nets if you had to go back.
If you’re in South East Asia, any EU choice is a huge improvement. Lately there has been strong immigration to Germany for example instead of coming to the US.
After naturalization and giving up my original citizenship, I am a little envious of people with dual citizenship of US + any EU country. It really doesn’t get better than that.
One of the reasons pay in the US is higher is because the EU taxes ordinary people fairly heavily to pay for those social services. But also because of systematic cultural differences between the US and EU that lead to the US having a more dynamic economy that generally pays people more.
> If you’re in South East Asia, any EU choice is a huge improvement. Lately there has been strong immigration to Germany for example instead of coming to the US.
Lately Alternative für Deutschland has been getting a lot of votes in Germany; what kinds of rules (on top of the existing ones) do they think should be in place for people in southeast asia trying to immigrate to Germany?
The AfD is in no position to put legislation regarding immigration in place, that is federal law. Nevertheless, southeast asian immigrants are not particularly in the eyes of the public.
Depends on whether you actually want to enter the US. If you don't, its citizenship is a burden like no other citizenship: Banks want nothing to do with you and you pay extra taxes that no other nation requires from you. Oh, and should you decide on giving it up - that's cumbersome and costs a bunch of dollars, from what I've heard.
So from someone that at a max would want to visit the US only as a tourist: Having only european citizenship is better than dual european/US citizenship to me.
1. Citizens have a right to enter at ports of entry, can refuse to hand over social media accounts, etc. Greencard holders are still at the discretion of border officials.
2. Citizens can wander the world and live abroad for however long they fancy and always be allowed to return to their country of citizenship when things go awry. Greencard holders can't do that.
3. Citizens get consular protection, greencard holders don't.
If you leave the country for more than 6 months, you need to seek prior approval, and you definitely can lose it. I was on Green Card and when I crossed the border, I was questioned by the customs officer as to why I didn't get my citizenship yet because it was 15 years I was on GC and the point of the GC wasn't to be literally permanent. I quickly got my citizenship after that just in case the same thing happened again.
If you get arrested for a major crime, you can lose your GC but you can only lose your citizenship if you lied or committed fraud at the time of your application, or if you committed treason against the government.
Didn't know that.
>If you leave the country for more than 6 months, you need to seek prior approval, and you definitely can lose it.
Doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
>If you get arrested for a major crime, you can lose your GC but you can only lose your citizenship if you lied or committed fraud at the time of your application, or if you committed treason against the government.
That sounds eminently reasonable to me.
In the US, local and federal taxes plus property taxes are easily 50-60 percent of your income.
Inflation runs higher in NYC than the rest of the country, as well.
If they were born in America they aren’t immigrants.
> To think otherwise is anti-American, and you do not belong here.
United States Congress, “An act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,” March 26, 1790:
> Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof on application to any common law Court of record in any one of the States wherein he shall have resided for the term of one year at least, and making proof to the satisfaction of such Court that he is a person of good character, and taking the oath or affirmation prescribed by law to support the Constitution of the United States, which Oath or Affirmation such Court shall administer, and the Clerk of such Court shall record such Application, and the proceedings thereon; and thereupon such person shall be considered as a Citizen of the United States.
"To think otherwise is anti-American, and you do not belong here." is just a useless emotional thought-terminating phrase.
I say this as an immigrant to the US myself.
What is different this time is that, for the first time ever, we have people who believe that immigration, as a concept, is not a net-benefit. We can disagree on the amount of immigration, sure.
But never, in our history, has "none" been an acceptable viewpoint. It is fundamentally incompatible with everything this country stands for, going back to our inception. And, before anyone says anything, yes the far-right is trying to stamp out all immigration. They might not say it, but their actions certainly do.
So it's only ok when rich people need special treatment ?
Immigration laws are racist to an absurd degree, the 7% rule unfairly makes it significantly easier for European nationals to get Greencards for example.
Recently it's been cranked up a notch, only White South African refugees are being approved now.
Honestly the problem is going to solve itself. Without being able to brain drain the rest of the world , America will start to fall behind economically.
Less people will want to come here.
Which brings me a certain sadness, my friends growing up were largely immigrants. The future of America without immigration frankly sucks.
With bland food too.
I doubt H-1Bs would oppose taking that test. Many already took English proficiency exams by the time they apply for the visa.
I assume Americans in general would favor this extra requirement too.
And companies, if we decide we care about what they want, really have no reason to oppose the test. There's a large enough number of applicants that they can easily pick from the ones that do speak English fluently.
So to conclude it would be a shitshow because of the politics is likely incorrect, certainly defeatist, and gives up on the actual thing we should strive for, which is to make the H-1B visa better.
The point wasn't that these difference are unreasonable.
It was that they are substantial, and absolutely exist, making your "green card is pretty much the same as citizenship" statement false.
>Didn't know that.
We know. This is why we're telling you these things.
Now you know.
And there's much more for you to find out.
Most Hispanic families and cultures are overwhelmingly socially conservative leaning.
In addition, non-citizens cannot vote in federal elections.
That "theory" has never held water, and was always a racist dogwhistle.
The idea that Hispanics and other ethnic minorities would vote Democratic was so popular that people wrote a whole book about it[0], until the idea was finally put to bed with Trump's electoral gain among every nonwhite group between 2016 and 2024.
Until then, the broad demographic makeup of the illegal crossings during Biden's years would absolutely have been assumed to lean Democratic.
> In addition, non-citizens cannot vote in federal elections.
Noncitizens count for Congressional apportionment, and as GP said, there is the implicit understanding that at least some of those noncitizens will become citizens in the future and vote for the party that facilitated their arrival into this country.
[0]: The Emerging Democratic Majority, 2002.
It was a stupid premise, of course they were wrong.
It did more to help US conservatives through counter-propaganda than anything else.
TRUMP: "They're all crooks. The Somalians are -- what they've done to Minnesota -- the Somalians. They're crooked as hell. Ilhan Omar. Crooked as hell. They're all crooks. And we got 'em."
- Great food -- especially if you live anywhere near one of the major metropolitan areas, but holes in the wall are aplenty ( I still remember that one ridiculous medley in SD )
- It is huge -- it is hard to explain to people how big US is, which has its own benefits and drawbacks. The obvious benefit is that if you really don't like somewhere, you pick up your toys and move somewhere else. As an immigrant myself, I appreciate that. Doing route 66 properly will take you more than 2 weeks.
- Shit is designed for the lazy -- there is an obvious diclaimer that goes along with that. The design relies on the lazy to extract as much money as possible, but it is effectively designed to be convenient. I used to hate how wasteful dishwasher is until 1) I used it 2) read up on data supporting the approach
- Access -- Most of everything I possibly want ( though - without going into details - thanks to Trump that has changed somewhat ) as long as I can ship it here
- Vibe -- This may be the hardest to actually ingest unless you spent some time here. It is hard to explain the ability to be excessive should you so desire. I think the closest I can get to explain it is the 'merica meme, which is not so far from reality once you get to a certain point ( as in, if you are really into something, you can absolutely get into some crazy level stuff, which may include and I am just listing random encounters with people here: own a tank, have a pet alligator, ride a doom buggy to work, build an indoor range in your house ). I know it is changing in EU, but I think most excess/hobbies there are kinda.. not limited exactly, but they don't often seem to reach the same level of crazy.
All small things and there is plenty to complain about, but I stand by my comfy. I do not think I would be able to do half the stuff there I did here.
You don’t have to retire in the US. As others have pointed out, nobody comes here for the lifestyle.
Immigrants like us are literally the holy grail of immigration. Come in during our most productive years, work hard for 10 to 20 years, go back home before you need any of the social and health care stuff you paid into.
What exit taxes exist in the US if you cannot maintain citizenship in both?
$300k is probably in the top 10-15% for software engineers if I had the guess. And I assume the top 10-15% in Paris is substantially more than 80k?
Edit: Okay, I guess $300k is near the median in SF if you’re including stock options. (Media base salary in SF is 150-160k)
Of course, but 80k is also on the high-end for Paris jobs as well and buying an apartment in or around Paris is not cheap at all. And most companies in France, even in tech, except maybe the few high-end international ones like FANGS or Mistral and Datadog, explicitly request French language for their workers, whereas English is enough for most US jobs.
I'm EU citizen and looked towards working in France even for the lower wages, but the French language mandates for most jobs are really off putting, even in European companies like Airbus.
Like I'm willing to learn the language, but I'd need at least 2-3 years to get remotely fluent, and it's just not worth the added effort, just for the opportunity to get the average Europoor wages that I can anyway get with just English and my mother tongue anywhere else in EU without any additional effort.
Even in my small Eastern European home town I hear more and more french speakers in the city center every year, and when I talk to them I understand they're all here to study medicine or get junior tech jobs, which is insane to me and speaks volumes on how bad the French jobs market must be for the youth when Eastern Europe is now an immigration hotspot for the french when 20 years ago it was the opposite.
So no, Paris/France is no European SV equivalent, not by a long shot, even by the low European standards. Amsterdam is probably the closest thing to SV the EU has, after London left, but housing and CoL there is insane and even that has significantly fewer VC funding than SV and even London, which highlight just how poor the EU is by comparison to the US at tech funding.
Like I want to get the EU to the top an catch up to the US, but I don't see how that's possible with such limited tech funding and glass ceilings based on having the right nationality and language requirements. EU will never beat the US, at least not in my lifetime.
Most people would make way less, at big French companies you won't make 80k until late in your career as an IC (they don't have a staff+ track).
So 80k sounds like a decent guess for the top 10-15%.
