So for those that don't know, it's quite common for a visa renewal to be required to leave the country. Depending on the visa, you might have to do this every year.
So just imagine, having a normal job in the US and you're asked to leave to renew your visa and this stuff happens.
That's no more appointment, not even a new date and you're now very likely unable to work and possibly can't even enter the country to get your belongings if you were to leave.
Just 'putting a pause' on people with existing appointments with no answer for when they might resume is.... Inhumane
I think you have a point, however a change of status for example (so from temporary to permanent) can require you leaving the country.
Also, the first paragraph of the article says it too:
"Immigrant visa applicants with interviews scheduled at U.S. embassies and consulates have been notified by email that their appointments are being postponed."
Not trying to make a political point at all and perhaps a controversial take. But, it’s specifically and maybe implicitly by design. Meaning they made this way precisely so you have to reapply so they can change their mind or block you out later. Nothing about getting a visa is permanent and you’re fully at risk when you move here with that type of status. If you evaluate the situation that’s always been the case.
The leaving part is not the issue, as you try to immigrate into a country you're subject to the rules that country sets. You're always free to not immigrate into that country (this is not about asylum).
The issue here is that, if you just left the country to do everything the country asked you, you are now in limbo.
For how long? No one can tell.
Does this mean you lose your job? Maybe.
And when you decide it's no longer worth it, you might even have issues getting back in to get your stuff...
Retraining your people CAN be done without it being so disruptive, they chose not to.
when you treat immigrants like they were not people with lifes, you are just one step away from treating poor people as they were not people and then too treat all common people as they were not people.
also it has been quite convenient explanation for adopting systems such as Flock and allowing all kinds of para-police actions which seems very similar to what happened in germany circla 1930-1934
You treat them like they are people without personal agency.
Temporary worker programs are a deal offered on open terms: people can come to work, but they have to leave afterward. The laws are plastered with the word “temporary.” People take advantage of the deal knowing the terms and there is nothing wrong holding people to the deal.
Especially when they arbitrarily change the rules so people who did everything by the book are now “illegals”. Especially when they “lose” paperwork somewhere inside of an enormous overworked and hostile bureaucracy.
That term has been in use for at least the half century I’ve been alive. It’s a common word almost every where in the US, shows up in daily conversations, but it’s been deemed not politically correct. That’s why you maybe never heard it in media or from a politician in the past. This presidency is all about breaking political correctness though and it’s on brand. This is why his devotees love him. Simple things like saying the words we were told we couldn’t say really resonates with some people. There’s unfortunately still a lot of deep seated racism in the US. Will take a thousand more years to really get rid of it. Political correctness is a way to force accelerated the process, it backfires when you push it too hard too fast. You’re trying to change culture faster than humans can be expected to change (pesky long lifespans and all). It doesn’t work well and cause a pressure cooker situation. Trump is the steam venting of years of political correctness and rapid progressive movement.
oh please, everyone knows that its referring to their immigration status or legality of stay in country.
you surely must realize that any rational person just shrugs off listening to what else you might say when you start with such ridiculous interpretations
> when you treat immigrants like they were not people with lifes, you are just one step away from treating poor people as they were not people and then too treat all common people as they were not people.
"The way that a society treats its prisoners is one of the sharpest reflections of its character." - Nelson Mandela
I did not know this but true.
I would point out that when you are talking about criminals there is still a layer of judgment from society given the crimes. When talking about legal immigrants and refugees there is even less space.
The US is an outliner on prison terms and sizes etc. Under the surface it is hard to tell if the public lead the prisons or if the big prison business shapes public opinion but from the outside it seems crazy.
Different societies are at different places on the prison is for punishment to prison is for rehabilitation spectrum, and their reoffending rates reflect that.
> as you try to immigrate into a country you're subject to the rules that country sets
Always written and followed up with “but…”
If only the millions and millions of people that NGOs were shuffling in over the Biden years could have had some obvious and expected pushback… I don’t remember anyone here saying “geez, this could effect more than a response to illegal border crossings down the road!”
> The issue here is that, if you just left the country to do everything the country asked you, you are now in limbo.
I feel like I’ve said it a few times but - Yes, exactly. The country wants you to leave and then get’s to decide if you can come back. That’s how it’s designed. On purpose.
You’re approaching it from a perspective where you’re being asked to leave and your reentry is a right. It’s not. They never said, if you leave you can come back. They said, leave and we’ll see. The risk of being blocked out is inherent by anyone residing in a country that has this similar process; there are many.
> I feel like I’ve said it a few times but - Yes, exactly. The country wants you to leave and then get’s to decide if you can come back. That’s how it’s designed. On purpose.
That is how it's designed, and that's fine.
But make a decision... They're pausing the decision making for an indefinite amount of time. That's not how it was designed, but it sure does look like that's on purpose.
It's not a mobster way, more like a weasel way. The reason it is a weasel's move is because decisions at the consulate are made by consular officers who are career public workers and won't deny visas for arbitrary reasons. That is bad for the political leadership because they just don't want to issue visas. So they need to invent evasive moves to throttle the pipeline by adding trainings, background checks, and other bogus bureaucratic hurdles.
> The reason it is a weasel's move is because decisions at the consulate are made by consular officers who are career public workers and won't deny visas for arbitrary reasons.
No? Visa can be denied for arbitrary reasons based on what executive branch of US. there have been multiple cases where it has been clear that visas are a privilige not a right. Visa needs a reason to be granted, by default it is denied.
Isn’t that the whole definition of “executive branch”? They are given (by we the people) the power to choose how to execute the laws. And we elect them.
The alternatives I can think of are for laws to be executed at the whim of an algorithm, a king, a more local executive like the governors of each state, or a more distant foreign executive like the UN
No, the executive branch has a responsibility to execute the law. It's not a privilege. We elected them to perform a duty on our behalf. Do you understand the difference?
Expanded rights for some at the direct expense of others. That's not the same as simply expanding rights, unless you count other people being 'offended' in the same category as someone being physically assaulted or killed.
No, you are confusing discretion with whims of the executive branch. Consular officers have discretion to adjudicate the applications and they can deny them for reasons prescribed in the INA. Those decisions are not reviewable. They are still supposed to follow their training, the FAM, and the INA in making the decisions. If Rubio sends an email to the consulates that says, "deny all visas", that would be illegal as a matter of policy and will be overturned by the courts under the APA. Note that 212(f) (aka Muslim ban from Trump v. Hawaii) gives discretion to the president to bar entry into the country, not visa adjudications. Visa adjudications require individualized determination by the consular officer.
Does the United States owe immigration to the world, somehow? Does it owe it so much that there must be an avenue to immigration so large that you casually refer to that as a "pipeline"?
Some of us have friends overseas who we think are deserving of residency and citizenship. You used to be able to just show up on a ship and they would make you a citizen if you were healthy. That's how my ancestors got here.
"You used to be able to just show up on a ship and they would make you a citizen if you were healthy."
Unless you were Chinese. Let's not romanticize that period, the Chinese Exclusion Act was enacted precisely over fears of too many people of a different culture and race moving into the US at once. It was only repealed in 1943, as Imperial Japan became the common enemy of both China and the US.
And the Jews who were seeking shelter from Nazi Germany weren't particularly welcome either. There was an entire conference in Evian in 1938, ironically organized by none other than FDR, that sought a solution to increasing Jewish emigration from Germany. The end result was that no one was willing to increase or waive any quotas.
History tends to repeat with some variations. Few political things are totally new under the sun.
> That is bad for the political leadership because they just don't want to issue visas
America welcomes the most people in by percentage and by numbers in the world. If they don't want to issue visas, and they do it the most by political design, then no one does.
Pause is a silly way of saying No for now. You can try again later. But they’re not advising when that may be happening. To me, that tells you everything you need to know. That they don’t know themselves because it’s to be determined, maybe. Until then, no.
Can they? Because one of the questions on these questionnaires is almost always 'have you had a prior request being denied'.
> But they’re not advising when that may be happening. To me, that tells you everything you need to know.
These are life altering decisions for people that might have put decades into doing their best for the US. This is not about what to have for dinner.
This causes a LOT of uncertainty and chaos for no real reason. If they're so convinced it should all be denied, then issue those denials so they can be challenged.
So maybe you have stated a reason a pause is better than an explicit no. No history of a denial is maybe a better thing.
I get the human component but I can separate that from policy. I have my own risk assessment on it and it’s that I couldn’t imagine ever making any material investment financial or community in a place like this. I’ve thought about doing the digital nomad thing in the past, and I don’t think anyone would be surprised if some random South East Asian country did this same thing and nobody would bat an eye. It to be expected that other countries can have wavering policies, it’s when the US does it that people cry about the humanity of it.
I don’t think it would have hurt much to put some advanced warning out there. Let people plan for it. But I also know that probably has some blow back towards the intended outcome of this.
Also, I don’t think you can challenge a blanket policy. I haven’t really dove into this but it doesn’t sound like they’re making any exceptions.
The current administration loves creating chaos and uncertainty. Exactly why this should be less of a surprise to those that know how things work and that they may actually get locked out. Anyone who reads even just the headline of this and is perplexed by it has been living under a rock. To me, it is 100% on brand.
> I don’t think it would have hurt much to put some advanced warning out there. Let people plan for it.
As with a lot of things this administration does, this is where the cruel part comes in. That would be the sensible thing to do, it's just a choice not to.
> I don’t think anyone would be surprised if some random South East Asian country did this same thing and nobody would bat an eye. It to be expected that other countries can have wavering policies, it’s when the US does it that people cry about the humanity of it.
Because those countries would typically do it with a warning period of some sort, the fallout won't be as much.
In general these countries typically don't do this because the legal immigration system is how they pick and choose who to allow in, as the US does. So typically this would be to their advantage.
Also, the US is the country that used to call themselves "leader of the free world and all that". So maybe they should hold themselves to high standards?
> Also, I don’t think you can challenge a blanket policy.
There isn't a policy here that has been changed. It's the executive branch stopping some function it was tasked with. We've seen in the past that they've tried such things many times for the courts to then come in and say that the law says they should do XYZ and so they're forced to resume their work. DOGE stopped a bunch of things that the courts later reinstated, including rehiring the people they fired. Thankfully the executive branch isn't completely unchecked, yet.
> Exactly why this should be less of a surprise to those that know how things work and that they may actually get locked out
So you would suggest that people cancel their lease, pack up their stuff, don't sign their kids up for school and all? Just on the off chance that this hits right when they're abroad? I think that's just arguing around the issue created here.
We’ve said a lot already and obviously have our own perspectives. I understand your side, you don’t seem to understand mine. Or can’t understand it without echoing back the same stuff, I hear you and can understand perspectives I don’t agree with. That seems to be missing on your end, or you just want to argue about things which I don’t.
You quoted me without the “but…” part I already wrote.
I don’t think it’s a given another country would give any notice. Political regime change and general volatility are higher in some other places. Big assumption on your part.
Lack of policy and executive mandate is exactly why there’s really no formal dispute process either. Yes, it means you have to let the courts sort it for you. And that means hoping someone leads the charge.
I have suggested that I never would have created a rooted life, with school aged children, financial obligations, assets, etc based on a visa that inherently has such weak grounding in my existence in a country. Those that have chosen to do so, have chosen the risk. They probably hoped for the best and considered historical precedent but we all know the past isn’t a crystal ball for the future. It’s like joining the armed forces after a long period of peace expecting peace to persist. But armed forces are kept because shit can change. Wars can start. And you’ll be involved if it does. The benefits that come with it are provided because that risk exists. Whether you serve at a time of peace or see active duty is not known (unless you join in wartime of course.)
I don't think you understand anything about an immigration process.
All these cases are meticulously documented. So not making a decision is not at all the same as a 'no'.
A 'no' you can challenge, a pause not so much. They probably cannot and don't want to actually deny all those applications as they'll be in hot water really quick. So this is just the childish, not wanting to really own it, way of trying to achieve the same result.
Of course it’s on purpose. That’s the point: to get temp migrants to leave. There’s nothing inhumane about that, and the government is acting within the scope of its authority.
In the end this is 100% a political issue and who knows why it is on the HN front page.
I imagine it's on the HN front page because it directly affects the technology careers of a large number of the people who are members of this community - or are coworkers of or employees/employers of members of this community.
Yes, obviously. But it was rhetorical - this is not specifically tech related and there’s nothing about it that a ‘hacker’ would find innately interesting. It’s just people bitching about a US executive branch decision they disagree with and everybody’s downvoting the side they disagree with, which is exactly the sort of outcome this site ostensibly tries to avoid.
Only if your definition of "hacker" is limited to "begging for VC money for your b2b SAAS".
Through the entire history of the phrase "hacker", there have been hackers concerned about human rights, political causes, anti-corporate measures, etc.
Personally I consider myself a hacker and will not abide by the narrow definition you set forth. I'm a hacker because I'm pissed off that money controls our lives and I seek out to regain control wherever I can.
You're right but I think you're running into the emotional side of the issue for some folks. The "not coming back" angle is a feature not a bug. Saves having to track folks down, potentially detain them, etc.
Well no, you're running into the fact that this administration has shown capricious (and often illegal) determination logic of who gets to come in or not.
People haven't always complained about this feature/bug/whatever because the US has generally not had people in charge who allow in people charged with sex trafficking (like the Tate brothers) but stop and harass even American citizens who are accused of saying mean things about Israel on the Internet.