I don't think that's a good assumption. 80k is rather high for Paris. That's a Google salary at their small office there (or it was when I checked a few years ago). I think the OP's comparison was pretty reasonable.
But there are VERY few countries on this planet that actually saved for retirement.
https://codes.findlaw.com/us/title-8-aliens-and-nationality/...
With the caveat that I'm absolutely not an expert in this area and have no clear idea what changes have been made since, it's still highly informative to read this section and the carve-outs that were made at the time.
My current understanding is that the creation of "dual-status" visas (immigration act of 1990) paved the way for using the adjustment-of-status process established 8 USC 1255 for those particular visas (like H1B), and thus makes those visas less vulnerable to a change of interpretation by the executive branch. Contrast to, say, a regular tourist visa.
Where this falls apart is that the K-1 Fiance visa is also a non-immigrant visa, that through Adjustment of Statuses (based on your demonstration of a genuine and sincere relationship) becomes a green card pathway. All "may", "at their discretion", on a non-immigrant visa.
But then what is the purpose of the K-1 visa? To allow you a US citizen then perhaps, maybe, one day, be allowed to stay in the same country as your spouse? At the government's discretion, of course?
Under 8 USC 1255(d), the AG can’t adjust the status of someone here on a K visa: https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim.... If you don’t get married, you have to leave.
What entitles alien spouses to petition for permanent residency is not the K1 visa, but section 1154: https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim.... So, for example, the citizen could marry their fiancé in the fiance’s home country.[1] And they’d use 1154 to petition for permanent residency. The K1 visa just allows the marriage to happen in the U.S. but is unrelated to the ultimate basis for permanent residency.
[1] Our family friend did this. We set him up with the daughter of our next-door neighbor in Bangladesh. They had a wedding over the phone with him in the U.S. and her in Bangladesh. Then she came over on an 1154 petition.
After about 4 years there, I relocated back to start a new job, arrange housing, etc. We started the USCIS petition in her country during one of my visits. She eventually finished the whole process and got her immigrant visa to come back and join me.
It worked out smoothly for us, but mostly because we understood the general process timeline and pipelined it to coincide with other professional and personal life factors that drove things. We were going to be separated for a bit anyway, because I wanted to chase the new job back in the US while she still had obligations to wrap up overseas.
Per my immigration attorney, the K-1 entirely bypasses 8 USC 1154 at the petition stage. 1154 governs immigrant visa petitions (I-130, I-140, I-360, etc.). The I-129F is technically a nonimmigrant petition even though it's understood by everyone as a pre-immigration vehicle.
K-1 AOS does not require a separate I-130. The approved I-129F plus the marriage to the petitioner supplies the petition basis. This is one of the cleaner cases where 8 USC 1154 is genuinely sidestepped, not merely deferred.
For K-1s, the path to residency is firstly via 8 USC 1186a, and is automatic and statutory, granting the conditional LPR.
Then at 2 years of marriage, 8 USC 1186a again handles the removal of conditions.
However, many attorneys will file I-130s, according to her, and such, simultaneously, though not required if you follow the process to the letter. And that does go via 1154.
40 years ago--we had no knowledge of each other's existence when she entered the US. Life put us in proximity, our hearts decided they wanted more proximity. Adjustment of status was granted. She's 20 feet from me as I write this.
Yeah, and the disincentives consist of giving non-citizens a hard time for no reason.
> so fewer people will do it.
You're not disagreeing with OP. You're just trying to whitewash all the xenophobia behind the motivation.
Incidentally, we don't have an attorney general at present, only an acting one (Trump's former personal lawyer), and I question the standing of an unconfirmed federal officer to alter existing rules, never mind to bypass the federal rulemaking process entirely.
I’m using a colloquialism to convey how much latitude the administration has under the wording of statue. It says that the “status of an alien who was inspected and admitted or paroled into the United States … may be adjusted by the Attorney General, in his discretion and under such regulations as he may prescribe…”
When the statute says an officer “may … in his discretion” do something, that’s Congress giving very broad latitude to the executive to make case by case determinations.
The word “discretion” has a special meaning under the APA. The APA says that courts can’t review agency actions that are “committed to agency discretion by law.” The Supreme Court has read that carve out narrowly (because otherwise I think you have serious due process problems). But Congress using the word “discretion” here at the very least conveys how much latitude Congress intended to give the administration with respect to adjustment of status.
1. You just quoted 8 USC 1255(a) because it's at the top of the USCIS memo without understanding it; or
2. This is just the most ChatGPT comment.
I say this because you clearly don't understand this stuff. From reading your comment history, you're a Trump supporter [1] and you seem to have done the most MGA Thing of being told what your position is and then looking for a justification.
8 USC 1255(a) is a carve-out that basically gives the AG authority to let people adjust. It doesn't go the other way and say the AG can withhold permission to adjust. The entire section details the requirements to adjust, detailing admissibility requirements.
So how did we get from the AG can allow someone to adjust to the AG can override the entire section that details adjustment requirements?
Also, you don't understand what "nonimmigrant" means in relation to your H1B comment. Yes, H1B is a nonimmigrant visa. That just means they're not a lawful permanent resident ("LPR"). It doesn't mean they can't adjust status.
It's a bit like taking the description fo a woman as "non-pregnant" and taking that to mean they're not capable and/or not allowed to get pregnant.
A way to silence people is to cause commotion so people get dizzy by the noise.
There is no menace. There was no evil plan. There was nothing like that. Accusing others of what you want to do is a classical trick.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_sanguinis#Jus_sanguinis_st...
Say one of your parents is a citizen of some other country.
If they're Canadian, you're a Canadian citizen. Period. The process is to get your documents that prove it. You don't apply for citizenship, you apply for proof.
In many European countries you are not a citizen. The process is to become one by descent. You apply for citizenship.
Very different.
> You don't just magically get citizenship for your parents home country, at least not for most countries.
2. The US not functioning without illegal immigrants is a bad thing. More often than not, employers like illegal immigrants because they can abuse them in some way or another. If you actually interact with illegal immigrants or the people that employ them, this is clear. “We need modern indentured servitude” is not the country I want to live in. I would rather these industries just be subsidized by the government to whatever extent it takes for US citizens to take the jobs with all of the protections we expect workers to have.
3. Not every country is short of workers. Employers may be short of workers that they can lord over, but refer back to point 2. Pointing to Canada’s policy as an example of a “smart move” is a strange play.
The current administration is certainly not working on the above premises, but I’m floored when I hear supposedly progressive people going on about who is going to work the psychologically scarring meatpacking plants if we don’t take on an undefined number of people who are only here to get shit on for a good paycheck. I have compassion for illegal immigrants, which is exactly why I don’t want them in the US.
My point was that with the sorely lacking rules already in place, illegal immigration is a problem and at the same time there is still a supply problem.
So acting even more high and mighty like it’s the greatest place on earth to be and require people who want in to grovel even more certainly isn’t good policy.
I’m also confused why you think Canada isn’t doing it better? You can immigrate but your profile needs to match what the country needs: its win win, because once you’re there you have a fair chance at a good life (integration, job, etc) vs taking anyone in and then having issues with people who can’t find jobs, be happy in the country, and integrate into society.
But the process around the US visa and immigration program is a lot more hostile than it needs to be. I had the displeasure to deal with this grinder and it’s really showing that the attitude is “you’re less than nothing, it’s up to you to prove you’re worthy of us even reading the forms you filled in and paid for, fuck you very much”
Are we talking about the same Canada here?
From what I remember, most of them don't migrate though but return to their home country after a season. Back to their families and a country with much less living cost.
Was some time ago that I last read about that topic though.
That’s exactly what “may” means. The AG “may” do it, but he doesn’t have to.
To make that clearer, the statute also says “at his discretion.” That means the AG can adjust or not at his choice. That’s what the word “discretion” means in a legal context: https://dictionary.justia.com/discretionary
> The entire section details the requirements to adjust, detailing admissibility requirements.
You need to read more carefully. The rest of the section describes conditions where the AG cannot adjust the status. They don’t require the AG to grant the status adjustment to anyone who meets the requirements.
For example, subsection (d) says: “The Attorney General may not adjust, under subsection (a), the status of an alien lawfully admitted to the United States for permanent residence on a conditional basis under section 1186a of this title.”
So subsection (a) gives discretion to the AG to adjust status at the AG’s choice. Then other provisions say that he can’t adjust status under certain circumstances.
> Also, you don't understand what "nonimmigrant" means in relation to your H1B comment. Yes, H1B is a nonimmigrant visa. That just means they're not a lawful permanent resident ("LPR").
No, because there are also “immigrant” visas. Those visa holders also aren’t LPRs. So what’s the distinction between immigrant and non-immigrant visas in your reading? The difference is that immigrant visas are intended to be a pathway to a green card, while nonimmigrant visas are intended to be for temporary workers who will typically go home.
Note that subsection (H) also includes H2 visas for unskilled temporary workers. Those visa holders can request an adjustment of status too. But the expectation is that generally that will not be granted.
Perhaps you can enlighten me on the Zimbabwe situation?
That said, I think the centuries of colonialism and slavery--of which whites in the US greatly benefited--makes this exclusion of immigrants from predominantly brown nations disgusting. Pulling up the ladder, even from some of those who built it for you.
[0] https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2025-03-19-we-must-b...
I have friends from South Africa and Zimbabwe. They’re all lying to me?
“Kill the Borer! Kill the farmer!”
Would that make you want hang around and find out?
Plenty of brown people in the 75 paused countries face serious threats and crime too.
Trump asks why so few immigrants from northern European countries. I'm not sure how folks can miss the pattern.
United States immigration policy is supposed to benefit the United States. It doesn't need to be fair.
The US can bomb a country if it's in US interests, and then deny immigrants from that country if that immigration is not in US interests. It really is that simple.
I'm not sure what is controversial about if you want to reduce people trying to come to your country then you should promote global economic & political stability so they don't have any reason to come. Especially when you are the most powerful country in the world that is already meddling in everyone's affairs.
So the source of high skill immigrants is countries with dictators and economic dysfunction. That used to include places like Poland, Czech Republic, Italy, etc. The first generation brings new ideas and cultural flavour, the second generation is completely American. As long as you don't have religious schools and ethnic charter schools getting state funds, integration is systematic and inevitable.
If they had a CS degree, and were generally decent communicators and 'responsible actors' ... and could not get a job - now that's a problem.
https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/news-releases/us-citizenship-...
> Our system is designed for them to leave when their visit is over. Their visit should not function as the first step in the Green Card process.
The H-1B is not "the first step" in a Green Card process. That's why there's an adjustment of status!
You go from non-immigrant to immigrant status and it's not a foregone conclusion. The requirements for the Green Card are entirely different from the H-1B. It's a separate process, with its own rules, fees, timelines.
The "adjustment of status" is simply a way for workers and their families to remain in the US legally while the green card process runs its course, instead of requiring them to uproot their existence (which at that point is often in the 7-10+ year range, if they studied here before the H-1B). Why would we want people to leave and quit their jobs and _then_ give them a green card? They will be in a worse position to contribute to the economy then.
These people pay thousands or millions in taxes and take nothing back. Making their transition to permanent resident smooth is in the interest of every American.
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
The majority of permanent residents gain their green card through a status adjustment (ie, from a nonimmigrant visa).
Status adjustments are the norm, not some fringe edge case.
The only large category of immigrants that does not come primarily through adjustment are the "family preference" categories for more distant relative such as adult sons and daughters and siblings.
https://ohss.dhs.gov/system/files/2025-07/2025_0725_ohss_leg...
Nice.
So, at least one
So on your visa if you did anything bad, what would happen? Get your visa taken?
Here's one big difference. Do something bad, your green card might be taken. When you're a citizen? Nothing happens
And that's just one example...
Nothing?
My current understanding is that the "carveout", as it were, is the creation of the notion of dual-status itself, in the 1990 immigration act. This made H1b visas both immigrant and non-immigrant visas, and thus eligible for INA 245.
For example, a law firm's opinion:
> However, the USCIS memo suggests the new policy may be less applicable to dual-intent nonimmigrant categories (e.g., H-1B, L-1 and their H-4 and L-2 dependents), where applying for adjustment of status is not inconsistent with maintaining status as a temporary visa holder. Dual intent means that a person can legally intend to reside temporarily in the United States for purposes of their temporary H-1B or L-1 work visa and simultaneously intend to apply for a future permanent residence status. Dual intent is a well-established concept in business immigration law, with many decades of support in federal law and regulation. The USCIS policy memo does caution that maintaining H-1B or L-1 dual-intent status alone is not sufficient, on its own, to warrant a favorable exercise of discretion. The USCIS officer must still weigh whether or not to exercise discretion in approving the adjustment application, but adjustment applications have always been discretionary.
https://www.quarles.com/newsroom/publications/top-5-things-t...
China and Singapore are some of the more prominent examples.
China considers it a "nationality conflict," the child is issued a Travel Document and treated as a citizen domestically, they can still be registered on hukou and get ID card. Apparently they used to unofficially force you to decide as an adult, but stopped a few years ago and now issue the Travel Document for life.
edit to add -- that assumes the parent is not a unconditional green card holder, which is the scenario here.
Singapore allows dual citizenship until 21. Which is not necessarily a good thing, as if you do not do their national service you will effectively get banned from ever going there even if you renounce it later.
Japan and Korea both allow it forever from birth in practice, but the latter also has some complexities regarding the military (either renounce before a certain age or you have some restrictions returning until past a certain age).
Note, indigenous people were less than 1%. New York City had the largest proportion of immigrants at 45%. Your claims of "only natives were there" and "everyone else immigrated from somewhere" are demonstrably false.
Having an ancestor who immigrated to one’s country does not make one an immigrant.
For example, giving funding to USAID to try to stop the spread of Ebola helps people in DRC, Uganda, and other countries directly affected, but can also help the US not have Ebola spread here.
Helping Mexico improve their economy can help people in Mexico not immigrate to the US.
I believe our generosity also benefits us much more than we can see when our perspective collapses and we see life from fewer and fewer dimensions. And I think we can collapse into the "us vs them" mindset that so many others have collapsed into or we can go the other direction and realize it's "us with them" and then we look at generosity differently.
In the 1920s and 1930s the US had:
- Forced labor
- Peonage
- Debt servitude
- Jim crow laws
The 19th amendment was ratified in 1920, so that barely missed the cutoff.
The US has not been some beacon of moral righteousness for the majority of its existence.
But you are right that it is ending, just wrong about what: it’s the high economic activity that attracted people which is disappearing thanks to the same people that hate migrants.
I'm not sure there's a "just" here: compared to peer countries, the US is either middle-of-the-pack[1] or significantly more accepting of immigrants[2] depending on which number you pick.
(This isn't to somehow imply that the US isn't hostile to its immigrants, because it is. But the question is whether it's more hostile.)
[1]: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-the-share-of-foreig...
[2]: https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/stocks-of-foreign-bo...
But in case you are genuinely just hopelessly ignorant of the situation and somehow unable to use Wikipedia [0], I'll give you just a couple of examples.
For decades, the practice of redlining[1] exacerbated and perpetuated the lower socioeconomic status of minorities, but especially black people, in America.
The Black Lives Matter protests were sparked by the killings of black people by police in the US—not "a couple of black people", but "a long history of killing black people in their custody at hugely disproportionate numbers, with a few very, very prominent instances leading up to the protests."
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_the_United_States
I'm just trying to hear more sides. If I wanted the same recycled talking points I could just open Reddit. You linked a general Wikipedia page on the history of racism in the US and one on redlining. Those are broad historical overviews, not answers to the specific point I made which is more of a "daily life" type of deal. Let's say: Today I'm born black within the US, what can't I do that white persons can? Of course dealing with individual racism is something real, people will just hate you for who you are (if you are white in Africa it's the same thing, they'll call you all sort of nicknames and just attempt to scam you and many are racists individually but that has nothing to do with political view) but that doesn't necessarily change real life opportunities, I also deal with racism on a daily basis where I am, and it doesn't change the fact that I can still open my company, hire people and so-on, having some haters is just part of life.
For Black Lives Matter, the person that was killed (that "became the face of it") was a serious criminal himself (already convicted, and a drug addict) so it's a bit hard to really look into it objectively tbh.
I asked for practical and theoretical examples regarding the claim that Americans have no problem with fully assimilated Black Americans. Can you give me concrete examples of how that plays out (or doesn't) in everyday life, hiring, neighborhoods, relationship, marriage, moving in different state...?
Regarding crime, you can't ignore the fact that the number of murders are statistically committed way more by Black people (it's not a racist take, please let's not go in the rabbit hole, I'm not racist (just restating to avoid personal attacks)) which means that a deeper route issue is probably cultural, structural, family and so-on.
Official FBI statistics on murder offenders (latest available detailed data, 2019–2022 averages): | Race % of Population % of Known Murder Offenders Rate per 100,000 Black ~13.6% ~52–55% ~27–30 White (non-Hispanic) ~57% ~42–45% ~3–4 |
This suggests the issues are not really about skin color but about culture and family. You can't ignore the fact that there is just more crime being committed, this isn't about people getting more arrested because they are black, it's people directly committing serious crime (solved murders). The main issue imo is cultural, maybe based on initial rage due to the shitty history they endured, but the one born today doesn't have this history felt.
A direct correlation could be that 70% of black fathers abandon their children, while only 25% of white do, most grow up without a father which will of course lead to a life of crime in average. That's one of the strongest predictors of poor outcomes across every race, I believe internationally as well.
From what I'm reading, US indeed do have active racist policies called DEI which favor certain outcome depending on Race, that's the exact definition of racism, those laws/policies should be clearly abolished, no one should be treated differently (in the sense of a policy/law) based on his race, it's actually surprising that policies like this still exist today.
This has nothing really to do with "right wing" or "left wing" (it seems to make no sense anyway nowadays, it's like people are in a basket just because of X belief).
Give me real data as it's available, not history pages, I'd love if you could reply to my other points above as well.
This CRS report examples: https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/20151215_R44310_34af119...
"Once in the United States, the K-1 nonimmigrant is required to marry the U.S. citizen petitioner within 90 days. K-1 visa holders are permitted to work in the United States during this time if they file for employment authorization. The foreign national is eligible for lawful permanent residence as an immediate relative if the marriage takes place within 90 days and the fiancé(e) is otherwise admissible."
It's the status as an immediate relative of a citizen that confers eligibility, not the visa itself.
You don’t need a rulemaking to release guidance on the exercise of discretion, even if that new guidance changes prior agency discretionary practice. Agencies do that all the time.
In which country can you emigrate to and be allowed votes in government representation just because you pay taxes? I'm an EU citizen and living in another EU country and am not allowed to vote in that country's government elections, just local ones. If you want to vote at government level then you need to apply and get citizenship which also comes with the responsibility(or obligation more accurately) of military draft.