Name one country, then. None that I'm aware of require you to leave the country to renew an immigration visa. Switching from a visitor visa to an immigration visa, sure. But if you're already on an immigration visa or residence permit, it's normally expected that you are, well, an immigrant. That your home, domicile, center of vital interests, whatever you want to call it, is in the country. I know of immigration systems that require you to apply from inland instead of from abroad in this case: most European systems work that way, for example, and I believe Canada and Australia too? But why would you require an immigrant to leave the country to extend their residence in that same country, other than to fuck with them?
Yeah, this is the problem. If you're on an immigrant visa, working a real job, then you have a life in the US: an apartment or a house, a pile of belongings, maybe a spouse and kids. If you need to leave the country to renew your immigrant visa, you may not be allowed back in to pack your apartment, sell your house, or help your US spouse and kids prepare to move to a country that will allow your family to stay together. It's a giant neon sign telling you you're not at all welcome here.
Of course, if you have a spouse and kids, this all gets easier once you have permanent resident status. Which used to be comparatively easy to get once you were married and you had offspring running around. I don't know what that process looks like now.
In practice, this kind of arbitrary screwing with people makes the US far too risky for educated, professional immigrants. So the scientists and the engineers and the company founders will just go elsewhere and build that country's economy. Which is fine, in the long run: If the US doesn't want to build the future or create new industries, then the voters have every right to vote for that. We've already decided we have no hope of competing with China in cars. And we'll need to cede more industries over time. As far as I can tell, the US has benefited heavily from poaching other people's scientists and engineers and professionals for decades now. But maybe the voters don't buy my argument, and they believe that chasing away skilled professionals and imposing 100% tariffs will lead to the future they want. It's a difference in beliefs about about what makes a country prosperous, and people have a right to vote based on their beliefs.
Ireland? Where'd you get that from? They have a perfectly typical European system where you are expected to apply from inside the country for renewals [1]. You can still do it from abroad, but then you're not eligible for the simpler online procedure:
> You must currently be present in Ireland to be eligible to renew your permission to remain online. Applications submitted from outside Ireland will not be accepted.
Nigeria I'm less sure about. From what I can quickly google, they have a few classes of temporary work visas that aren't extendable (which isn't particularly unusual), although they do list at least some as "renewable upon regularization", and I'm unfortunately not well-versed enough in Nigerian immigration law to know what that means. For actual long-term immigration they have a document called a CERPAC, and the respective website [2] doesn't seem to mention whether you have to leave Nigeria to renew it, only that it's done online. Common sense suggests, however, that if you did have to leave, it would be mentioned somewhere on there, likely in big bold letters.
And lots of expat-friendly countries that are tolerant of working on repeated tourist visas rather than a full immigrant visa, but still require visa runs every month or three.
Not at the moment, but the result of the current UK system has been huge uncontrolled levels of immigration leading to deep public resentment, so that may change in the future
Yes that's kind of what I mean - the powers that be are already quietly moving in the direction of cracking down on immigration, because they can see it's now causing them real political problems.
Not because they care about doing the right thing, but purely for self preservation reasons
‘Uncontrolled’ - surely the control point was the initial application being submitted from abroad?
It was very much ‘controlled’. We lost SO many European workers due to the obsession with EU Freedom of Movement that entire sectors like nursing were about to implode without a source of new workers.
Could you explain a bit more? Not sure what is achieved by forcing people to renew their visas from abroad. I appreciate that, philosophically, it is a way of setting requirements higher, but it does not strike me as principled.
From my perspective as an immigrant in the UK, there have got to be so many parameters the UK government can adjust before indulging into performative cruelty. Setting higher requirements for visas, revising what jobs qualify for Skilled Worker visas and such. In fact, my understanding is that this is exactly what they have been doing (rather mildly), and it's been successful.
If the government refuses a visa renewal while the person is in the country and they don’t comply you have to deport them, which is often problematic.
If you make it standard procedure that everyone has to leave the country temporarily to renew their visa, the person is already outside your country when you refuse the renewal.
Instead of having a deportation challenged in court and mired in paperwork, you simply don’t let them back in. That’s what the parent comment was getting at.
Not saying this is right or wrong or it will necessarily happen in the UK, but it’s the kind of change you can make if you want to quietly reduce immigration without fuss about deportations.
And that does seem to be the direction that UK policy is going, albeit currently only with baby steps
I find this quite confusing, but then I am far from being an expert on the matter:
* Do we expect a high number of people applying for visa renewals and getting rejected? How come? Otherwise, when it comes to people illegally overstaying their visas, how does this policy idea address intentional non-compliance?
* Don't legal challenges to deportation of criminals have to do with the deportation rather than visas. It would be convenient if hardened criminals complied with the law and removed the need to deport them, but what would motivate them to do so?
The idea seems to be to inconvenience law-abiding visa holders without addressing major concerns, but then I probably misunderstand the concerns. For instance, maybe there is a way of creating legal busy-work when one's visa renewal application gets rejected in a way that is cheap to the individual, but costly for the state, and that this happens on a scale that makes the problem significant. Sounds surprising, and surprising that there'd be no other way to avoid that too!
This would be true if visa and status were the same thing. In the US, they are not. Whether you are legally present in the US is governed by status. So what happens is that your status is valid and even renewed or extended in the US. But your visa expires. And you need to renew the visa just to bring the date on the visa to the same date as your status. You literally go to the consulate and show them your other status document, and they stamp your passport with the date from the other status document. It's all quite silly. A bit like the movie Brazil.
1a. Illegal immigration has nothing to do with visa based, legal immigration. illegal immigration is the type of immigration people are upset about here in the UK. most people have no problem with legal migration.
1b. anyone claiming the UK’s legal migration is any sort of problem right now, or in the past, should probably not be listened to in any way shape or form for anything they have to say on the matter.
2. a lot of the folks who have illegally entered the country end up asking for asylum, and by law their claims must be processed
3. the dublin convention states something along the lines of “asylum requests must be processed in the first EU country the person entered into”, ie it’s possible to remove people claiming asylum if they initially arrived in a different EU member state country
4. most people get to the uk having traveled through EU member states, because geography.
5. we left the EU, we cannot do 3 anymore. so we have a bunch of people stuck in hotels waiting for asylum claims to be processed.
illegal immigration got worse because we left the eu.
People absolutely do have a problem with legal immigration, especially post-Boriswave.
If legal immigration means millions of new people every year and rapid demographic change, of course that will cause a political issue.
It would be very strange (basically unheard of in human history) if it didn't.
People I know who are non-white all report increased racism (mostly not aggressive but noticeable) since Covid, despite having English accents so clearly not being illegal immigrants.
That is caused by reckless immigration policy stoking resentment
Reform take peoples concerns about the massive increase in population numbers and the knock on effects of housing and infrastructure, and cultural clash since we swapped eu immigration for sub Saharan and South Asian, and point it to the small boats.
I have no problem with refugees. I do have problem with a million people a year arriving through Heathrow. Farage and co want that though as it’s good for business (more workers, higher asset prices) so they blame it on the tiny numbers of small boats.
Brexit meant we swapped immigration of mostly like minded Europeans and temporary workers for permanent immigration from poorer countries with more medieval views.
I’m fairly left on the spectrum, I was door stepping for remain, and for Lib Dems in 2017,2019 and a by-election, I’m very much on the tax wealth not work side, and I have no problem in paying tax despite earning more than 90% of the people in the county, including the old folk who just keep taking and never paying.
But it seems I’m not left enough because I have a problem with the massive amounts of legal immigration under a populist right wing government and I should be sent to a gulag.
"anyone claiming the UK’s legal migration is any sort of problem right now, or in the past, should probably not be listened to in any way shape or form for anything they have to say on the matter."
This sort of position is, IMO, disgusting and immoral. I cannot express how appalled I am that someone would state something like this. Anyone who's a citizen of the UK most certainly has a right to express their opinion on legal immigration, either in favor or against.
That "public resentment" mostly was fueled by a rabid, out of control yellow press and a healthy dose of Russian propaganda spread by Russia-financed entities (Brexit, UKIP and Reform UK all have been shown to have very suspicious links to Russian money).
That's a disfuncional view: "we set the rules, take it or leave it". In Switzerland there are strict requirements, but if you're a law abiding and employed migrant, ie contributing to the country, the services help you fill the paperwork so you can stay.
Even considering the disfuncional way, one thing it's to say "you only stay if we allow". The other is to say "you only leave if you allow": that's a much more authoritarian position.
These policies will work and immigration will lower for sure. Let's see the outcome in a few years.
Rather than rights and privileges, think about the economic consequences of this. People will stop coming here for advanced study for advanced research and for advanced industry jobs. And most institutions and companies will accommodate this and try to have such people work from where they are vs fight an onerous government to bring them here. The net result will be damage to the US economy
> You’re approaching it from a perspective where you’re being asked to leave and your reentry is a right. It’s not. They never said, if you leave you can come back. They said, leave and we’ll see.
This so much. Ultimately, you are a guest and the host country can kick you out with no notice.
oh yea, let me just uproot myself because immigration took too long and my company didn't want to wait.
I'll just cancel my rental agreement, move my furniture across continents, cancel my other subscriptions, oh wait that's got a few month notice period so I'll have to pay up for months I don't need anymore, let alone all the friendships and social connections I made that I never got to say a proper goodbye to.
This is extremely unappealing to skilled workers, and the loss of trust will extend past this current administration, if all it takes is one idiot in office to upend your life, you can't trust that country and its people anymore.
That’s the point. The current people in power don’t want immigrants because the vast majority of immigrants are non white.
The tall blond nordics they really want have no real motivation to deal with this bizarre BS as they usually already have a great standard of living in say Norway.
So you end up with a ton of folks from places where running water is still a luxury. A lot of these people are even excellent church attending Christians.
Not white though.
I really do think this country is ran by idiots. No one will be there to pick the crops, prisoners make poor farm hands.
The price of food will skyrocket, and if the rest of the world wants to punish us they could just suspend food imports to the US.
This was all predictable, and while the Democrats are far from perfect, at least you don’t have chaos.
I find the idea the only immigrants can do low skill labor kinda… obtuse. Maybe Americans should pick their own crops instead of living in a delusion that certain labor is beneath them. Boomer era “all my kids are going to get white collar jobs” type thinking isn’t sustainable.
It's not beneath them per se. It's just that this trade only makes sense for a certain slice of the population at a certain time in their life. The immigrant is willing to work in that job because what is offered is not just the salary but something more (chance to immigrate, stability, arbitrage, etc.). It's similar to research assistants or grad students in universities. They are doing cutting edge research for peanuts because what they are getting is something more (degree, skills, future earning potential). It's hard to replace this dynamic. Or in other words, the dollar value of the intangibles is so high that if you were to put a price on it, it would make your business unviable.
> research assistants or grad students in universities
These are not fully trained scientists, but rather trainees. As such, they don't get paid the same as a fully trained scientist. Like how a journeyman is paid more than an apprentice electrician.
Of course, they are also underpaid, too. Ask any grad student union.
> It's hard to replace this dynamic. Or in other words, the dollar value of the intangibles is so high that if you were to put a price on it, it would make your business unviable.
Yes, it's very hard to pay your workers a liveable wage if everyone else is exploiting their workers by underpaying them.
All you're saying is that we've built exploiting labor (foreigners, interns, trainees) into our economy.
I’d only say change the system to provide a pathway to residency. If you’re willing to work 12 hour days to ensure my fat American born self keeps eating , you deserve a spot here.
One of my former partners was making around 200k. Her grandparents cleaned homes.
The idea is that you come here and your life is crappy low paid work, but your kids and their kids have amazing careers.
While I understand that you think this is romantic and ethical, it also guarantees a status quo where the economy and indeed everyone's quality of life is kept afloat by a permanent imported labor underclass. As we are finding out, we end up with colossal amounts of undertrained, entitled citizens and artificially deflated prices for critical civilizational services.
I agree with the spirit of your comment. But what often gets overlooked is that we do have a pathway to permanent residency and naturalization. It involves demonstrating that you are willing and able to be a citizen, not just do labor. The fact that a large number of actual citizens probably aren’t equipped to perform their civic duties doesn’t excuse it. We can change the laws on what it takes to be a citizen but if it were easy to redefine citizenship I’d imagine we’d have already done it.
Don't worry, supply is there. Because the US is actually increasing visa caps for some of these workers. Might also be because they work at the properties of a certain person.
Need to keep those wages down, it would be terrible for profitability if he had to hire Americans you know!
Immigrants aren’t the only ones who can do low skill labor, machines can do it too.
But doing any kind of labor that a machine can do, is beneath your capacity as a human, so you shouldn’t do that job, you should do other jobs that require human effort or where the quality of human output is valued.
Even if machines could do it, it doesn’t mean they could do it at or below the equivalent cost.
I also disagree with the automation point regarding what humans should do. As we see with current AI, many creative tasks can be automated but it doesn’t make them unfulfilling human endeavors.
> The leaving part is not the issue, as you try to immigrate into a country you're subject to the rules that country sets.
The ultimate uncertainty is that regardless of who you are and what you do, a country always has the right to kick you out when you are there on a visa regardless of what the rights and rules of that visa. Nothing is guaranteed ultimately.
>The ultimate uncertainty is that regardless of who you are and what you do, a country always has the right to kick you out...Nothing is guaranteed ultimately.
Which is what makes the actions of the government so disturbing. What made the USA so attractive (the rules, the decorum, the civility) is gone.
While there were a great many injustices, in general, it trended toward getting better over the years, until recently.