Everything about this seems pretty fair to me. I'm not sure why not to you. If you're not a citizen you shouldn't be allowed to vote at gov level since you're not subject to a draft, because in case the shit hits the fan militarily, unlike citizens, you can just pack your bags and go back to your home country and avoid dying in the front lines. So why would any country let people who aren't subject to draft vote? Makes no sense. You don't have the same skin in the game as citizens who are draftable just because you pay some taxes.
Now if you're paying taxes in a foreign country where you can't vote, it means you're there voluntarily because you're getting a much better deal than being in your own country where you can vote. Probably you're in the US because you make orders of magnitude more money than in your own country, but nobody in the US dragged you there against your will to work and pay them taxes, you agreed to this situation voluntarily because it also benefits you personally, and you would just as easily leave if it stopped benefiting you.
There are a few, with varying degrees of residency time (and possibly other conditions) required. New Zealand requires being a resident for a year.
The UK is particularly interesting, if you're a citizen of a common wealth nation you can vote in national UK elections if you're a resident.
Personally, I agree with you though. I didn't vote in the UK despite being able too. Let the citizens decide the future of their nation, I have the privilege to leave (and have done so already). Feels wrong for me to influence the nation when I'm not fully invested in the outcome.
Hope that provides some color. To all the fans of the current immigration policies - you are throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
> we are taxed with no representation in government
My country does in fact provide this right to foreign residents who live a certain amount of time in the country. Even if it didn't, it would not be a hypocritical position to state something is bad. Do you think I wrote the laws? Hardly seems like a good-faith argument or even a sound one!
You have representation. Perhaps you mean suffrage.
Maybe in some sense "no taxation without suffrage" would be more accurate, but it would be a worse slogan. In any case, "no taxation without representation" is a well known phrase, it's been around for over 250 years, and I don't think much is achieved by nitpicking its wording.
Also, money. Salaries are simply higher in the US (even if life is worse and less fulfilling overall)
The only possible way you could write a comment like that with a straight face is that you've never walked through a barrio in a developing world country with brick block contruction and tin roofs with tires holding the roof on, or favelas in Brazil with crowding, unsanitary conditions and resulting disease, drug crime, and gang warfare.
The standard of living in the US is vastly better than in these third-world shitholes, and it requires a stunning amount of out-of-touch suicidal empathy to project that it doesn't.
Google at least, I think people would say there was a period of near-universally believing it was a good thing, and an immigrant was a co-founder.
It definitely shaped our society. And if you think it's for the worse, might that suggest college-educated Anglo-adapting immigrants are more dangerous to us than the ones right-wingers are telling us to focus on?
Its bigger but then there are bigger places. It takes cca 4 days to travel from one side to another, but thats rather meaningless quality. I can hop in a car and be in 30 minutes in France, in 1.5h in Italy (living in Switzerland). I can be in top notch ski resort like Verbier in 1.5h. Thats a positive to me anyhow I look at it. Massive exposition to properly different cultures rather than US mono culture.
I wouldn't call excess a positive, being lazy positive, being deep in comfy/comfort zone an achievement in life, in contrary. But that's up to everybody how they setup their lives.
Everything has a weakness. Everything can be a drawback depending on circumstances. If everything is close means you can never really "get away" from everything; it means everything is condensed and you are effectively forced in a mode of life most Americans instinctively avoid. Is it possible you convinced yourself it is a desired state?
<< Massive exposition to properly different cultures rather than US mono culture.
I personally see this as a severe misunderstanding of US or not having traveled here. Even moving between states, there are massive differences across multiple facets of social reality ( though admittedly, often shaped by local geographical reality ). Utah and New Jersey come to mind -- the is almost nothing about both that aligns beyond maybe existence of tollways there. About the only thing that I can kinda find to support your claim is McDonalds, which is a lone oasis of stability across the continental United States.
edit: FWIW, I wouldn't want to live in France or Italy these days. Maybe Spain. In other words, I think my preferences are showing.
As of the current 2026 rules, the states that do not require ID at the polls are: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin, plus Delaware has a special affidavit process if you do not have ID
https://www.usvotefoundation.org/2026-in-person-voter-id-pol...
Note I am not endorsing the latter as it can come up in future citizenship applications.
They are not entirely wrong. The person you replied to said "that country's citizenship":
> So a person who was born in the US and is therefore US citizen at birth will not be allowed to have that country's citizenship
Taking example of China, you said "the child is issued a Travel Document and treated as a citizen domestically"
"Treated as a citizen" is not same as "having Citizenship". OCI card holders are India are pretty much treated as citizens, except few rights such as the right of suffrage/ability to engage in agricultural land use etc, but that doesn't make them citizens of India.
An OCI card, as you said, is effectively like a PR card for former citizens. It is explicitly not citizenship politically and India fully recognizes their foreign citizenship.
If an OCI holder with a US passport gets arrested, India will notify the US consulate as they are a citizen. The same would not apply for a Chinese travel document holder. That is what I meant as “treated as a citizen domestically.”
As to political rights, I assume in practice that one cannot join the Party without first revoking their other citizenship, if at all. But since it is not a democracy, that was never a right/element of citizenship in the first place.
It's often mere fiscal arbitrage. Look at the Belgians in Sofia for example. Euro zone, simpler and more stable administration, much cheaper, better climate, good food. Ridiculously lower taxes. Work remotely for Belgian customers. Pay 10% tax instead of 53.5% + 25+% employer social security contributions + 13.07% employee side. Even in a junior position, working for a Belgian client, you are so much cheaper to them while your net income is so much higher.
So why doesn't Belgium implement those perks too?
I'm not superbly well-placed to answer your follow-up question.
What does a plurality even mean here? This is a binary question, so plurality and majority are the same thing. And I don't think it is factually correct that the majority of Americans do not pay income taxes.
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-in...
I didn't look hard but that's the first thing I found. Famously, Mitt Romney complained that 47% of Americans don't contribute to federal income tax revenue, which is what I was thinking of.
Income taxes are not payroll taxes
Looking holistically the person leaving the US (or lets say 100 people to make it easier to see the point) means 1 to 30 less startups and so maybe an entire company or more not being started. That is less revenue for US.
What most people from the "they steal our jobs" mentality (not saying that is you, but this a seperate point) don't get is productive people create jobs by being a customer of many businesses.
I feel like the better argument is that the greencard holder was the best candidate and thus will be more productive in the role. It is just efficient resource allocation. That, even without new companies, will drive profit/expansion/more jobs
There isn't a "lump of labour" that gets distributed in the economy.
It's funny how we forget about meritocracy as soon as the median American is threatened.
Is that really true? I’m sure in some fields where you need rare experts I believe it. For the average engineer who is just another cog in the wheel of big corp, I highly doubt it.
What meritocracy? This is a myth pushed to justify a kind of "just world" interpretation of our social ills. Nepotism is increasing, social mobility decreasing. To believe in meritocracy in the face of this is to deny reality.
I can already on the ground see the effect of the Trump policies. So many tech jobs that would have been in the US are being lost. And companies are learning how to be effective with overseas teams.
Immigrants doing a very large portion of tech work can't be just because they get paid less
It is solely about that. Remember, immigrants didn't really play a role in the US tech industry for half of its existence and didn't play a major role until a decade ago. This is despite the fact that US colleges openly and actively discriminate against US citizens for grad school spots for 2 or 3 decades now.
They're not being turned away. There's a requirement to be in the country for 5 years with a green card before citizenship. It seems to me that they are just upset that they have to follow the rules which aren't hurting them at all.
They are actually in fact being told to return to their country before completing a process that previously - legally! - could be done in the US. That = being turned away
> There's a requirement to be in the country for 5 years with a green card before citizenship.
That is absolutely irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
Until next week, or whenever the current system is again upended haphazardly.
> It seems to me that they are just upset that they have to follow the rules which aren't hurting them at all.
It seems to me that they were all following the rules. The rules are now being capriciously changed with sly marketing words to confuse everyone.
They are effectively being ruled by a system that they have no say in. That's incompatible with America's democratic values. Of course it's reasonable that we don't allow non-citizens the vote; the problem as I see it is that if someone has worked here for 25 years for all intents and purposes they are a citizen, the government just doesn't formally recognize the reality of their situation.
By the way, your [2] is useless to prove your point: you can't compare absolute numbers (for instance Iceland vs the US).
(Again, I must emphasize that this does not make the US good. Only that the bar is perhaps lower than people who are assimilated into any particular country may realize.)
1. the amount of violence directed against immigrants legally allowed in by governmental forces.
2. the chance of legally allowed in immigrants will have immigration status changed without due process.
3. what percentage of Immigrants fear that 1 or 2 will happen to them.
I believe these two conditions seem to exist in the United States currently, although not sure how many immigrants it affects.
I am unsure if there are other countries that have a similar situation, I would expect if there are they must be relatively few in number.
The closest type of situation would be, I suppose, racial oppression focused on particular groups that have become undesirable according to a country's government.
The idea that you should be required to swear some loyalty to a government before you get a say in how the place you live is governed is the position that’s actually absurd.
(Yes, I do think there should be a global republic and that there should be full freedom of movement. It’s way past time for that.)
If you love the place you're living in and want to actively participate in its governance, including implementing any changes, you should obtain citizenship.
And even if you do, your stake would still be less than those who've been living there all their lives, across many generations. Maybe the natives actually don't want the changes that the immigrants want to see implemented.
(not going to argue the finer details of ethics like racism or xenophobia, etc. which I acknowledge can often come up in cases like this).