The craziest part is with globally declining total fertility rates, a country would be fortunate to have productive, younger people be banging on their door to be let in.
> > The ultimate uncertainty is that regardless of who you are and what you do, a country always has the right to kick you out...Nothing is guaranteed ultimately.
Depends on whether you think international law still exists and is followed - statelessness isn't allowed under that.
There's no single set of "international law" in the sense of national laws, state laws or local laws. There are only agreements and treaties between nations that are applied within those nations. As such, what "international law" applies depends on which nation you're in or from or if some nation's law enforcement have jurisdictional reach.
More to the point, nothing about this decision implies statelessness. Every visa applicant is a citizen of another foreign, non-American, nation. Being booted out doesn't make them stateless. They couldn't have applied for a visa if were stateless.
Note, I do agree that this suspension is unfair and a bad idea. But tossing out random accusations that imply that international law is being violated or causing people to become stateless doesn't help our case.
> whether you think international law still exists
Well that’s an easy one. It doesn’t. There are specific agreements, and I guess you could consider war crimes the primary example of an international court. But there is no and should be no international courts for immigration.
A country gets to set its own laws, end of story. The current happenings in the US are a direct pendulum swing from the previous administration. If people can’t accept that, it just shows how biased they are. Or how one-sided their information sources have been.
They sure do. US law presupposes that a tourist is secretly planning to stay in the US, and must demonstrate otherwise to the satisfaction of the assessor. There are a number of factors assessed, including things like ties to the applicant's home country - an existing job, ownership of property, family demands; basically, clearly having a life in that country that the applicant wants and needs to get back to.
Someone applying for a tourist visa, who recently had an immigration renewal denied, who has no life to get back to in their country of origin (because they built a life in the US) but clearly has a life in the US (owns property in the US, has family in the US, has work ties -maybe even still has a job in the US); that applicant is an enhanced overstayer risk and this increases the chances of being denied a tourist visa.
Look around the thread and notice how little the comments defending these policies have to say about the policies themselves. Instead, what they all have in common is a vague underlying fear of being displaced, or sense that something owed to them is being taken.
This comment is itself a perfect example of what I was talking about.
Nobody feels entitled to a visa. It’s aspirational, like applying to a job. People do it because they want a better life, knowing full well they could be denied, or that it may well be temporary.
But if you believe immigrants could take something from you, like your job or housing, then it makes sense you’d project this idea of entitlement onto them. As if by applying they’re implicitly laying claim to something owed to you, a citizen.
In reality the economy is not a fixed pie and nothing is being taken from you. Immigrants take jobs, but they also spend money, pay taxes, start businesses, and need houses built, all of which leads to more jobs. It’s a positive feedback loop that benefits everyone, and a big part of how America’s economy grew into what it is today.
> This comment is itself a perfect example of what I was talking about.
Except it's not. It's just an observation of these comments. I don't have a dog in this race. I am not a citizen or a resident. Both residents and citizens are sounding entitled IMHO.
> Nobody feels entitled to a visa. It’s aspirational, like applying to a job. People do it because they want a better life, knowing full well they could be denied, or that it may well be temporary.
For those applying for a new visa I would mostly agree. For those extending their Visa I would disagree heavily.
> But if you believe immigrants could take something from you, like your job or housing, then it makes sense you’d project this idea of entitlement onto them. As if by applying they’re implicitly laying claim to something owed to you, a citizen.
If there is no genuine concern over this then why are applications/quotas for work Visas even a thing? Just offer automatic residence to whoever in the world can get hired by any company that operates in the USA. Infinite GDP glitch.
You are right that government of the USA doesn't owe citizens a continued quality of life. The preamble is very clear on that. When it says "promote the general Welfare" that is interpreted as the welfare of residents and citizens alike.
> In reality the economy is not a fixed pie and nothing is being taken from you. Immigrants take jobs, but they also spend money, pay taxes, start businesses, and need houses built, all of which leads to more jobs. It’s a positive feedback loop that benefits everyone, and a big part of how America’s economy grew into what it is today.
I mostly agree but "benefits everyone" is not true. There are winners and losers and negative externalities. GDP isn't a happiness score. Cynical me thinks that the difference between a USA resident and a citizen is basically non existent for the average USA citizen in terms of rights (arguably worse in terms of responsibilities for non politically active people who don't work with/for the federal government) but the permission to reside indefinitely is one of those rights so a government denying residency is a way to artificially give value to the citizenry without actually giving or improving anything.
Yes they definitely do. People on H1B visas upset that their visa expired and they have to go back to their home country when they'd "built a life in America".
Maybe compare it from point of asian phd, who follows all rules, spends thousands of dollars, and years applying for job and visas... and much better treatment of people, who move to US illegally.
I stopped traveling to US, because during covid goverment, could not be even bothered to clarify entry rules (what sort of booster shots were needed etc). At the same time south border was widely opened. Clear rules and fair game, are the bare minimum!
There are fixed number of jobs, fixed number of houses to rent... it is not infinitive baloon.
The program has always "threatened" to displace citizens. That's not new and if that were the only reason motivating people then why wait till now to complain? Frankly I don't care if I'm fairly displaced. That's meritocracy at work.
The reality is the program has been abused and stretched far beyond its intent by corporations in pursuit of cheap (I’d argue slave) labor. You cannot, with a straight face, argue that the spirit of the program is being upheld. Come on. People are upset because they are realizing that they haven't been playing fair--the game's been rigged this whole time. I think that's a very understandable and normal human emotion all things considered.
Fraud is illegal. And when people enrich themselves fraudulently it does tend to feel like something has been taken by someone not entitled to it, yes. That works for both the corporations fraudulently hiring H1B and the fraudulent credentialing rings being operated to supply the labor.
It is sad that good people and valid visa holders are swept up in this. Aim your ire at the fraudsters, not the people trying to enforce the law and fix the problem.
Are you calling for open border with no controls? That's the only way to get meritocracy.
The system is set up so the casino wins. You cannot, with a straight face, argue the odds are in your favor, but there are rules about how the casino works, both formal and informal.
When a casino only investigates cases where someone wins $1 million on the slots, to see if there's a fault in the system, while never investigating all the times that people lose, that's technically within the legal system, but the spirit of gambling is not being upheld, and people get upset. Just ask Katerina Bookman.
The immigration system, with the thumb firmly in favor of the interests of capital, is still based on the expectation of good faith by those running the system, as doing otherwise results in orders of magnitude more rules, or an alternate set of unspoken rules based more on vibes.
"Pausing" is a bad faith breaking of the spirit of the system.
I think what he's saying is if a corporation has a genuine need of some high specialist in a skill, and no American has that skill - then okay, such is life - bring in a foreign worker. But corporations have abused the system to unnecessarily employ immigrant labor in lieu of American, because immigrant workers not only tend to earn well below market wages (which is supposed to be illegal), but also tend to be far more easily coerced and loyal because their visa is dependent upon them staying with their employer.
The way it works in some countries in Europe is that you have to pay the foreign worker a minimum wage that is x% above industry standard for that role. No need to check if they have special skills. This will obviously not fly among corporate donors.
> I think what he's saying is if a corporation has a genuine need of some high specialist in a skill, and no American has that skill - then okay, such is life - bring in a foreign worker.
I don't think so, as that would be a silly point to make. I mean, it's absurd to assume a hiring round should't extend offers to other candidates if current applicants can just barely meet the hiring bar. This is a contrived scenario intended to rationalize excluding better candidates on technicalities that only serve the interest of low-skilled, low-competence applicants that can't compete.
And by the way, I've worked with my fair share of US emigrants, both veterans and juniors fresh out of college, and I would hardly describe them as raising the hiring bar. Nevertheless it would be colossally stupid to argue they should have not been considered for the position just because they were foreigners.
Most H1-Bs earn well below market rates for the roles they fill. [1] The exact data gives 46% of H1-B's earning in the 34th percentile of local rates for their roles, and 60% below the median. That's hard to square against them being world class super employees.
But the interesting thing is that there's a simple solution that we should both be able to agree on, in spite of having quite different views. If you genuinely believe they're super-world-class workers, then you should certainly be enthusiastic about, for instance, rules that would require they be paid wages well above the median for their role. In both of our narratives, that goes a long way towards righting an injustice, we merely disagree on for whom.
But this solution solves it in all cases. And the companies using, but not abusing, H1-Bs certainly wouldn't mind since they'd be mostly unaffected. Finally this would also help prevent wage stagnation. There are many hundreds of thousands H1-Bs and them being paid such low wages is going to have an affect on the market.
If true, that interpretation hardly seems relevant given that all immigrant visa applications are paused, with the goal of determining whether immigrants are likely to become dependent on public benefits in the US.
It's not simply a pause on immigration by people applying for a category which requires special expertise.
I am well aware of US immigration law history and the views of the current administration regarding immigration.
How does reading up on the history change how the stated reason for this pause has nothing to do with the meritocracy issues, fraudulent H1B visas, etc. that you complained about?
Do you think those labor issues will be improved after the training is finished, and if so, why?
How does your earlier comment explain why visas based on family preference are also apparently on pause as well?
Of course if we look at the history of US immigration we can easily see how for over 150 years it was explicitly set up to support a white supremacist race-based culture, which broke down with the civil rights movement and the incoherency of "whiteness" as a legal or scientific definition (are Arabs white? Are Asian Indians white? Are Chinese immigrants in Mississippi "white"? - https://archive.org/details/mississippichine0000loew/page/n7...).
With the current reactionary administration's antipathy towards nearly all immigration, except seemingly white South Africans and Nordics, it's far easier to interpret this action as deliberately gumming up the works and causing distress, rather than some systemic beneficial labor reform like what you want.
I assume that's what you mean by reading up on how we got here?
No I am talking about why a specific pause on 75 countries turned into this global pause that we all find concerning. You seem to have a wishful view of humanity as some post border utopia but that’s not how our or anybody’s laws work. If you want to go post border that’s a super interesting idea to talk about over some beers or whatever. But looking at our very standard immigration process and telling people who are concerned about curbing real fraud that enforcing our laws is racist is pretty out of touch.
> But corporations have abused the system to unnecessarily employ immigrant labor in lieu of American
I'm not going to say this has never happened, but in general I don't think it's common or widespread. Generally, businesses going to the trouble of bringing in foreign labor through the various programs are trying to fulfill labor shortages.
You should be able to see evidence of it happening in jobs and unemployment numbers. You'd see it higher unemployment among American citizens than the workforce as a whole
Towards the end of the Biden admin, there was a great jobs report, but right-wing media and MAGA pundits spun it by saying the vast majority of all the new jobs were taken by immigrants.
That wasn't a lie, but it wasn't because immigrants were taking jobs that would have otherwise been filled with Americans as they tried to portray. If you looked at the employment numbers by citizenship status, citizens were sitting about as close to full employment as we could ever be. The only way to fill those jobs was to expand the labor pool.
I didn’t follow your casino allegory. Anyway I happen to agree that “pausing” is inhumane. What I’m trying to communicate is we didn’t get here in a vacuum. There is a real problem and good faith attempts have been made to curtail it by putting pressure via “taxes” on the “interests of capital” abusing H1B. Cooperation would have prevented this.
I simply do not know how you can use "meritocracy" to support your position, while also supporting an artificial barrier to free movement which prevents a more competent foreign worker from moving to the US to displace you from your job.
I mean, anyone who is still defending this administration isn't even trying to have a conversation in good faith.
I have a Republican friend who appreciates the Supreme Court Justices, and then suddenly has zero clue about any news story involving the administration, and shrugs off the war. This despite meticulously following Benghazi hearings when it was someone he wanted to dislike. He would rather Trump be Romney, but he's not going to do anything about it whatsoever.
I blame myself for teasing my Italian friend in college over Silvio Berlusconi, and now I've found myself in the same position :(
I'll defend this administration in good faith on the policies I agree with (I disagree with most of the current foreign policy).
In 2015, Trump took a position on excessive immigration and illegal immigration that made him very popular in the Republican primaries, even considering his very obvious character flaws. Like Ross Perot before him, there was a groundswell of support from people who (rightfully or not) feel like their country and their inheritance they are leaving younger generations was slowly being destroyed (the social fabric that makes America a great place was being shredded).
This policy decision is a continuation of that political shift. This is, quite literally, Democracy in Action. The people wanted to see a change and elected a very unorthodox political leader to enact that change.
Right, the point isn't that "Leave to renew" is some kind of horrible policy. Such bad-fucking-faith on display everywhere.
The point is maybe signal to people that we will soon be pausing all visa renewals so people who trivially have good jobs and good records know they ought to literally just plan on moving out of their apartment rather than have to deal with paying thousands of dollars to have someone else move their shit overseas, just to maybe get their visa renewed right when their shit arrives and they have to do the same thing all over again.
This would literally just helping law-abiding folks follow the law. But no, the cruelty is the point.
> the point isn't that "Leave to renew" is some kind of horrible policy
I mean... "leave to renew" is a horrible policy, it's just one that we've normalized since 9/11. It's incredibly wasteful and disruptive, and serves no purpose. There's no legitimate reason why a long-term residential visa like an H1-B can't be renewed by mail or electronically. I can renew my driver's license by mail, and I'm a hell of a lot more likely to cause serious damage with a car than my foreign coworkers are by continuing to do their jobs well.
The reason the State Department hides behind, by the way, is that domestic offices don't have the ability to take biometric data (fingerprints), which is self-evidently pretextual.
Right, stateside renewal was common until 9/11. Disappointingly, Biden tried to bring it back but was presumably thwarted by labor/union or incompetence. Immigration tends to be a bipartisan morass.
> The terms were clear, visas are a privilege and not a right or automatic entitlement.
They are. Yet can you tell me why you would need to pause all processing in order to retrain your people? Surely they do training all the time without pausing processing.
Your passport is a right too, you wouldn't mind if they paused that request with no indication of when they might resume? And that's including when you're abroad and lost yours. If that happens to you, you'll happily hold the same position?
> I am a citizen, so this isn't a good faith comparison.
Oh, you still are. You'll get your passport, we just can't tell you when. That's what's happening here. These people aren't being denied, they're told to wait for an indefinite amount of time.
But basically you're saying that you think this is outrageous if it were you, got it.
I've explicitly stated that visas are not a right - which is the legally-consistent opinion and basic English interpretation of the concept. (If visas were a right, why would denial be a possibility? If denial isn't a possibility, what function do they serve?)
> That's what's happening here. These people aren't being denied, they're told to wait for an indefinite amount of time.
What part of "these people" somehow makes them equivalent in entitlement to a nation's citizens - how is this even a question? Not agreeing that borders, citizenship are concepts generally doesn't make them magically cease to exist.
> Do you have anything constructive to say about the merits of the leave to renew policy itself?
I've discussed this thoroughly in sibling threads: forcing people to leave every once in a while is an extremely useful tool in ensuring that they are maintaining a residence and ties to their home country (where they agreed they would return.)
B-1/B-2 are the quintessential examples of visas requiring "leave to renew" - and note: these folks are granted no permission to work or remain in the United States.
> immigrants aren’t entitled to anything? (but you presumably are!)
I don't feel entitled to anything whatsoever in other countries. As a citizen of the United States, however, our law does indeed entitle me to things that foreign guests have zero expectation or entitlement to.
>As a citizen of the United States, however, our law does indeed entitle me to things that foreign guests have zero expectation or entitlement to.
Based on what? It's a set of arbitrary rules applied within an arbitrarily defined geographical area.
Some people may have decided at some point in history to treat you differently and with more respect than other fellow humans. Some other people may want to treat everyone fairly.
All of this is a moral construction. What's for certain though is that you did nothing to deserve to be born where you're born. It follows that you didn't do anything to deserve more rights.
This isn't hard: Just give a notice period if you're going to stop processing visas, so people can sell and ship their shit and break their leases before they go.
Just because temporary isn't indefinite doesn't mean we have to be absolute ghouls about how they leave the country
First, that's not what this is talking about. "Leave to renew" becoming "leave, and you will not be renewed" on a whim is insane, self-destructive cruelty.
But also, it's only been "the policy" since 2004. That's technically "decades", but only just, and it was also introduced for idiotic pretextual reasons. The ostensible reason is that domestic State Department offices don't have the equipment to capture biometric data. Seriously. That's the argument. The law doesn't say "you have to leave to renew", it says "you have to get fingerprinted to renew", and conveniently there's nowhere in the United States that can do that, despite every police station in the country having that equipment at this point.
They come with renewal expectations, assuming the situation hasn't changed. Reserving the right to change the rules unilaterally doesn't make you not an asshole if you actually exercise that right. And government only functions if it's predictable - if it's a random-number generator (outside of processes that are explicitly lotteries), what is anyone supposed to do? Why would anyone engage with it?
In most states, employers have broad rights to fire employees at will, including no reason or "he wore the wrong color shirt". That doesn't mean that if you have a dickhead manager who fires you because he doesn't like the color of your shirt isn't a dickhead, and if you defended that manager I would similarly consider you unfit to participate in civil society.
> They come with renewal expectations, assuming the situation hasn't changed
What? Where is this expectation enumerated? An expiration date is in fact defined. I'm not sure where some legal expectation of guaranteed renewal could arise from.
> unilaterally doesn't make you not an asshole if you actually exercise that right.
"Asshole" is a matter of opinion, and rights aren't actually rights if you aren't ever able to exercise them.
> if you defended that manager I would similarly consider you unfit to participate in civil society.
Why have laws, borders at all by these standards? What's the point?
I have good friends on an H1B. I've got plenty of amazing coworkers and teammates on it as well. At the same time, the program has been wildly abused. We don't need to go into the details I'll assume if you are trying to have a conversation in good faith here then you are well aware that companies abuse the H1B program to import literal indentured servants (to the point of there being covert rings that traffic H1B workers with fake credentials into the country) that ultimately aren't serving even the most remote interests of working class America and really just allowing companies to lower costs while increasing profits so boomers can get rich. We can have nice things until people abuse the system en masse. This isn't a new failure mode.
So what do we do? I don't want good people disrupted. But I also morally disagree with everything the abuse of the H1B program represents. What's the solution? It doesn't seem that crazy to me that "tax the companies so they can't undercut local labor so easily" is a reasonable first pass. But we know how that went.
I can't help but think if instead of shouting across the isle there were some amount of bipartisan accountability and shared understanding on the topic then the previous attempts by this administration to curtail the problem would have been more effective and we wouldn't be at a point where people have to take the gloves off.
To equate immigrants who have followed due process to a homeless person insisting on staying in a property owner's living room is appalling.
It's understandable for everyone to have varying views on immigration and immigrants, but this sort of rhetoric is a vile, racist and xenophobic dog whistle.
It is sufficiently incoherent as to suggest you aren't interested in the serious discussion you are requesting in response. You could better refute this by starting with a policy you would consider cruel, and the in turn demonstrating how this one doesn't fit it.
Historically i've tended to agree that "the cruelty is the point" was too dismissive for the policies in question. But with immigration policy of this admin, I'm not sure that's the case. For a while they were deporting people to the equivalent of a Gulag, and literally suggested that if people were afraid of that outcome they should self deport. I think that would be a pretty fair example of a policy where the cruelty was the literal point: The hope was it would be viewed with sufficient fear as to dissuade people from staying in the country illegally. However seriously you think immigration should be taken, and however many people you feel should be deported, there are policy choices that do not involve that level of cruelty that could be chosen instead. That they are intentionally not is what the term "The cruelty is the point" is meant to imply.
>You could better refute this by starting with a policy you would consider cruel, and the in turn demonstrating how this one doesn't fit it.
I actually don't think it is that common for policy to be cruel just for the sake of being cruel ("the cruelty is the point")
>For a while they were deporting people to the equivalent of a Gulag, and literally suggested that if people were afraid of that outcome they should self deport. I think that would be a pretty fair example of a policy where the cruelty was the literal point: The hope was it would be viewed with sufficient fear as to dissuade people from staying in the country illegally.
The point of law enforcement is to deter and prevent lawbreaking, not be cruel for its own sake. Suppose you observe that meals in prison aren't very tasty. Would you criticize this policy on the grounds that "the cruelty is the point"?
You can argue that the punishment is too harsh, but that still doesn't prove that cruelty was the point.
An immigrant who has followed due process is equivalent to a homeless person who has convinced the property owner to willingly let the homeless person stay in the property owner's living room. The property owner is allowed to change their mind about the arrangement at any point, unless and until the person obtains part ownership of the property (citizenship).
This is a vile analogy, whose implication so twists the American tradition that I blush with shame to read it from a possible countryman.
What American tradition? I'll let Lincoln speak, since you have already given voice to his opposition.
"As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it 'all men are created equal, except negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.' When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy."
Yes, all men are created equal. They have the equal right to live in their country. A Russian has just as much a right to live in Russia as an American does in America. And I have just as much a right to move to Russia as a Russian has to move to America—i.e. none at all, it's a privilege than the government of each country may or may not grant.
Btw, I am a naturalized US citizen. I'm talking about myself here. I'm very grateful for what this country has given me, because I know it had no obligation whatsoever to do so.
If "all men are created equal" applies to foreign citizens, why not just go all the way and let them vote in US elections? We can elect the US president on the basis of the entire world population. Is that the American tradition?
Leftists tell me the US is an irredeemable and illegitimate settler colonial project founded on slavery, white supremacy, and genocide.
When the US has an active foreign policy, I'm told we are "destabilizing foreign nations", or engaging in "neo-imperialism".
When we have a passive foreign policy, I'm told we are "complicit", or "abandoning allies".
There's nothing the US can do, or not do, which doesn't get demonized to the Moon and back. Right here in this thread, someone is trashing us for our WW2 involvement.
HN has been basically silent on the Swiss referendum to put a hard stop to immigration to Switzerland. But all the US has to is pause immigration for a bit, and I'm told we are "vile".
And now, I'm told about an "American tradition" that we are supposedly "twisting". You sure that isn't a good thing? Look where those "American traditions" got us. Our nation is a DISASTER, right? Shouldn't we be keeping out brown people for their own safety?
You're not arguing against leftists, you're arguing against Abraham Lincoln.
If you want to know the answers to your questions, read about Abraham Lincoln.
And no I will never agree that policies created out of racism will somehow bear sweet fruit from poisoned water.
All over this thread you have been misreading and strawmaning others in order to seem more reasonable. Even in this thread you misread me: the vile part was the homeless analogy, not the policy.
It's just time to draw the line in the sand: yours are the ideas lead to suffering and genocide and nobody whose words are worth reading wants that.
Like most internet meme phrases, this is both trite and inaccurate. The cruelty is not the point. This administration has decided foreigners are the scapegoat, and wants to get rid of as many as they can. It’s heartless, but cruelty is not the objective.
The ultimate goal might be some political aim and in that sense cruelty is not the ultimate point but what is usually meant by this phrase is that the cruelty is not an unintentional oversight, an unintentional side effect. It is intentional (and there to achieve the ultimate political goal).
Normally I’d agree. For this admin the cruelty does actually look intentional as a deterrent. Making it intentionally turbulent to discourage people from trying in the first place.
Cruelty is the objective, because the America is unwilling to enact the laws that will most effectively stem immigration. These are:
1. Make it illegal to hire undocumented immigrants.
2. Foreign specialists need to earn at least an x% above industry standard (to prove they are specialists).
These laws will obviously not fly among corporate donors. Trump will also never deport all illegals because of how much hospitality and agriculture rely on them. In the end it is all show and spectacle. That's what all the tactical gear is for.
Yes cruelty is the point for this admin and its voters. They think it makes them more manly looking. They openly brag about it. They glee in it. They go out of their way to endanger goals just to be cruel.
All of that is in the open, if you listen to what they say and watch what they do.
It’s not “cruelty” to have and enforce rules. The words “temporary” and “nonimmigrant” is plastered all over the laws that govern these visas. People shouldn’t have treated them as permanent immigration visas. And employers shouldn’t have mislead employees into thinking these were permanent immigration visas.
It’s like saying that it’s “cruelty” to remove someone who uses a 2 hour parking spot as their permanent car parking.
Rules are well and good, but norms are important too.
An immigration system governs people making major life choices, and companies making large investments.
Legally, there's very little the state can't do, there could be a bill passed tomorrow revoking all immigrant visas. But businesses, and by proxy the nation, benefit from work done by these workers.
Sudden unilateral moves like this are stupid on a social level (cause damage to businesses and communities), and on a moral level. "First do no harm" is a principle just as suited to government as medicine. Even if there is a broad consensus for reducing or eliminating H1B visas, why punish people who followed the system as it exists and contributed? It's perfectly possible to pass a bill, stop handing out new visas, and sunset renewals after some 1-2 year timeframe.
It's legal to invite a bunch of guests over and kick them all out after you open the wine, but you're going to lose friends. And ultimately it will be businesses and individuals paying the cost for these needlessly volatile course changes. Tourism and high skilled immigration rates will face lasting harm.
> Rules are well and good, but norms are important too
Not when the norm is open defiance of the rules for decades.
> An immigration system governs people making major life choices, and companies making large investments.
And it also governs the right of people to decide who they want to invite into their country and, ultimately, with whom they want to share democratic governance of their home. Those are important stakes, not to be minimized. But you neglected to mention them.
Defiance of the rules? What rules exactly? The law does make clear that H1-Bs are temporary workers. But it's also permitted to renew, and workers are allowed to pursue immigrant status. In fact, until 1990 there was specific language saying that H1-B's (like all visitor visas) are not supposed to want to stay, they must maintain a foreign residence "which he has no intention of abandoning". This language was struck and the visas became, and still are, the most common defacto "seeking green card" status for workers seeking to move the US.
To be clear, while a person who enters the US on an H1-B is a temporary worker, they are not prohibited from also seeking a permanent status. So it's fully within the rules, which is why it becomes a question of norms. In the present, the H1-B is (was?) the most popular route to permanent immigration to the US besides family sponsorship.
I specifically said that the government (and the citizenry by extension) can decide who it wants to enter and stay, how much immigration, whatever. But changing the rules suddenly, upending peoples lives who have not broken any rules, through a pathway the US state itself freely established, is immoral and short sighted.
It should go without saying that there are experts across many fields in industry that any country would benefit from attracting. The US is harming its capacity to attract and keep that talent with these ridiculous theatrics.
> This language was struck and the visas became, and still are, the most common defacto "seeking green card" status for workers seeking to move the US.
Incorrect. H1B still requires non-immigrant intent. The only thing that was struck was requiring the government to presume non-immigrant intent automatically upon some filing for permanent residency. That was not intended to change the system into a de facto permanent residency pipeline.