That would still mean runtime_terror made a false claim: "It's not like undocumented immigrants even get welfare or other social programs" They didn't specify whether the money for welfare or social programs came at the federal vs state level.
Do they pay income taxes if they're getting paid under the table in cash? If so, please explain how.
I agree that bad faith presentations on how things work is definitely a problem. But I think the reason immigration is a disaster is because both republicans and democrats have decided to be xenophobic. There's no political party pushing an alternative narrative. But further, the current system works for big corporate donors. The broken immigration system makes it easy for a company to exploit H1B workers or farm laborers/construction workers.
That, IMO, is why the system is so broken. Our politicians used 9/11 as a way to ramrod in draconian border policies "to fight terrorism" but really because they benefit those that own big businesses.
Until either party decides that immigrants are our neighbors and not scary "criminals" the system will remain completely busted.
I'm not even sure how I feel about immigration restriction. But I do want to get the facts straight. Be careful about assuming that anyone who mentions facts which are inconvenient for your worldview is "writing in bad faith" or "being stupid on purpose". That's a fast-track to epistemic closure like we see in religious cults.
Hahahahahhahagahahhahagaggahahahahahahahahahahhahahahaha!
Brother, we're the 4th largest economy in the world. We hold up an outsized percentage of the US economy.
> But I do want to get the facts straight
Oh do you now? You're the one that believes countries are better off after the US overthrows their democratically elected leaders and that the Venezuelans were celebrating in the streets (most of those were AI videos btw).
You just want to defend US imperialism and to scapegoat hard working immigrants.
And people who that x number of people do not pay income tax are implying they are paying no federal taxes when that is not true. It is a disingenuous argument.
That is your “good” immigrant. He is the right winger.
But that's besides the point, because I'm not the person making the argument. I was just pointing out that the comment was misread and misresponded to.
Yes! I agree, I don't mean to sound like I support the status quo. In this particular case, I wanted to clarify that green card-holding immigrants carry a disproportionate amount of tax burden (but that is not to support the current state of things).
Why hasn't the pandemic loan been paid back? Why do so many in Silicon Valley want to relocate to Austin or Miami?
>most of those were AI videos btw
Source? Most of the discussion on the venezuela subreddit seemed pleased about the intervention
https://old.reddit.com/r/vzla/comments/1q2yxsb/trump_acaba_d...
https://old.reddit.com/r/vzla/comments/1q4nfzm/opiniones_kam...
You believe Maduro was "democratically elected"? I don't think any serious observer believes he won a free and fair election.
You claimed the dire economics in South America was a result of US intervention. I gave 3 data points indicating that it's not that simple. You haven't given a single data point in support of your position.
>defend US imperialism
As I said, I'm an isolationist. I just get tired of people blaming the US for everything.
The "faction" lied about their intentions in order to be elected. That in itself isn't uncommon, but what is uncommon is the degree to which it lied. Most Republican voters, when told about the actual policies being implemented by elected Republicans, don't believe the reports, and assume that nobody would be enacting such stupid policy. Yet the voters keep voting for them.
The first two items were:
"1. SEAL THE BORDER, AND STOP THE MIGRANT INVASION"
"2. CARRY OUT THE LARGEST DEPORTATION OPERATION IN AMERICAN HISTORY"
You're acting like Trump's immigration policy was buried in some "Project 2025" whitepaper nobody has ever read.
Also, his immigration policy remains popular. According to Harvard-Harris, "Deporting all immigrants who are here illegally" remains above water at 55% support (including 33% of Democrats), 45% oppose: https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/HHP... (p. 26)
Yes they did. Of course they didn't want to be targeted themselves, but the rhetoric was very explicit about what would happen, and they already had a preview of it in 2016 and voted even more favorably for this regime this time around.
> The media silently accepted Trump's lie at face value when he said he knew nothing about Project 2025
Not true. The media was very vocal about it, and it was obvious that he was on board with it.
> Most Republican voters, when told about the actual policies being implemented by elected Republicans, don't believe the reports, and assume that nobody would be enacting such stupid policy.
This isn't true. The recent ouster of Thomas Massie is a clear example of this. However, even if that were true, Republican voters still overwhelmingly prefer this to the alternative (Democrats), and polls show this today.
> Yet the voters keep voting for them.
Indeed. Not sure how you can acknowledge this but somehow believe it's not what the voters want.
The simple statement that none of this is what voters want if we're talking about a majority of them is just true. To say otherwise is to be ignorant of history since the 90s and the Rs under Newt Gingrich to this day, and how effectively as a party they've consolidated power in America. I'm not really saying it's evil or smart or anything (I do think it was smart and bold). But, polls do consistently show a majority of Americans have never been so pessimistic about the country and their leadership in both parties.
How?
If people knew they were voting for Project 2025, why would Trump disavow any connection to it during the campaign? It doesn't make any sense.
> Republican voters still overwhelmingly prefer this to the alternative (Democrats), and polls show this today.
Republican voters care less about policy than about the team. Take key Democratic policies, and present them in polls without the Democratic label, and Republicans support them. Add in the label and they don't support them.
It's not hard to understand that politics is mostly treated as sports-team affiliation these days.
Republicans don't vote for Republicans because of policies, they vote for Republicans because they identify as Republicans.
And, claiming that the Massie vote, of just the extreme primary voters, represents the public's will? That's ridiculous. Massie still got something like 45% of the vote, among that extreme and unrepresentative bloc of voters, after Trump going hard after Massie for trying to release the Epstein files.
The Massie vote is about extremist Republican's subservience to Trump, not about whether anybody actually likes policies. People despise Trump's Epstein coverup.
I do not understand why the "American First" MAGA crowd can't get it through their thick skulls that everything nice they have, including our technological lead, is built by immigrants that are just smarter than they are.
This is just an ego problem I suspect. It bruises the ego of MAGA voters to realize that immigrants actually are smarter, they actually do get paid more (and not because they're "taking the jobs" but because they are actually more desirable.)
> I do not understand why the "American First" MAGA crowd can't get it through their thick skulls that everything nice they have, including our technological lead, is built by immigrants that are just smarter than they are.
Which specific Americans are kind of mediocre academically? Which specific immigrants are smarter than the average American and are therefore responsible for the nice things about America?
Not all American citizens have the same level of intelligence, nor do all people attempting to or actually succeeding in immigrating to the US. To the extent that "everything nice" including technological development is grounded in the average level of intelligence of the people currently inhabiting a country (which I think is a substantial part of but not the entirety of the explanation), this doesn't necessarily imply that immigration which isn't specifically gated on the intelligence of individual immigrants will improve a country along this metric.
And in fact the US has a huge number of legal pathways for immigration (including some like "immigrating illegally, having a natural-born-citizen child on US soil, and having that child sponsor your legal immigration decades later) that have nothing at all to do with how intelligent a given immigrant is.
And of course, immigration itself changes how "mediocre academically" Americans are, by changing who Americans are - an immigrant might eventually become a citizen; or if they don't their children born on US soil will be.
Edit: And before you mention O-1 and friends for highly accomplished individuals (maybe that's not affected for now? Honestly have no idea), this kind of policy has wide ranging second order effects even if it doesn't affect top talent directly. Like I said I was U.S. educated myself, once I would encourage bright minds from elsewhere to pursue a higher education in the U.S., now I heavily advise them from even setting foot in the U.S.
Most of them. We have normalized getting Bs and Cs in our schools. Our school curricula are mediocre, and our culture around education is as well. It is distinctly uncool to care about education here.
> Which specific immigrants are smarter than the average American and are therefore responsible for the nice things about America?
Most of our best doctors, scientists, and engineers are all immigrants. Look at the ethnic breakdown of top AI researchers at the top labs.
> which isn't specifically gated on the intelligence of individual immigrants will improve a country along this metric.
It's not just intelligence. Immigrants overall have more grit, more entrepreneurial spirit, and more ambition and willingness to succeed than median Americans. It takes a lot to uproot your life and attempt to make it elsewhere. The vast majority of immigrants I've met embody the American spirit far better than most born-and-raised Americans I've met.
> And in fact the US has a huge number of legal pathways for immigration
That we are making harder and needlessly painful, which will in turn reduce the amount of highly intelligent and capable immigrants we get as well.
But America being what it is, it attracts those with most potential creating and sustaining a network effect.
But there’s nothing intrinsically good or bad of the US, and it’s quite easy to mess up the equilibrium and go back to the mediocrity you mentioned
That's my point to get the Constitution changed (Amendment #28) to allow an immigrant to run for POTUS. We love US more than natural-born citizens. Our interests are far more aligned with the betterment of the country than anyone else's.
Generally, yes.
But then there's Elon Musk.
Peter Thiel too: while a US citizen by birth, he defacto immigrated to the US from elsewhere (as in: moved from another country to settle in the US).
Immigration for rich folks is a bit different, see.
If that was about any other class of people it'd be downvoted to oblivion, but for some reason Americans and white can always be talked shit on.
This is the kind of shit US AMERICANS are talking about, this xenophilia bullshit that is infecting our nation.
Go to any high school and see how little American schoolchildren care about academics vs immigrant schoolchildren. Academic excellence being uncool is baked into American culture. You're a "nerd" if you do well and care. Getting a B is "good enough." And "C's get degrees." This mentality is plainly unacceptable in most immigrant cultures.
I took almost two dozen AP classes in my day. In each one, the concentration of immigrant groups was far higher than the rest of the school at large.
Expand this out to college. Look at the admissions for top colleges without affirmative action. How do their demographics compare to the rest of the country? - MIT, 47% Asian. Berkeley, 41% Asian. UCLA and Stanford, 27% Asian.
6% of the US population is Asian, and 75% is white, and these schools don't have affirmative action. If all groups were equally competitive, admissions would reflect demographics.
(Ethnicity here is a crude approximation for immigration recency. I am not saying one ethnic group is better than another - simply that children of immigrants excel.)
The same goes for top PhD programs, the highest paying STEM jobs, even C-suite positions at big tech.
I am American and when I say that we have a problem where most Americans do not give a fuck about education, I am not being racist, I am just pointing out the truth. Over decades, our culture has bred an anti-intellectual attitude, one that prioritizes being cool and sociable over getting shit done. This is the antithesis of progress and ambition. It is great for sitting around and demanding handouts.
Immigrants more closely approximate the culture the founding fathers intended for the US. They uproot their lives to build something great. They get off their asses, do exceptionally well, and are carrying the nation on their backs. The rest of our culture could learn from them, instead of blaming our problems on them and turning them away.
Even if it were true, there are wider effects of immigration that you must consider. The purpose of life isn't to increase GDP. It reflects poorly on you that you must cast your opponents as being stupid and spiteful. Could it be that MAGA voters are humans with real motivations and rationales?
Because Literally everyone else in the US is an immigrant. Or are you referring to the Spanish that settled the west? The French in the far south? The Italians and Jews that populated New York? The British and Africans?
I’m painting in broad strokes, but to say “the American People” as if it’s somehow distinct from immigrants is just ladder pulling.
No, it couldn't. Trump tells them to vote a certain way, they do it. Look at Massie's primary as an example.
Given that they’re underwater for approval rating on immigration it seems both you and they have misread the room. Most people’s objections have to do with immigrants who are violent criminals that are going around neighborhoods hunting for cats and dogs to eat. This is what their campaign was highlighting as a problem. They have not been cracking down specifically on those immigrants. For this, they have no mandate.
I'm not so sure.
I think it would play out like this:
1. 20% H1Bs leave; 2. Those migrants are now in countries of origin, looking for work; 3. Many of the big US tech companies will already have offices in those countries, and those that don't can make new offices if they wanted to; 4. many, but likely not all, of those employees are now working for the same employer (or close enough), just in a different jurisdiction; 5. as none of these employees are physically in US hotspots, all the other stuff that happened in those hotspots because of big tech pay, suffers, conversely all the stuff which was suppressed because of those wages may (possibly) return; 6. two of the things that go down are the number of people transitioning from temporary visa to citizenship, and the available talent pool for the local-to-those-places startup and VC scenes.
If you just got massively screwed over by them (having upended your entire life in hope of getting a better future, then having that rugpulled), why would you get another job at that company with significantly worse contract terms?
Considering the rest of the world is reacting to the US setting itself on fire by finally stimulating local tech, why not just join one of the local alternatives instead?
There never were "violent criminals that are going around neighborhoods hunting for cats and dogs to eat." That was a baseless, racist caricature and it's unfortunate that anyone took it seriously.
And we all still remember "the wall," and Trump complaining about immigration from "shithole countries" like Haiti (versus Norway and Sweden, gee I wonder what the qualifying factor is there) and how Mexico was sending drug dealers and rapists across the border. The immigration policy of this administration has always been that immigrants (specifically any non-white immigrants) are an existential danger to American culture and safety. You don't try to wall off your entire southern border because you think the problem is a minority of bad actors. The DHS doesn't deploy white nationalist anti-immigrant propaganda[0,1] because it's just concerned about a criminal element.
And they didn't misread the room. Trumpism is first and foremost a white nationalist nativist movement. People wanted the wall. They wanted immigration stopped. "The immigrants were taking our jobs." "Muslims can't assimilate into civilized society." "Europe is basically a war zone because of all of the Muslims and low-IQ sub-Saharan Africans." These are all things Trump supporters have been saying for years and that the American right has been saying since at least 9/11. "Borders, Language Culture" as Michael Savage used to say. It's all been out in the open.
White Christian conservatives still support Trump's immigration policies by a wide margin. He speaks to the people he intends to speak to. I don't know why so many Black people and Latinos signed up for the "Leopards eating your face" party thinking the leopards wouldn't eat their face, but that's on them. But pretending Trump doesn't have a mandate to purge the country of immigrants is just naive - that is the only mandate he actually has.
[0]https://newrepublic.com/article/199094/dhs-neo-nazi-memes-no...
[1]https://www.splcenter.org/resources/hatewatch/dhs-white-nati...
I would challenge this. If you do believe that there are violent criminals coming through the porous border, whether it's 1% of the illegal immigrants or 100% of them, trying to seal the border off is not irrational. I'm not endorsing the physical wall itself, as I know a ton of illegal migrants are just overstaying visas, and I've heard of ladders and tunnels.
I think what's really compelling, and what the Left can't seem to relate to, is this: Everyone serious does believe the true fact that illegal immigrants have a lower rate of committing crimes than the overall population. But people who are victimized by those crimes have a valid point that those crimes are still incremental crimes - meaning that if we already had 1000 people in $BORDER_STATE who are going to commit violent crimes, letting in 1000 more people, even if only 10 of them (1%) are violent criminals, gives us 1,010 violent criminals. That's more crime than we had before. It's not like we get to trade in 10 of our own criminals for 10 immigrant ones.
Making no effort to control who comes here is irresponsible, because of course if there's a country that doesn't even try to vet you, and would feel guilty making you leave, of course criminals would be excited to go there.
Have you ever hired someone before?
Do you work in hr?
You didn't answer!
Can you provide a citation for this specific claim? I used to do admissions to a grad program in the US, and we ended up admitting mostly foreign students soley because very few US citizens actually applied (probably only 10% of apps). Whether that's because they were not qualified or couldn't afford it I do not know. But it's not because they were openly and actively discriminated against.
Bell, Wang, Fairchild, Intel, Sun...
Isn't this just because foreign students pay more than citizens? Isn't this just capitalism and the free market efficiently allocating resources?
Something about 'having the cake and eating it too'.
> Why would the university not pick that over a local kid who the university has to pay for out of their own coffers?
Universities don't pay for research - and departments usually don't pay for research either.
At the margin, a professor will prefer someone who has her own funding, but that person also needs to be competent, so I doubt the national schemes you are citing have made an impact on who gets into graduate school.
Sergey Brin? Paul Graham? Elon Musk?
Have you ever hired someone before? Did you decide to take the best person you found or did you pick an American?
Many times. Sometimes we don’t offer sponsorships so we hired who didn’t need one. Other times not. During the interview process where they’re from isn’t the matter at hand. Either way, there’s no shortage of good candidates - solely American / GC or not.
Though let’s be honest - there is a question behind the question, isn’t there? Why don’t you just ask that instead?
You answered it - you picked the best person, who sometimes was not American.
They mean "I would like our government to stop taxing people who don't get to vote for it" or "It is unjust for a government to tax people who don't get to vote for it" or something of that sort.
The fact that things aren't already the way you want them to be doesn't make it absurd to demand that they change to be that way.
(You might argument that governments don't give a damn what anyone demands and for that reason it is absurd to demand change. But I think that in fact governments do take notice of what people want, if they fear what the people might do if they don't get it. Whether that's voting them out of office or putting their heads on pikes or anything in between. And they will take more notice if more people are demanding whatever it is, and a large part of the point of saying things like "No taxation without representation!" is to get other people who aren't in the government to sympathize with your cause and maybe start demanding the same thing. So I think it's manifestly not absurd to make such demands, as such. Some particular demands -- "No taxation without $1M/year universal basic income!" -- would be absurd, but this one seems obviously not to be in that category.)
Is it a sensible demand? I dunno. Some people have thought so. Some other people have thought not. I'm not trying to settle that question; just trying to bring some clarity as to what the issue is.
OP: Complaint about taxation without representation
A: Acktually it's called suffrage not representation
B: This phrase has been in use forever and people use it interchangeably when they mean the other. It's a slogan, chill
A: I've had great representation without suffrage!
C: You're missing their point
A: Taxation without representation isn't an issue
I feel like I'm chatting with an LLM with a broken input box.
For this in particular:
> why would you get another job at that company with significantly worse contract terms?
Even if it is worse on paper (and it won't even be worse if the big tech companies do struggle to retain talent), it is likely to still be better than local companies offer.
In absolute terms yes, but you're forgetting that you are also increasing the victim population, so the per-capita rate is still going to drop!
Assuming criminals more-or-less randomly choose their victims, the number of immigrant criminals hitting native victims is more than offset by native criminals now hitting immigrant victims instead of native ones.
Yes it is. Building a 1900 mile long wall with moats and barbed wire and armed guards ordered to shoot on sight across an entire continent because a fraction of illegal immigrants might be violent criminals is the definition of irrational.
Particularly when the same could be said of the border with Canada but no one is concerned about that at all.
> I'm not endorsing the physical wall itself, as I know a ton of illegal migrants are just overstaying visas, and I've heard of ladders and tunnels.
But Trump was talking about a physical wall. And a physical wall is what Trump supporters voted for.
>Making no effort to control who comes here is irresponsible, because of course if there's a country that doesn't even try to vet you, and would feel guilty making you leave, of course criminals would be excited to go there.
No one is talking about making no effort to control who comes here, that's another right-wing conspiracy point not based in reality. There is a vast degree of possibility between "doing nothing" and "building a wall and sending ICE to kidnap people and shoot them in the streets." There is a degree of vetting which is reasonable and responsible and this is not it. This is paranoia and fear born of racism.