You are arguing semantics and peculiar archaic ones at that. It is not prohibited. It is permitted. In fact it is so common that Congress had to pass AC21 to mitigate the damage caused by indefinite backlogs in the H-1B->GC pipeline. A majority of employment based greencards are issued to people in the US through adjustment of status. The purpose of the system is what it does.
Yeah, law is about semantics. And semantics reflects underlying politics. Immigration proponents never had the political capital to enact a law that actually reflects current practice.
> It’s like saying that it’s “cruelty” to remove someone who uses a 2 hour parking spot as their permanent car parking.
That's a very weak analogy for the moral issue here.
The consequences are radically different; losing a parking space is a minor inconvenience; losing immigration status can/does involve relocation and upends employment, family, property, and years of life planning / general stability.
No, people are following the rules and politely asking for a renewal in a different country.
The issue here is that they're not being denied, the government is basically refusing to make a decision for an indefinite amount of time.
I'm assuming most normal cases will get their visas eventually, the question is when. In the meantime the applicant can pay rent in the US, find some place to live abroad and maybe continue working from overseas? All so the state department can retrain a few people?
They are being denied. That's the default state when your visa expires and you have not been granted a new one. What the government is doing is telling people to not bother asking right now because everyone will be denied.
They're not making decisions. No one is being denied as a result of this.
Also, there are many cases in which a visa can expire and you're still allowed to be in the US and even work. As long as the reason why you got one is still there (there's a legal term for this but IANAL). It's just that when you leave you cannot come back without getting a new one.
The moral issue is defined by the nature of the rule, not the stakes for someone who has transgressed. Enforcing the rule doesn’t become less legitimate just because someone has invested more in breaking it.
> Enforcing the rule doesn’t become less legitimate just because someone has invested more in breaking it.
Nobody broke any rules here. These are the people folowwing the rules for the legal immigration system.
You just want to break the law as it stands today and not have an immigration system at all. That's a view you can hold and just as valid as any other. Just stop talking about people breaking rules, that's not what this is about, this has nothing to do with illegal immigration.
Why is that how the moral issue is defined? Seems to me the moral issue is the stakes, and I have no idea why I would cede that judgement to you. What's your basis for claiming moral authority? If you don't, please show your homework: what strange anticonsequentialism underlies your claims, and why should I agree with it?
Consequentialism in general is a third-world mindset. But in this particular context it leads to the absurd result that someone who breaks the rules more egregiously is rewarded for doing so.
In first world countries, we focus on rules over consequences. If you build a dwelling on my property, the rule doesn't reward you for making a house rather than a tent. The moral analysis is based on the nature of the rule, not the consequences to those who break the rule.
Hogwash. You're trying to slide from claiming moral high ground to pointing at rules, as though the American lexicon didn't have whole classes of words denoting the "virtuous rulebreaker" (maverick, renegade, etc). And, do you think all the rules you live under have moral weight? What if those rules changed, as they did here-- would you still think that?
Not to mention that it's still incorrect even if you're just pointing at the rules themselves-- the entire concept of standing to sue requires that you were harmed (ie, suffered consequences) to engage the courts in the first place. On the other side, results are the difference between attempted homicide and homicide.
Which rules are being broken? It seems to me it is the State department that has suddenly and capriciously begun violating immigration law, rather than processing Visa applications according to the laws of this country. Is it because this administration knows it could never hope to pass a law this terrible?
Then you don't see why stealing $10 is a misdemeanor and stealing $1000 is a felony (depending on jurisdiction, but whatever you get the point). Not saying you should see why, just that many clearly do for it to be public policy.
But it makes me wonder: do you think the $10 theft should be punished more heavily (minimum 1 year in prison), or the $1000 theft punished more lightly (maximum 1 year in prison)?
Do you think the moral issue is the same if someone fails to hold a door for you, or if they shoot you? It’s rude either way, right?
I don’t have words for it, but the US has been infected with some kind of hybrid reductionism / nihilism where people think that vicious bad behavior can be enjoyed and justified, even righteously glorified, if a disingenuous analogy can somehow be crafted to something banal and comparatively harmless.
Nobody actually believes it, but it’s become a game of sorts. I don’t like it.
Are we reading different articles? The headline says immigrant visas. The first paragraph says immigrant visas.
“The Trump administration has paused processing of immigrant visas, which allow recipients to move permanently to the U.S., to train visa officers on new guidance ensuring that applicants have enough financial means to support themselves after they arrive.”
American immigration laws are designed to have a small stream of permanent immigration, both to protect american jobs and to protect american culture from foreign influence. That’s what people voted for over decades. The New York Times did a good podcast on the issue. https://youtu.be/xgDdTV7A57w. If you want to define “xenophobic” to encompass that then that’s your choice. I don't think that's a sensible or useful definition. The concept of "xenophobia" only applies to individuals. It's wrong to assume that somebody will be a certain way because of their nationality. That obviously doesn't translate to immigration, which involves the mass movement of people who do have a distinct culture in the aggregate, and do transplant their culture into the U.S.: https://www.sup.org/books/economics-and-finance/culture-tran...
I know a lot of people that support these cruel and chaotic changes to our immigration laws and they are mostly xenophobic - they don’t like people speaking languages other than English at the store, they don’t like religions different than their own, they don’t like family traditions different than their own.
Xenophobia is about assuming that people are different because of their national origin. It's not "xenophobia" if there are actual differences, especially if there are actual changes to someone's society. Treating all cultural differences as equally desirable is cultural relativism. Not everyone who rejects cultural relativism is xenophobic. You're allowed to prefer your own culture and to live in a society that reflects your culture. The countries that most immigrants come from treat that principle as axiomatic.
You’ve successfully mangled the definition of xenophobia.
“A strong aversion, antipathy, or fear of foreigners.” Simple as.
It wouldn’t be wrong if you admitted that you want some degree of xenophobia. But I suppose that sounds even less convincing than your preferred abuse of terminology.
> “A strong aversion, antipathy, or fear of foreigners.”
Yes, it's antipathy to foreigners in and of themselves. It's antipathy based on the mere fact that someone is a foreigner by stereotyping them based on nationality. Antipathy based on actual cultural differences.
I think the confusion of "no one should be persecuted for being part of group X" with "no one part of group X should be persecuted" is the root of far left ideology.
>I think the confusion of "no one should be persecuted for being part of group X" with "no one part of group X should be persecuted" is the root of far left ideology.
I think that no one should be persecuted[0]. Persecution is unfair harassment/injury/punishment. Perhaps you meant prosecuted[1] instead?
3
: to bring legal action against for redress or punishment of a crime or violation of law
b
: to institute legal proceedings with reference to
prosecute a claim
This might seem like an academic point but the support of all xenophobic people for these changes doesn't imply that some non-xenophobes don't support these changes (or ones in the same spirit) as well. I don't know what the relative numbers are, but the support of a negative group for a cause doesn't invalidate the cause.
US immigration can be very slow and bureaucratic (even pre-Trump). I hesitate to say but generally, it's not as arbitrary as people think. If things are clearly above board, it works out.
The US still is a destination in very high-demand. There are a huge number of qualified and unqualified people, who would come here in a heartbeat (and it goes without saying, there are a huge number of people who have no interest in moving here).There are clearly agents like the H-1B body shops who have exploited the system. Similarly, masters programs were launched effectively to trade full tuition for an opportunity to enter the US labor market (e.g. all the masters in financial math programs). This doesn't mean we don't get amazing people on H-1Bs or in masters programs but these pathways have been exploited.
Many people desire a sane immigration policy and experience. One that allows promising candidates into the country. The exact definition of a "promising candidate" was outsourced to universities and companies sponsoring these visas. A lot of people have lost trust in those institutions. I don't know what a good solution is but the rise of these policies is a symptom that the current system is not working.
> This might seem like an academic point but the support of all xenophobic people for these changes doesn't imply that some non-xenophobes don't support these changes (or ones in the same spirit) as well.
Americans aren't "xenophobic." I just got back from two weeks in rural Texas and everyone was super nice to me. Nobody was "afraid" that I'm a foreigner. They just don't want me to bring my entire extended family over and in numbers that changes the culture of their home. And people in my dad's village in Bangladesh would hate if some other group did the same thing to them.
People throwing around “phobia” and “ism” is just a way to obscure what they really mean, which is cultural relativism and erasure of the distinction between citizens and foreigners.
Of course no one reasonable would paint a huge population with a brush like that. I am pushing back on the narrative in this thread because many non-immigrants in this country infer the experience of an immigrant (like you, I am an immigrant and spent an inordinately long time before eventually naturalizing) from news. Are there powerful people in the government who might have these tendencies? Of course, it's possible! But, like you, my personal experience (which probably also doesn't apply to everyone) even in rural parts has been very positive.
At the same time, it is reasonable for people to point out the unpredictability of the system. Going to get a visa renewal and getting stuck for several months is unpredictable. Having to make plans at the last-minute is stressful. One can take the stance that the America doesn't owe anything to a non-citizen and, while I lean towards a similar stance, some of the arbitrariness is unreasonable.
And they may let you rot in a deportation facility for months “pending deportation proceedings” which they haven’t hired judges to handle? If we hired more judges with the money used to build and run the facilities we would work through the back log of cases in a humane and predictable way in line with our historical commitment to the rule of law. This is terror by design.
I can confirm Ireland does this as well. I'm not familiar with immigration law as have both US and EU passports and can travel to work freely between the two.
While I critique the US for a lot and it does get a lot wrong I think many countries do this.
There is a difference between what is legal and what is moral. If you think that there is no difference you also hold that slavery was moral up until the time it was illegal (and you might then wonder why abolitionists campaigned against a moral act.) Similarly, the visa system may have always had this uncertainty but that does not mean it is moral, or that it is moral to use it in this way.
The issue I see still is with regards to property rights. Because to me it seems the USA also automatically seizes all belongings, e. g. if you purchased something before and paid taxes in the USA. That seems not fair.
Let he who hasn't cheated on his first wife to get with his second wife to cheat on his second wife to get with his 'genius visa' third wife cast the first stone! Seriously, people, everyone does it!
I’m just laying it out there in a obvious way because if someone said “if you push this button, you could get electrocuted” you wouldn’t call it inhumane when someone pushed the button and got electrocuted. I didn’t want to get into the politics behind this, but I don’t think those affected have any right to complain about it. It’s something they opted into knowing the risks. Especially at this time of political leadership, you should probably always have expected you may not return from a visa renewal trip.
I was recently in Malaysia on a digital nomad visa. When it expired I was required to leave the country and either wait for the renewal to go through or reenter on a tourist visa (and either not work or work illegally). So not distinctively American.
It's definitely not. I know Japan and Korea had a similar process when I was living there, and I was under the impression that most places operate this way. Your visa grants you right to temporarily stay in the country, and if you don't have a visa you have no right to be there. Sometimes there's a bridging visa to cover the gap, but a country isn't under any obligation to provide one.
No. Japan certainly doesn’t. If you want to renew your visa you go apply at the local immigration department and they mail you your renewal notice a month or two later. No need to leave the country at all.
It was a long time ago, so I might have the details wrong. I suspect it may have been expats from Korea taking a short trip to Japan to renew their visa, or even folks switching the type of visa they were on.
I've renewed my visa in Japan a bunch of times, including changing work category or visa status, and never had to leave the country for it. It's not standard for working or student visas, though you would have to leave if you were switching from a tourist visa to a different category.
But my point is it’s a known factor up front, and it’s so they can (have the option of) getting you to leave without allowing you back in. The thinking is that if people had visas that expires or revoked, they just wouldn’t leave and enforcement would be difficult (we have a forceful ICE now, but not always). Having them leave first is by design even if unique.
Certainly not Germany - I renewed mine at the city's immigration office, which was even helpful enough at one renewal to point out that I was likely eligible for a permanent residence permit and supplied the list of documents to bring back to apply for that.
All students on visas in UK have to leave the country if they want to change to another visa, often involves people either flying home or else getting a cheap flight to a Schengen country
All 29 countries in the Schengen Zone require exit to renew tourist visas
Germany, Italy, France, Switzerland, Austria, and most EU nations generally require non-EU citizens to return to their home country to change visa types.
> Just 'putting a pause' on people with existing appointments with no answer for when they might resume is.... Inhumane
For the admin that closed USAID overnight, sent innocents to El Salvador, incited ICE to gun down American citizens, this seems to me like business as usual.
The pause is for immigrant visas so most visas like H1 or H2 or O visas aren't affect this time. But it's definitely part of the US admin's overall theme of ratcheting up visa restrictions and making any immigration or travel to the US extremely difficult.
Not _this_ time but they were targeted previously: banning up to 75 countries from issuing visas, adding a $100k fee to the application, forcing visa renewals to go through consular processing instead of change of status, etc.
The end goal is to do end migration as a whole (especially from “certain places”) and expel all “undesirables”. To get there, they will test the waters, get the right precedents and judicial orders in place, and move the Overton window enough so the public sees these actions as “business as usual”.
Illegal immigration does not create queues or waitlists for legal immigration.
But I'll be honest: between the uncited numbers, the clear-eyed, neutral potted history, the italics, and the all-caps "LEGAL," I'm starting to think it would be foolish not to take your argument seriously.
This "they did bad stuff so we have to do worse stuff" idea strips the people doing the second bad thing of their agency. That's false; they have agency, and can choose to do better.
Immigration laws are like any other licensing or permitting regime. Controlling "who" and "how many" is the whole point. Making legal immigration easier doesn't solve the problem, it defeats the purpose.