Musk was (mostly) great until 2020; Something happened to him during the COVID timeframe.
I'd not want Musk, Thiel, or Palantir guy to run for POTUS. Probably, there should be a clause that if your net worth exceeds the threshold, you shouldn't be eligible to run until you donate all of it to the government, with no option to get it back ever. Some more clauses can be added as well.
Edit 1: I think another clause, maybe most important, a minimum one term public office service experience required only as a Senator, Rep, Governor, or a Mayor.
Oops, my bad, somehow I thought his parents naturalized before he was born.
Thanks for pointing this out; this helps the point I'm trying to make.
>I'd not want Musk, Thiel, or Palantir guy to run for POTUS. Probably, there should be a clause that if your net worth exceeds the threshold, you shouldn't be eligible to run until you donate all of it to the government, with no option to get it back ever. Some more clauses can be added as well.
Edit 1: I think another clause, maybe most important, a minimum one term public office service experience required only as a Senator, Rep, Governor, or a Mayor.
Can I vote for you and your proposals somewhere?
At this point, this reads like "I have a dream". But it's one worthy of trying to make a reality.
>Musk was (mostly) great until 2020;
Aside from running the Thai cave diver's life (and slandering him as a "pedo") for daring to rescue the children instead of letting them die waiting for Musk's non-existent submarine to rescue them.
That, and being generally known for working his employees to the bone.
And the whole "I need to spread my superior seed" conveyor belt approach to having children.
And the "420 funding secured" nonsense.
Oh, and the Hyperloop hype, which he did with the sole intent to kill high speed rail in California (which he succeeded in).
And the Boring Company scam.
And... nevermind, he was a known, not OK", great asshole before* he went full Nazi, but I can agree that he was "great" in comparison to what he's become.
>Something happened to him during the COVID timeframe.
It's ketamine. Ketamine happened.
But it should be just as obvious that there are plenty of immigrants who are also necessary because they bring new ideas, their education, their incredible work ethic, to fill in the gaps that the US clearly has.
There is one thing that unites all of us (and I do mean us, as I am one of them). We all dream of a society where our hard work can become prosperity for ourselves and for everyone else, a plot of fertile soil that is worth sowing. We all come here with a dream.
And I personally don't mind so much that I'm uplifting people that don't agree with my existence. I just wish that they could stay out of our way so we could all benefit.
There is a completely different dynamic with job shops like wipro and others sponsoring “high skilled visas” which are only used to undercut certain labor markets.
I mean, it's one thing if you think immigrants commit more crimes or use more taxpayer money. These are both false, but at least the argument could hypothetically work. But if you say that even perfectly law-abiding, non-welfare-using, good-work-performing hypothetical immigrants shouldn't be allowed in because they would "undercut labor markets", that's plain nonsense. Such nice hypothetical immigrants should be invited in large numbers and everyone would win from it.
I don't think "but who will pick the cotton?" is a good argument.
Without immigration an imminent depopulation crisis is on its way to America.
We are actually blessed to be in demand as an immigration destination as well as a culture and infrastructure uniquely set up for it.
Squandering that advantage to satisfy xenophobic ideology is yet another demonstration of the Republican Party’s lack of fiscal responsibility. See also: completely random war in Iran, ICE budget increases spent on kicking out taxpayers/customers, tax cuts for billionaires, the current record high budget deficit, $1.8 billion fund for Trump brownshirts, etc.
You may not realize this, but it appears to be the goal in this case.
Most countries have this same issue. Not all, but the global population rise, if current trends continue will reverse.
Can you explain to me your understanding of why that is?
And can you also explain your understanding of why Israel is the only Western country that has a fertility rate above replacement?
Exclusively immigrants? Is that what you’re arguing?
Only green card holders in the US do those jobs?
The fact they're coming the US literally means its economy needs them.
Of course we could all wax philosophical and say "Nobody needs a Frappuccino every other day, we just want it," but then nobody needs to live in a prosperous economy anyway.
Classical economics would argue that higher population tends to increase productivity (economies of scale and specialization) while lowering wages, increasing land value, and improving returns on capital. Free trade has a very similar effect. You can find this analysis in all standard texts (Smith, Riccardo, etc) and even progressive works such as Progress and Poverty by Henry George.
Different groups are free to have different opinions of this tradeoff. Big landowners benefit immensely while working class renters only suffer.
Not necessarily. As just one example, it could mean one of their family immigrated for a well paying job, and now they want their parents, or other family, to join them and they don’t have skills in a high paying industry.
The presence of low income wage earners does not, by force of nature nor economics, require them.
Having said that, I tend to against minimum wage policy.
They are needed and often do more than those that are citizens.
Remove, or at least tighten the requirements, for welfare.
Your argument seems to be the equivalent of: if the (illegal? surely some of them) immigrants could get welfare they also wouldn’t do those jobs.
As welfare increases to the point where it starts to competes with jobs, it seems sensible to expect welfare will compete with jobs. Especially when you take in to consideration the expenses welfare recipients don’t incur as a result of not having to attend the workplace nor dress for such.
The Democrats squeaked out one miraculous win buoyed by the incompetence of Trump's band of corrupt idiots in the early COVID days. But now merely pointing out how incompetent and corrupt Trump is stopped working, as we saw in 2024. Do Democrats have anything left in the playbook besides derision and scorn toward those outside their tent? We will soon see, I guess.
[1] I know the talking points say that the tax cuts "only benefit the rich" but I'm far from a 1%er and can tell you that I'm paying way more taxes in a blue state than I would be in a red state, and also the OBBB improved things for me. Voters in those blue states can see their tax bills and the one thing Democrats can't say is that they don't put a huge tax burden on those who work.
Racism is literally the point.
Yes the job market exists.
>The facts show that just like the amount of labor is not fixed, neither is the size of the economy (fixed pie fallacy) and as more work is done, the economy grows
Your reply is a glib thought-terminating cliche strawman that doesn't address their point at all. Interesting!
This might be less true if there is resource starvation but we have transport and imports and exports. You can accomodate more people and feed them.
That doesn't mean your plumber isn't qualified—just that people looking for webapps want to hire workers who know how to make them.
There is the other side plenty of workers successful at programming language could be trained to fill any gap. That's what happened in the 50s and 60s..
Recommended reading:
After the Spike: Population, Progress, and the Case for People
Or really any other book on the subject, I'm not married to that one, it's not a perfect book it's just one that's easy to find because of the distinctive cover.
I don't care to get into talking about Israel. It's a country with the population of Ohio, so if it's an anomaly, it's an anomaly. The only discussion I can get into that country is going to get distasteful.
Would you agree that caring about school performance constitutes acting white? Would you agree that acting white is uncool? Less flippantly, how much of American culture around education is specifically driven by a desire to eliminate or avoid noticing conspicuous racial discrepancies in measured educational attainment?
> Most of our best doctors, scientists, and engineers are all immigrants. Look at the ethnic breakdown of top AI researchers at the top labs.
What is the specific ethnic breakdown of the set of people you consider to be top AI researchers at the top labs? How does this compare to 1) the current ethnic breakdown of the totality of the United States of America, and 2) what the ethnic breakdown of the United States of America would be under your preferred immigration policy.
> It's not just intelligence. Immigrants overall have more grit, more entrepreneurial spirit, and more ambition and willingness to succeed than median Americans. It takes a lot to uproot your life and attempt to make it elsewhere. The vast majority of immigrants I've met embody the American spirit far better than most born-and-raised Americans I've met.
What kinds of immigrants have you met, and not met? How many of them can you talk with in the language they are fluent in, in order to get an accurate sense of the degree to which they embody the American spirit?
> That we are making harder and needlessly painful, which will in turn reduce the amount of highly intelligent and capable immigrants we get as well.
That might be worth it, if those highly intelligent and capable immigrants would, once they are settled in the US, turn their capacity and intelligence towards making US immigration policy more open to less intelligent and capable immigrants (e.g. their less capable and intelligent family members, or just liberalizing immigration policy in general).
No, the opposite. In my experience immigrants care far more about getting good grades, whereas most multigenerational American students were happy with Bs or even Cs.
> What is the specific ethnic breakdown of the set of people you consider to be top AI researchers at the top labs? How does this compare to 1) the current ethnic breakdown of the totality of the United States of America, and 2) what the ethnic breakdown of the United States of America would be under your preferred immigration policy.
A lot more Asians. Very few Asians. A lot more Asians.
> What kinds of immigrants have you met, and not met? How many of them can you talk with in the language they are fluent in, in order to get an accurate sense of the degree to which they embody the American spirit?
Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Nigerian, Mexican, etc. So many.
The only ones not fluent in English were the Hispanic immigrants, but despite this they better embody the American spirit than most Americans. I don't need to be fluent in Spanish to see that (though mine is passable).
The skilled first and second generation American immigrants do extraordinarily well. Most of my second generation Asian peers are clearing mid 6 to low 7 figures in their 30s, many working on their own ventures or at bold startups. And my Hispanic landscaper that came here with nothing, now owns a business enough to pay him and his four employees.
Now compare this to the median multigenerational American - working a dead-end job, comparatively far less grit, ambition, and risk-taking, too comfortable so there is not as much a drive to be exceptional or prove themselves.
Which group do you think the Founding Fathers would say better reflects the American spirit? To me immigrants are clearly the better reflection of the best aspects of American culture.
United States Congress, “An act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,” March 26, 1790:
> Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof on application to any common law Court of record in any one of the States wherein he shall have resided for the term of one year at least, and making proof to the satisfaction of such Court that he is a person of good character, and taking the oath or affirmation prescribed by law to support the Constitution of the United States, which Oath or Affirmation such Court shall administer, and the Clerk of such Court shall record such Application, and the proceedings thereon; and thereupon such person shall be considered as a Citizen of the United States.
Note: “free white person […] of good character”
US Constitution Preamble:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
Note: “ourselves and our Posterity”
I'm not American, but this conversation happens a lot in Canada where I'm from too
I was born in Canada, in a Canadian hospital. I've never had any other home than this country.
I'm descended from immigrants, but I am not an immigrant. I'm not considered indigenous either, that's a whole other type of person.
What a strange thing, to be from a place but have many people say "it's not your place, it's stolen" as if I had a say in that. If I went anywhere else, I would be an immigrant there.
Very odd.
Meaning, if we time travel and apply these restrictions, you yourself would have never been a citizen. In fact, you probably wouldn't even exist. Do you see the problem?
That, my friend, is ladder pulling. When you destroy the very conditions that allow you to thrive.
>The point is your parents, or their parents, were immigrants.
Or my parents, parents, parents, parents, parents, parents were... And if they came here for a better life, obviously there was some mind virus that was going on in their home country that forced them to leave in search of a better life. Don't try and bring that mind virus here if you had to immigrate here to escape it.
Is Kash Patel any different from Americans who have lived here for generations? Is Rishi Sunak any different from the people who lived in Britain from generations?
Immigrant (noun) A person who comes to a country to take up permanent residence.
But... the US also has not the best education, so.
and nutrition, pollution, infectious diseases, etc
Generally though, the foreign candidate is not so much better that hiring an American would have lowered the bar.
Sometimes it also comes down to leveling - I’ve had to down level people due to budget concerns. Americans can hold out for that better job, but the other cannot so companies take advantage of that.
My point is that it’s not a skill issue, it’s a wage + location issue. Foreigners will find that their wage is better than what they can earn at home, so they can undercut that citizens who’s held out for a better opportunity.
Just to better understand, genuinely, do you mean that the company would increase their budget in the event that a foreign worker had not been available, and that an American would have taken the job at that time, given the higher wage?
Other ways to solve is to settle for less if the job isn’t that crucial, or look for someone who lives in a lower cost of living area who can take the wage. But that also depends on the whole RTO fiasco.
To be clear, if you are doing leading edge R&D or some super special project like SpaceX, etc then yeah you need to seek the brightest minds across the globe. But to maintain your CMS or work in some ERP softwares, you can definitely find an American to do it.
The basic point I’m making is a large majority of H1B work can be done just as well (within an acceptable error rate) by someone here. There are reasons why you need some special talent but those aren’t as common.
Besides, yeah, if you hire people who will work for any salary, the amount of jobs will increase, but salaries will decrease, for locals as well. After some time, locals will flee sectors where the migrant workers are brought in, creating further self-inflicted "labor shortages"...requiring more migrants!
The main winners are capital owners, who, thanks to the migrant workers, can now acquire a larger part of the added value generated by workers.
Those having their labour under-cut aren’t going to directly benefit.
This is not a visa issue, but one we solve with illegal labor and visas.
The real solution is visas and making those that done want to work and sponge off social services, actually work.
My kiddo graduates soon, her baby daddy owes $75k in back child support - say 7 years. He’s talented enough to make $150+ wood working. Refuses to do anything because the man/etc. Branch not far from tree.
I’d love to turn a POS like him in such that someone equally talented and wants to contribute can, take a percentage. The person gets a visa, the dead beat gets servitude. No take on the servitude just taxes maybe going off to pay the debt.
The US is a land of opportunity, but also a land of a bunch of idiots that are entitled.
I can't disagree with your final assertion there, but there's really very little you can do besides offer greater incentives that get people to genuinely want to work. And I know there's not a market for that and that the rich are keeping the purse strings tight. So it goes.
That price is driven by the benefits system creating a price floor, not by intrinsic lack of interest.
Certainly if 8,000[1] years ago a tribe walked across and settled, and then 7,000 years ago another group walked across and set up camp next to the descendants of that first tribe who had been there a thousand years, the second group were actually immigrants, right?
And how do we sort it out now, millennia after those various groups arrived, after all that DNA has been mixed together?
My point is just that it's silly to label any race or group "immigrant" or "native" based on what movements we guess from their skin color that their ancestors may have made millennia or centuries ago, or even what their parents did. Yes, I'm very in favor of birthright citizenship, even if people have "anchor babies" in bad faith the baby didn't have any say in it. And no one else of any color had any say in being born in America either.
[1] please substitute correct numbers -- they don't matter
I'm saying that pre-colonial-age America was not a place where each tribe came in, found their own piece of virgin land, and lived in peace and harmony. They were not any different than the homo sapiens on other continents, which is to say, smart, determined, and willing to kill outsiders to improve their own tribe's chances of survival.
The only reason of course that they are viewed so sympathetically today is the tragedy of their near-complete destruction, which can be explained very thoroughly by their incredibly bad luck of having almost no domesticable native animals, and their not having gotten Iron Age technology. But in the end their destruction was mostly due to disease, traceable to early Spanish contact, which had absolutely decimated North American societies before almost any human Europeans had set foot on the mainland.[1] Europeans indeed did lots of bad things to those peoples, but I argue this is less proof that "Europeans are uniquely mean" and more proof that humans are brutal when they come into conflict over scarce resources and will press whatever advantages they have, whether it's large numbers of braves with obsidian arrowheads or muskets.
A good read for some perspective on what we can piece together about what pre-colonial America was like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Before_Civilization
> "According to Keeley, among the indigenous peoples of the Americas, only 13% did not engage in wars with their neighbors at least once per year. The natives' pre-Columbian ancient practice of using human scalps as trophies is well documented. Iroquois routinely slowly tortured to death captured enemy warriors (see Captives in American Indian Wars for details)."
Pre-colonial North America was certainly not some idyllic pacifist utopia as people like to fetishize. However, any previous ethno-political disputes between those nations is irrelevant compared to the very recent history of the last 200 years.
The genocide of Native Americans in the 19th century happened under the unbroken chain of authority of our current government.
Having done a STEM PhD, No. STEM PhDs are merely easily exploited labor by STEM departments. The PhDs and postdocs from foreign countries are typically a notch lower than the US PhDs and postdocs (especially the postdocs, because in many foreign countries you can do a 3 year PhD). It's just that most americans won't accept 100 hour workweeks in exchange for a $50k paycheck, and won't falsify the science to stay in pursuit of the next rung on the academic ladder.
Any justification at all for the US government to give a visa to someone - including student visas, including visas for postdocs doing ostensible research - will be gamed by people whose primary concern is access to the US. Demand for access to the US among the myriad peoples of the world is that strong.
Most of these who think that wasp Americans are harmed by high skilled immigrants are admitting that they can’t beat them. Pathetic slave morality which is life denying and ontologically damnable.
Chinese, Chinese, Greek, Canadian, Chinese, Chinese, German
They were called out by:
American, Indian, American, Polish, American, American, American.
Respectively
Power is a function of technological superiority. The moment you it stops attracting the smartest people, a country will fall behind on military and economic power.
At least everyone knows that there's something icky about ads and quants, and good people like you reject the lucrative opportunities. Most people generally think that science can do no bad at any scale, and that just throwing money at the problem/good intentions are all you need. The enterprise of science has a truthseeking model that it needs to uphold in order to succeed at its advertised ends, and it's desperately becoming the exact opposite of what it should be, and nobody has reasonable remedies to fix it within the current system. If you have a suggestion on how to fix what we've gotten ourselves into, please , I'd love to hear it.
PS The number of roles that there aren't qualified Americans for could be counted on one hand. This has always been about reducing salaries, not shortages.
Of course I am exaggerating, but this is not a 1 dimensional problem.
There is no mind virus. People wish to rewrite history to fuel their own delusions. They don't require enforcement around immigration, they require medication and perhaps a history lesson or two.
Suicidal empathy mixed with this 'idea that america is illegitimate' cause we are a 'nation of immigrants', and we 'took land from the natives' is quite frankly retarded. And i can use the word retarded because i mean it in the literal since, "a verb meaning to slow down, delay, or impede a process."
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/imm...
shows the USofA having much the same level of immigration as it had from 1860 through until 1920.
It is truly astounding to me what lengths Republicans will go to to "win". Well, you've won. When are things going to get better? I'm waiting.
This is why in the modern world some sectors are always crying about "worker shortages" while asking always more migrant workers to come in - salaries are compressed as a result, and locals have no incentives to enter the branch.
Hence importing workers may be useful for needs that are limited in time and space (say, install a specialized foreign machinery in a power plant), but systematic importation leads to dequalification of the local workers, who flee the branch that has now low salaries.
Also, check the definition of that chart... We have far more "illegal immigration" today than we did back in 1890. So.... egg zack ly. Don't you think that's a big problem considering our current size? I'm all for 'some' immigration, but the level we are at today is totally unsustainable when we have an absolute homeless epidemic in all of our cities?
Holy shit, we've gone form 4.5% of the pop and 10M to 14.5% to 50M?(!)in 40 years since 1970?
Isn't that alarming?
We have far more "illegal immigration" today than we did back in 1890.
Don't you think that's a big problem considering our current size?
I'm all for 'some' immigration, but the level we are at today is totally unsustainable when we have an absolute homeless epidemic in all of our cities?
Are you certain that all US cities have "an absolute homeless epidemic"?