The laws should produce friction but the right friction in the right places. There are too many arbitrary and difficult processes in the US immigration system that keep great people out of the US.
In other words, completely inaccessible to many people who would like a better life and are willing to work but lack opportunities in their native country.
Just because it was achievable for you doesn't mean it is achievable for everyone.
So? No one is entitled to immigrate to the US. It is very much supposed to not be achievable for literally everyone but only for those where it will be a net positive for the country.
And it's perfectly normal that the country where the most people want to immigrate to will also have higher barriers.
> And it's perfectly normal that the country where the most people want to immigrate to will also have higher barriers.
In my country, I've not heard a lot of people expressing the wish to visit, let alone immigrate to the US for quite some time now.
And as a reminder of what country we're all talking about here, that'd be the one with the highest number of school shootings in the world, and the least political action and drive to do anything material about it, because, you know, emotional neanderthals gotta have their guns.
What sheltered well off ideologues say in their bubbles is irrelevant when it comes to determining what country people from around the world want to immigrate to. Historically, the US has been THE country where people want to be and I have yet to see any evidence that that has changed. If people would no longer want to come to the US then these changes to the immigration policies would also not affect anyone.
Agreed. People seem to hold views that getting visas to the US is a human right.
It’s no fun, but these are adults (and often very privileged adults) that decided to move to a new country for more upside at the cost of no residency.
Conflating this with “inhumane” is just a basic misunderstanding of immigration and the contract these people signed up for.
Very uncomfortable, yet a risk these people took, and hopefully a conscious one.
Sure. Unless you prefer autocratic rule by a moral paragon, democracy involves doing what people want, not what is moral. Often what is nominally moral is not good for the country or its people.
> People seem to hold views that getting visas to the US is a human right.
Come on, there's nothing to be gained by misrepresenting people's views.
The argument is a simple one: if you are currently within the immigration process you should be able to move through that process in a timely manner, with clear communication of expectations. Freezing appointments is a political hack: they're not changing the law, they're not altering what anyone is entitled to. They're just leaving people in limbo.
You're saying "these people took a risk", and you're right. But that doesn't mean we can't criticize the people ensuring their bet is a losing one in the least moral way possible.
Immigrant visas cannot be renewed - if you use such a visa to enter the country then you become a lawful permanent resident and are not eligible for any visas until you abandon your permanent residency, and even then you will need to apply for a brand new visa.
Common around the world? I'd be curious what other countries require this, pretty much everywhere else I know has you renew your status within the country (incl. US), and they give you some form of proof of residence that takes the place of a visa (excl. US).
In many cases I've seen this is either a sticker on your passport (incl. possibly a visa) or a physical card, and does not require traveling abroad for it for "consular processing". This is the case for Schengen countries, Canada, UK, Australia, Japan, Thailand, etc.
Visa renewals are processed at a US consulate. You can extend your status (ie you ability to legally be in the US) while staying in the US, but if you want to renew your visa (your ability to leave and re-enter) you need to visit a consulate and those only exist outside of the US.
I was questioning the renewals every six months and asking about US visas which are granted for 6 months (i.e. expire after 6 months). I am aware of renewals requiring leaving the country.
That's not a renewal. It's fairly standard for EU countries to require being outside the country to apply for a visa or residence permit when it is your first one, or (in some cases) when changing the type of visa or permit. But renewals never need you to leave.
I think the whole point of making someone leave is the possibility that they may not be allowed back in. If staying was a foregone conclusion then there’d be no point in leaving.
Isn't there's a special case with Canada where you can return within x days even if your visa has expired, if your status is valid? Many go there for "consular processing" for that reason if I recall correctly.
I can’t think of any other rationale. What, only border officers are able to process a visa renewal? Please. We can have offices inside the country handle this stuff, just like offices handle Trusted Traveler applications and Social Security card issuances.
The point is surely to get another chance to grill the immigrant and potentially bar them entry. Other countries don’t always do this: Canada for example has inland changes of status and I believe renewals.
For many visas, people are expected to maintain a home that they intend to return to in their country of origin. Forcing people to leave every once in a while makes this more likely (at least in theory.)
See the recent events and pushback on immigration enforcement, to answer this, with whole cities (with their judicial system and police) refusing to participate, and governors condemning enforcement.
The visa holder is forced to expend nominal financial resources and time in their home country (where they agreed they would return to.) Most people can't afford to maintain a facade of residency or two actual residences (and those who can aren't the intended targets of this type of restriction.)
You do not need to do it in your "home country" at all, though, is the thing. People plan vacations around appointments they manage to land for this, in countries they want to go for their summer holidays.
Additionally, it doesn't really do that either, you don't need a valid visa (only valid status) if you don't plan to leave and re-enter US, so this mainly forces people to stay within US rather than going elsewhere for visiting family, vacation and whatnot. I'd not be surprised if the net effect was less time/money spent in "home country".
Not sure if things have changed recently, but up until at least 2019 (last time I had to do it iirc) you definitely had to do a "flagpole" (drive through the border and immediately turn back) to change your status in Canada.
Canada effectively requires leaving and re-entering. It can take multiple months for an online visa to get processed, meanwhile leaving and reentering takes hours.
there were other dumb factors pushing people to do border runs, like your paperwork says "expired" but your status still being valid while being processed.
Except you had zero paperwork to show to an employer and they had no way to verify themselves. Even if an employer understood the process and accepted some proof that you submitted an application, they would have no idea if you were rejected and became out-of-status.
"Must leave to renew" certain visas has been policy for decades - through at least the Clinton, Obama, and Biden administrations.
Most visas are for temporary guests: obtaining a visa doesn't normally give someone the right to permanently reside, and most don't permit their holders to work.
I think there are a lot of inhumane things happening around the world right now to label this inconvenient, at best. We need better leadership through higher voter participation and an informed electorate to stop these inhumane and inconvenient policies.
I think it is helpful to remind folk that these policies are not universally hated. Indeed a majority of voters voted specifically for them, and they were explicitly laid out.
This is democracy in action. The majority (of those who care enough at all) get to rule over the minority (and the apathetic). Obviously not all actions will be universally loved, but no govt action can ever be universally loved.
Its also helpful to remind folk about why someone would hold this position.
The largest reason US got to where it was at least in the world economy stage was because of the visa program. It was the country everyone wanted to move to, because you can apply your skills, make money, start a business, with very little restriction comparatively, buy a house, and live your dream life.
The more people wanna work, the more opportunities there are for work. Any time money changes hands, like in salary for work, this grows the economy, which further creates new jobs.
If someone is for this type of restricted immigration, then you should have a clear cut position on why you think things being more expensive, less available, and overall lower economic activity (which affects things like one being able to get a mortgate or other loan, and so on) is generally better for the country.
Because if they don't have those reasons, or have ones that are not rooted in reality than the position comes from xenophobia and racism in 99% of the cases.
Countries are not merely economic zones..! While I don't even agree with you (skilled immigrants are very different from unskilled), even if I did, anti immigration sentiment is largely about culture. I would prefer to live in my own culture than to be slightly richer in someone else's culture.
In the US, anti-immigrant sentiment is often the highest in regions with relatively few immigrants, far away from the border. The less that immigrants are part of peoples daily lives, the more people seem to fear for their "culture".
Presuming to have any real agency over the evolution of human culture also seems misguided. Culture is like a river, in that "no man ever steps into the same one twice". It's constantly changing in unpredictable ways, from generation to generation or even within generations, with or without immigration. That goes for the cultures of immigrants also.
Well, for one you're not supposed to use a majority vote to abolish democracy, or mess with unalienable rights. You can think of it as "democracy with precommitment".
But will remain anonymous and are okay with the collateral damage. My suspicion is that competition makes you feel insecure. I was born and raised in SF, and I see this not only with immigrants but also from people who feel violated by migrants. There is a spectrum. It’s ugly, short sighted and unhelpful. It’s what it takes to make the valley, but people love pulling up ladders. At least, behind an alias, you’re will to acknowledge your shortcomings.
I would genuinely like to understand how you square this with the current president being known to leverage a lot of low/unskilled temporary workers visas.
If these weren't issued he would need to hire Americans?
Its kinda crazy to me that someone on HN can get upvoted for prioritizing xenophobia and racism enough to vote for convicted felon pedophile for president, but I guess thats the world we live in.
Im REALLY hoping that Trump manages to actually successfully coup the government this time around, cause the only way forward is for American populace to start experiencing actual hardship without the Democrats coming in and fixing everything then getting blamed for "bad economy".
Hey, if all it takes to get the government to hurt those immigrants is electing a narcissistic pedophile to the highest office of the land, then so be it.
You are talking about change (or extension) of status, not visa.
US is unique in that the visa sticker and your right to remain in the country (status) are two different things. The only purpose of the visa sticker is to allow you to travel to a U.S. port of entry, where you apply for admission, and therefore legal status. You can have legal status in the U.S. while the visa sticker has expired, and your status can be changed or extended domestically. However unless you have a valid sticker you cannot leave and return.
Australia too - however, to get a renewal all you need is an online connection and a credit card, the renewal (at least for me!) goes through automatically. (Notwithstanding that Australia just increased the PR-renewal cost from ~400-500 to ~1400-1500 AUD)
I thought that was universal. The Visa gets you into the country. Your entry stamp shows how long you can stay. It was an extra white card in USA but I forget what designation the form had. Been a while.
One example I'm familiar with which is different, are Schengen tourist visas. You need to leave before the visa expires. That's not the case for US tourist visas.
Based on my experience 20 years ago you could only renew the H-1B visa in the passport in-country under extraordinary circumstances. In the majority of cases they reject your request and would tell you to travel to a consulate.
Prior to the mid 00s you could renew at any consulate but they changed it so you could only renew in your home country.
Not really… Theoretically, you could get it issued in a third country under very restrict conditions (renewing to the same class, in Mexico or Canada, force majeure, etc). However, the likelihood of it being denied was considerably higher, so basically all immigration lawyers strongly recommended going back to the home country.
The recent policy change ended that possibility altogether.
The pause on visa appointments does not apply to H1-B and L1 as they are nonimmigrant visas. It applies to family based immigration visa, diversity visa, and EB-1/2/3 when you do processing abroad.
(You might have known that, but I thought it's worth clarifying).
> So just imagine, having a normal job in the US and you're asked to leave to renew your visa and this stuff happens.
The only way I can see this happening is if you try to convert from OTP to an H1. I used to do some runs up to Vancouver to help a friend do that.
This just generally sucks for anyone making plans in their life. I remember my wife's greencard interview in Guangzhou, and it would have sucked if they instituted this the day before she did that.
I've had a couple of reports that this applied to. It's incredibly disruptive. "I've got to fly back to India to renew my visa." "Okay, when will you be back?" "I have no idea, it depends when I can get an appointment. It could be next week, it might be in a month." "[State department] We're pausing all visa appointments." "Well fuck."
Meanwhile I've got a tech lead who is 12 hours away from the rest of the team. He was at least willing to work US-East hours while in India (basically staying up all night and sleeping during the day), but there was a huge amount of management overhead and inconvenience for the employee involved.
I've worked at companies where we transfer people to Canada during periods like this in the same time zone. Sometimes they enjoy it so much they don't want to transfer back to the US.
At least the procedure used to be that one would try to get an appointment at the US consulate in one's home country and then arrange the trip around it. Also, at least in my experience (but importantly, not with this administration) was that one was never required to leave the US.
The main constraint is re-entry into the US and being able to travel outside the US. If one stayed here, there was no problem switching schools, programs, jobs, adjusting status to permanent residency or naturalization. On the other hand, for re-entry, one needs a valid visa stamped on a passport which necessitated a trip to one's home country. This stamping visit could be unpredictable.
Ideally, one would like to travel freely to see family and friends but I see a lot of comments implying that one is forced to leave. It might be true now but a lot of comments here are conflating several issues together.
The first time it happened (2023) it was a non-issue; he did exactly as you said, appointment happened as planned, and then he was back on his scheduled plane trip a week later.
Everything post-2025 has been a shit-show. There's no predictability or clear guidance, either from our lawyers or from the state department.
Predictability matters a lot in business. If you know what the procedure is and how long it will take, you can plan around it. If the rules change in the middle of the game you're left scrambling to keep up.
Predictability flew out the window with the last election. I simply do not understand how any business leaders supported this, but I suppose the ability to bribe their way out of chaos was appealing.
It's beneficial for the largest firms, the ones that can forge personal relationships with the administration, because it's detrimental to all other businesses. Competitive advantage and all that.
Honestly, this is kind of the point. Making foreign labor so unbearably difficult to work with will force companies to hire domestically. At least, hire more domestic workers than they would have otherwise.
You are a great person. Thankfully you work at a non-profit and donate all of your money to charity, otherwise if you work for personal profit or company profit you may be a hypocrite.
Correct! Hopefully more people factor this into their decision to hire immigrants. Increasing the costs of hiring immigrants is good policy (and reflects the will of the electorate).
Hundreds of thousands of tech workers have been laid off in the last two years. There are many skilled Americans on the job market. Foreign workers are here for the benefit of the United States, not as charity to the rest of the world, or as a source of cheaper labor for global employers seeking to undercut American wages.
> Foreign workers are here for the benefit of the United States
But that's the point, isn't it? Some foreign workers who "worked the US for the benefit of the US" are now unable to come back to the US. Isn't that bad for the US too?
And what do you do about the people who only want to work in jobs that they're not qualified for, and who have unrealistic expectations about pay, benefits, work demands, etc.?
Is every natural-born American entitled to a job that pays what they want, for the hours they want, in the location they want, regardless of their qualifications for the job?
But isn't that how market supposed to work? Company offers to pay x for the job, can't find anyone for x, so it raises salary to x+y.
I would understand logic of bringing people from other countries when there is a shortage of workers but with current market it doesn't seem to be the case.
Migrants don't really depress wages, except by a very marginal amount at the lowest skilled rung.
That's because adding people to the economy creates more demand
In times of recession, things might be different - but immigration tends to take care of itself in that regard. When a country has unfilled labor demand, immigration goes up. When it has no labor demand, immigration goes down.
Do you propose to restrict the international flow of capital too while you're at it? Until every spare US dollar is invested in the US? or you just want to restrict the market for the 99% of people whose biggest asset is their labor.
Thats the amazing part of a diverse society, there is a variety of opinions and world views that you can come across that that might even be completely outside your current understanding. As by being curious and trying to understand something surprising you might just gain a new and deeper understanding of the world.
Most folks don’t want their minds opened to new and surprising views and opinions. They want a good job in the town they grew up in so they can take care of their family and raise their kids in the culture they were raised in.
Globalism has ruined that entirely, and there’s no amount of implying these people are closed minded or incurious that will make them change their mind on this issue.
But America is a capitalist system. The market has determined that not all Americans deserve jobs. Are Americans willing to work a 996 schedule for 2.00/hr to compete with labor overseas?
If your business cannot survive paying more than slave labor rate, then a capitalist system dictates that your business should cease to exist or your resources allocated to more productive work.
Capitalism is what capitalists do. No capitalist system dictates that, because that no capitalist system practices that. Wages don't increase with productivity anymore, the gap between the two has only increased since the 1970s.
Capitalists come out of the woodwork to denounce things like the minimum wage or unions that distort the fair market value of labor because they want to pay as little as possible and not a cent more. Why do you think automation and outsourcing exist to begin with? Why are we putting Manhattan Project scale effort into AI? Wages are an inefficiency in the market that capitalism has always sought to ruthlessly optimize away.
Most capitalist countries have 100% employment for their citizens and little to no immigration? No. "Every citizen who can work having a job" is not something capitalist countries do. They all take ample advantage of foreign labor, they all have corporations that prioritize their own profits and outsource.
> Most capitalist countries have 100% employment for their citizens and little to no immigration
You must have responded to the wrong post as it has nothing to do with my statement.
That statement is that there is nothing about capitalism that prevents a country from prioritizing its own citizens. That is a perfectly normal and rational thing to do.
Additionally, the exact percentages of unemployement rates also has little to do with capitalism, nor does the uncommonness of fully achieving a lofty but possibly valuable goal also has nothing to do with what capitalism is, nor does it say very much about how valuable that goal is or the value in attempting to aspirationally achieve it.
>You must have responded to the wrong post as it has nothing to do with my statement.
OK. You can't handle context, noted.
>That statement is that there is nothing about capitalism that prevents a country from prioritizing its own citizens.
The free market is what prevents it. The purpose of capitalism is the creation of capital and its transfer to the capitalist class, and the purpose of corporations is to maximize profits to facilitate that process as quickly and efficiently as possible. Neither capitalism as a system nor corporations have an obligation to improve quality of life for their employees beyond their market value, or to "prioritize" the social welfare over profit, or to hire more people than they need.
It's simple supply and demand and there isn't a demand for American labor.
>Additionally, the exact percentages of unemployement rates also has little to do with capitalism
which is weird because you're arguing that capitalist companies need to prioritize "citizen" labor in order to reduce unemployment, or that governments need to force them to.
It's clear you are not a hiring manager. There aren't thousands of highly qualified engineers looking for work. I can't tell if this a troll post or not.
It's clear you are not considering the long-term effects of labor policy. If we want a stronger domestic workforce, the answer is to incentivize Americans to develop the skills we need and to train them when they do not already have those skills. Mass importing foreign labor is not a substitute for building and investing in the domestic workforce.
Btw, this is analogous to the argument for positive discrimination:
Preferentially treat one group of people (non-white/women/Americans) even if in the short term the revealed preference of businesses is to hire a different group of people (white/men/immigrants), such that, in the long term, the first group of people can develop the necessary skills to compete with the second group.
The arguments can be the same but have entirely different hidden variables that make it fine to use the argument in one context and not the other.
Also, this ignores that the government works for citizens, no matter their race. Promoting racial equality among citizens is a function that the government might undertake. Pursuing policies that favor citizens over non-citizens falls in line with that same reasoning.
No it's really not the same because we have laws against racial discrimination, but it is the entire purpose of the state to represent the interests of its citizens above all others.
You can’t get them to apply. They are already very well paid. It’s a finite pool that is not large enough. Bidding up pay won’t change that. Instead you just hire overseas.
I’m very pro immigration, but “Americans are lazy and stupid , thus unfit for hiring” isn’t a winning argument.
Tons of Americans are out of work. I’ve personally seen my wages drop by at least 20$ an hour as well as the work being less stable.
Gasp, you might need to train someone a bit or have employees that will say no if you ask them to work on Christmas.
If I ran the H1B program it would be an unrestricted work permit with an automatic pathway to a GC after 5 years. Don’t get *convicted* of a felony and here you go.
Fortunately such ridiculous hypotheticals have no correspondence to reality. Most every job can be easily trained or cross trained. Mathematicians make good physicists. Nor is there some foreign pipeline of a million physicists. Such ridiculous argument exist only to perpetuate the lie of a skills shortage and deny the wage shortage.
They may make good physicists, but not great physicists. Similar to saying I know how to drive a car, now let me win the inde 500. Things take to for specialization, even with the advent of guessing and checking machines (llms).
A shocking number of innovations in x field are because y person brought an idea that maps from z field. Cross functional teams are important and mathematicians can and absolutely do make top level contributions to physics.
One of the math problems recently publicized as having being solved by was actually just discovering that a German mathematician had published a solution in the 1950s.
Oh that is true, and I’m not putting down cross functional teams. I’m just putting down the idea that a specialist in one area can immediately be a specialist in another semi related area with no extra review time.
Hiring is such a shit show, there's no reason to assume the people doing the hiring know what they're doing. Like HR has to insert them selves into the process
No - that's not right - they can't discriminate against people who have work-status, but they absolutely can discriminate against people who don't have status aka arbitrary foreign nationals.
And it would be absurd if they could not.
Also, in some cases, employers should be able to discriminate, it's totally different to hire someone on an n-month visa vs full time.
Granted, it's different if they are Green Card.
It's also perfectly normal to want to hire locals, if it can be done on a national basis, then I think for some roles, state ought to be fine as well. If state governments had a state preference for in-state nationals, that would be fine, for example.
The issue here is by far and away mostly one of transparency and efficiency - the rules should be clear and the bureaucracy should just function normally.
The fact that anything takes months, or that you need lawyers etc is a sign of dysfunction.
It should be about as complicated as getting a prescription. 'One trip to an office and done'.
It's totally not illegal to discriminate against people who don't have work status and the mere suggestion is absurd.
It's totally unreasonable to suggest that companies should have to hire random people from nation xyz only to have to sponsor their impossible work visas.
And I say this as someone who was on work status for a very long time.
Clarity, consistency, simplicity, predictability - this is what people want.
Because 'discriminating against people of other ethnicities' is kind of as old as time, the issue triggers our empathy radar a bit, which is reasonable, but in reality what would be 'the most fair to everyone' is just clear rules, and very light but important anti-discrimination aka can't discriminate on age, race, gender religion aka the basics.
There is no obligation[1] to consider any candidate who needs visa sponsorship. Green cards are different. In hiring they must be considered like any citizen candidate.
Most immigration is based on hiring people into jobs for which the skills exist locally but which demand higher wages than immigrants. This is called a labor shortage by employers who prefer not to think of it as a salary shortage.
This is based on my experience in working with good immigrant coders who got the job over about equally capable locals, but more cheaply. The immigrants (mostly Indian and Chinese) tended to have weaker English communication skills but stronger work ethics.
This idea that paying more would magically create a pool of trained workers is a a form of fallacy as well.
There's obviously some degree of reality to it, but the equilibrium doesn't always work that way, and, shifting it would require sometimes a decade, and integration with other parts of the supply chain, like literally opening / expanding new schools, training programs, certification, convincing young people before they even select a college major - etc.
It's a very different equation for specialized work than for unskilled labour.
And should add - communication skills matter a lot, and I don't mean just 'vocabulary'.
I've hired tons of teams from India and it's often really hard, the cultural gaps are huge.
There's a reason that almost zero startups on limited budgets 'go to China or India' to hire.
Big budget and small budget films immediately choose lower wage centres to produce films, but it's not the same for certain skilled work.
And yes, 'funny accents' can cause people's otherwise great work to be overlooked, or for them to be devalued, obviously that one is as old as time.
The entire Silicon Valley would not exist were it not for immigrants behind he scenes, obviously, and speaking from direct experience there as well.
Many job reqs are scams intended to satisfy the "doesn't exist locally requirement" (superficially) so that exploitable foreigners are importable.
Nobody has 20 years of React experience, of course, but that doesn't stop people from listing this as a requirement - or a pre-selected group of people on the other end from asserting this experience.
This is just false. There are lot of reasons people hire immigrants, very few are truly incredible, singular talents. I lived with a bunch of Indian immigrants when in SF and it was universally guys not as skilled as me hired because there was a pipeline for Brahmin to the US.
This is for immigrant visas, not non-immigrant ones. H1B is a non-immigrant visa which is mostly used for work. So I think this is a click bait culture affecting all media houses from top to bottom.
>So just imagine, having a normal job in the US and you're asked to leave to renew your visa and this stuff happens.
You are confusing some terms. You are never asked to leave to renew the visa. Visa is an entry document. It only serves the purpose of granting you entry. When you are in the US, your stay is covered by your status. If you extend or change your status, you will continue to be in legal status in the US. That is, you are never asked to leave as long as you are in status. If you do leave on your own though, you will need a new visa if your old one has expired. So the TLDR is that if you leave on your own, you will get stranded.
In the mid 2000s, I had to leave the US for renewal while leaving all my hard assets behind. I had a plan in place in case I couldn't go back to the country, which did happen to some people. These people had their interviews, but they got held back outside the US, sometimes for months, waiting for the renewal process to finish. I had an immediate renewal, but was almost held back for some red tape reasons.
The scale is new. Obviously a nightmare or even a tragedy for individual people that it happens at all. But this happening to (tens of?) thousands of people all at once is a whole different thing.
Notably, this is exceptionally common in every country I’ve ever lived in that had such Visa’s. Including them being used as political footballs (including for India, Brazil, Germany, etc).
Does it suck? Yes. Is this unexpected? Not really, no.
In Canada you never have to leave to renew or change status; it's just sometimes faster to do so. It's always the applicant's choice. I went through the whole work permit to PR to citizenship pipeline without ever having to leave the country.
I'm not sure if its the same in Canada but when I went through the process for Australia it depended on where you started the process. I started the process while outside the country so to activate my visa I had to leave and come back but if I had filed while in the country I could have stayed.
I do remember Canada telling my partner she wouldn't be guaranteed reentry while they were processing her PR visa until it was finalised if we left the country though so we just ended up doing the Australian half first and I never went back.
I had a study permit at first. I renewed my permit, got a work permit, renewed my foreign passport and extended my work permit, got PR and got citizenship, getting visas to match my work and study permits, over a period of 10 years, without ever having to leave Canada. So my experience is that in Canada you never have to leave but in the US you do.
My classmates who had gone to the US for PhD programs, even those who were fortunate enough to get multiple entry visas, had visas that allowed re-entry for only the first two years of the PhD program. After that, if they wanted to leave the US, say for a conference or to visit family, they would have had to apply for a visa from abroad and hope to be granted one. In Canada, I could apply for the visa and get it while in Canada. Even comparing like with like, the American system seems bizarre to me, looking at it from a Canadian lens.
I don't think the practice of the change is significant. Reddit has numerous stories of people who are still receiving it, so whatever that release says, things haven't changed. People seem to be receiving AoS based Green Cards the same way I did under the Biden Administration. It does seem to be a bit more uncertain which is always troubling.
Really? My spouse and I lived in Canada on work permits and were not required to leave in order to achieve PR status; nor to achieve citizenship status.
Prior to Covid, my wife had
to exit the country to get photos taken as part of the permanent resident process. We took a trip to Montana for
that purpose.
This seems to have changed in the past 3-4 years, but as the GP said, the original process did involve leaving.
This administration is clearly on a war against immigration of all sorts but... we need to be accurate here.
This is specifically a pause on immigrant visas. That is, green cards. So this is for family-based green cards and investor green cards through consular processing (ie when out of the country).
As yet, work visas and other nonimmigrant visas are unaffected.
It’s 2026 and you causally throw that term “inhumane” because it’s going to make some dollar denominated wage earners life a bit complicated ? Man, what a bubbly life you live in … inhuman it seems lol
At least for F1 and H-1B visas, one wasn't required to get a new visa physically stamped (for which one would have to leave) to switch schools (undergrad -> grad) or jobs. Is this forced now? Of course, if one wanted the freedom to be able to travel or visit one's home country, a new stamping was required if the old visa expired.
It's not ideal but a lot of us basically didn't leave for several years (even pre-Trump 1) to avoid the hassle of a new stamping.
Surely you would admit that this Administration’s approach to immigration has been both chaotic and cruel. The workers who were given status in the United States expected a predictable process, not one that changes weekly based on the unserious personal whims of a bored, ill-informed and vindictive man. In any case, the prioritization of citizens’ wellbeing writ large is demonstrably _not_ a feature of this Administration’s agenda.
The entire point of a temporary visa is that the host country can refuse to renew and force you to leave the country at their whim. When you apply for such a visa you accept those terms.
I wish, I desperately wish, this "both sides" fallacy would die.
There has not been this level of chaos in government decision-making in generations. I have no idea how far back you'd have to go to find a president changing the rules for business arbitrarily every single month.
How, in any way does this help the wellbeing of a citizen? Why bring up that very strange point, which is completely unconnected to the massive harm here.
If anything, these policies harm the citizens of the US in a myriad of ways. There's zero benefit to be had from any of this. Except for the joy tha tthe cruel feel in causing others misery, but that's not citizens, that's just a few sick people.
"Updated guidance and training were being put in place to ensure that visa applicants don’t become a public charge under U.S. law or depend on government benefits intended for Americans in need, a spokesman for the department said Wednesday."
If citizenship is not required for protected rights, what is? If myself and 10,000 of my friends migrate to Greenland illegally, does the Greenland government have a duty to protect our rights?
They can’t vote in most elections (except a few local elections in some places) and aren’t guaranteed entry at the border. They also can’t work a litany of jobs requiring citizenship.
They get a plenty bad enough shake. Let’s grant them the absolute basics of humane treatment and a fair shake at getting citizenship, sheesh.
Other countries get by just fine not having such a huge delta between haves and have nots on citizenship, and their social cohesion is better for it.
Oh, spare me. What an unserious statement. The entire point of an I-9 is to discriminate on citizenship, which is the document that HR pesters you on for your first few days at any new job anyway.
I have a better idea. Let them make their countries worth living in. If they don't like it in America they can leave. Because unlike Americans, we don't have another home country to retreat to.
Most countries have MUCH higher standards for immigration and their citizens much better off for it.
> Most countries have MUCH higher standards for immigration and their citizens much better off for it.
I think your math is off. The US is in the top 10 for GDP per capita, 99% literacy rate when the global average is 87%, the poverty rate is below average, the list goes on. Most countries in the world aren’t even considered developed nations. Immigration has been America’s core growth engine for two and a half centuries. There may be problems but you are deluding yourself if you think the whole economy hasn’t benefited from immigration. Even when that immigration was through chattel slavery.
It’s a symbiotic relationship. The reason the US is so prosperous is due to immigration, mostly during the 20th century. The US cannot run off of just the existing citizens. Well, it can, for a while, but not indefinitely.
I am aware of the concept of children, thank you. Not sure why we have to argue like we have a stick up our asses, but here we are.
As you're well aware, the US is just barely meeting replacement birth rate. Most developed countries are under it. And the big picture: the US is all about growth. Economic growth, cultural growth. If you want more of that, you need immigrants. Sorry, that's how the US has always worked. If you don't agree with it, then I'm not sure the US is the country for you.
There are plenty of developed, homogeneous countries. Diversity is what makes the US the US. Please, feel free to seek a country that better aligns with your beliefs.
The founders were, themselves, immigrants. From multiple different countries.
Of course racism existed when the founding father's were alive, we had slavery. But, from the beginning, the US has been a country founded on immigration and racial diversity. Yes, we did not, at the time, consider black Americans Americans. But we certainly do now, and have for a very long time.
I'm also not convinced immigration lowers wages. People throw this around, while providing no evidence. And, even if it did, I think it's obvious that wages is not the cause behind birth rate decline.
All the developed countries, with the high wages and standard of living, have poor birthrate. All the developing countries, with low wages and low standard of living, have high birthrates. Hmm.
If we look at the demographic progression of nations the "culprit" behind birthrate is development. Particularly, social development, the liberation of women. Turns out lots of women don't actually want to have children, and when we stop pressuring them socially, they don't. They work instead.
Obviously this is a hard problem to solve. If you want to solve birthrate, you need to de-develop your nation. Not good. Or, some other solution, which nobody has found yet. Or, you just have immigration, which we do and have had.
> the US has been a country founded on immigration and racial diversity
This is a misreading of pre-1965 history with respect to immigration. The Naturalization Act of 1790 explicitly states:
"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... making proof to the satisfaction of such Court, that he is a person of good character."
So the "diversity is our strength" slogan is a modern invention and an attempt to retcon our history.
George Washington was the 4th generation of his family in america. He and his community has deep roots in america and did not consider themselves immigrants. The American nation existed before the revolution and was a precondition for such.
Only supply a demand economic denialists cannot understand than an increase in the supply of something leads to falling prices.
We certainly do not have an oversupply of labor. In fact, we're quite short on it. The demand for many jobs is very high. In fields where immigrants often work, that is, blue collar labor, the demand is VERY high. We simply do not produce enough tradesmen, but we still require infrastructure.
And for white collar labor, we have a lot of immigrants, too. But again, supply is not the issue. Yes we import a lot of things like doctors. But we certainly don't have nearly enough doctors.
> Other countries get by just fine not having such a huge delta between haves and have nots on citizenship, and their social cohesion is better for it.
Outside of the USA and a few other countries, there is no social cohesion at all shared between natives and immigrants/foreigners, just different levels of animosity. Even between different native ethnicities and groups.
What responsibility does a non-citizen shirk? They must follow lows, pay taxes, etc. Even for things like social security.
I sometimes wonder where these concepts come from, because it sounds like somebody tricked you into thinking that non-citizens are somehow taking things from everybody else, rather than contributing just the same as everyone.
National defense, and (more vaguely) a responsibility to keep the host country in good shape as there's no other country they can run back to if things go bad in the host country.
Not even American. Just visited once for a few weeks. The answer is generic, in recent times you can compare how Ukraine or Russia can conscript their own citizens but probably not foreign workers who just work there.
Ok so you probably wouldn’t know that foreign born service members make up 5% of our military, most of those becoming naturalized citizens while serving. They’re not shirking their responsibilities anymore than natural born Americans who don’t volunteer.
The mere suggestion that this admin is doing this or anything else for the wellbeing of its citizens is a complete departure from reality.
It's very clear what the motivations are, and just because they don't seem harmful in isolation doesn't mean it's going to have no consequences for everyone else.
And its going so great for our citizens wellbeing. Oodles of programs for the needy smashed to bits. Corruption and self dealing out the wazoo. Protestors shot to death by ICE agents. A legendarily stupid war fucking up international shipping. Illegal tariffs changing daily.
The hundreds of thousands of unnemployed tech workers who were laid off over the past few years and replaced by immigrants in the USA are probably not the saddest about this news.
The fresh grads who can't find a job in the US aren't the saddest about this news.
Agreed. I live in Midwest and that's the same sentiment I am getting from the people. People voted to oppose illegal migration, not stopping legal migration. This November will be judgment day for this administration's policies.
The term "illegal immigration" got moved to "people who have proper papers and did everything legally but were granted access by someone I don't like" - anyone who was an informed voter could see that "against illegal immigration" was just red meat for the base.
This report is for immigrant visas. H-1B visas are not immigrant visas and are the ones that require the stamp renewal in the home country.
That being said, yes, the way the current administration handles immigrant visas, worker visas, and more is absolutely inhumane and completely asinine. I've been through it with family and friends, and it is painful and can be heartbreaking even.
everything this administration does daily is from one of three boxes
[CHAOS] [CORRUPTION] [CRUELTY]
this is a little from the first box and the last box
imagine what's tomorrow or next week
meanwhile let's all enjoy the billion spent on making statues gold plated in DC and the ballroom and the arch and his drapes and his reflecting pool and 100 foot banners of his face on federal building and his face on gold coins, passports, park passes and the $250 bill
Hang on a tick: does that mean we may have been the baddies all along?
I say this as someone who just sent their daughter to NYC explaining how we used to try to sell the Brooklyn Bridge to poor immigrants who just assumed this was a land of kind people, WTF? Could we not take a decade off from being prissy about our democracy *and* total cocks about how we actually act?
Or... one can move to place which treats you with respect you deserve, and not like some unwanted garbage scum.
Is this really how smart immigrants want to live their lives since this is not some temporary glitch? This is society you want to raise your kids in? There is no sum of money high enough for me to accept such treatment, money are not that relevant once person is not poor.
And if its not money, other places have much better working societies in all important metrics, not just this (healthcare, education, social services, criminality, infrastructure and so on... basic pillars not some nitpicks)
By default we'll have a change of president in 2-3 years. Like Karl Popper said, the primary strength of democracy is the ability to remove bad leaders with minimal violence.
Fascism is the merger of corporate and government power. Powerful corporations utilize do not like this policy decision at all. Increasing costs of H1B means less workers who will work harder and cheaper than the market would bear if large amounts of immigrant labor were allowed in.
So no, reducing immigrant labor is not a fascist move because it is not in the interests of powerful corporations and capital owners.
People who voted Trump, though, kind of want that tough-man stance. The problem is that the USA is really messed up. They only get binaries, aka "more/fewer immigrants". That's not really democracy - that's a dictatorship based on populism, run by a billionaire who keeps on feeding his dynasty clan, yet suspiciously avoids explaining his association with Epstein or why he attacks foreign countries (such as Iran) without having a plan in place. He is really by far the dumbest US president of all times - and I said that about George Bush jr. too, but that guy is still smarter than Trump is.
Yeah, this is a pretty big risk. I'm similarly married to an American and we have an American child. Other country seems to have screwed the family, though. Mine (India) offers a fairly indefinite visa called an Overseas Citizen of India. And my wife's other nationality (Taiwan) also permits foreign spouses to live there after some straightforward paperwork. So, in theory, we could live in either of these other places together. I suppose I will only know when push comes to shove.
I’ve never had any trouble going to Taiwan. One of the easier places to go as an Indian who lives here in the US since you have an online form and you get 6 visits of 14 days each and you can do that while you wait for your visa application. My parents also found it quite easy and they live in India.
Also, even with NWOHR it’s not that hard. What trouble did you encounter? Might be useful for me to be aware.
I don't want to minimize your friend's situation. But, a spousal visa is very different from being a permanent resident (maybe I am misunderstanding). If he got it through marrying a US citizen, there's a 3-year wait for naturalization and otherwise it's a 5-year wait.
Naturalization never required leaving the country, at least in my experience but things might have changed.
It's not automatic, you still need to apply and USCIS still has arbitrary discretion. The I-485 can take several months and that's assuming your paperwork is perfect and the agent likes you.
You're right, I fixed the wording. I don't know all the details, but I do think it's a recent change. They've been married for almost ten years. His wife and child are US born.
Trump ended in-country processing and now requires almost all greencard applicants to go to a consulate abroad. My friend and his wife were surprised and nervous when they were told he'd have to leave due to this new requirement (rightfully so, in retrospect).
You said he hasn't seen his daughter in over a year which means he was disallowed from coming into the country since August 2025, before that in-country processing was ended. It ended in May 2026.
Almost a year. The May 2026 rule ended it for a lot of people, but they ended in-country processing for his situation/country earlier. The new rules are complicated and constantly shifting nowadays.
They didn't end in-country processing for any green card applications until November 2025. Your friend could not have been out-of-the country for over a year.
Didn't we used to fast track citizenship for immigrants who married a US citizen? I mean, the default should be that after the wedding you're now on track to be a citizen within a year or two if the marriage is still in effect by then.
For now they're just waiting, separately, each living with relatives. There is zero guidance. The US consulate did not provide a reason for rejecting it other than the freeze, so there's nothing to even appeal.
Moving his wife and kid to his birth country isn't really an option. He doesn't plan to stay there. He has no job, no house, and no social network there. He barely speaks the language. His wife (US born) has a job and family here, and his kid only speaks English. Asking them to pull their kid out of school and move to another country until the US consulate decides to start processing paperwork again doesn't really seem like a reasonable solution, though with every passing week and month, it may end up being the only way they can be together again.
This doesnt make any sense. If you are married to a us citizen you qualify for a green card. Then you need 3 years for citizenship. You never need to leave the country. Ive been through this process, this is absolutely wrong.
The only way this makes sense is he entered the country without inspection or something is very very wrong with his backgrounds. I personally know many people who overstayed their B1/F1 visas and then do AOS to green card via marriage, none was required to go back to their home countries.
OP either intentionally left out some crucial details or their friend lied.
This story can't be true. The green card freeze policy only went into effect in January 2026...earlier this year, and was struck down several months ago.
Also, UCIS has limited discretion to reject a spousal green card applicant; an undisclosed criminal record or immigration violations are basically the only two that would apply if he's been married for years.
I think part of the problem is that most Americans have no clue how the immigration system works. They see a large number of immigrants and hear horror stories about "chaos at the border" and "open border" and assume it's easy to immigrate. Even if you know someone who immigrated, you probably only know that route. Even though I'm a nationalized citizen myself, I can only tell you about the exact route that applied to my specific circumstances and beyond that mostly just know that it's extremely complicated and burdensome.
My wife is an immigrant and there were so many times when I’d talk about something related to her not being a citizen and the other person would say, but you’re married, doesn’t she get citizenship from that? They just thought it was automatic. People have no clue.
Or they do have a clue, actually want the cruelty, and assume that somehow, some nebulous "good ones" will be exempt from the cruelty. I was at a gathering and someone's garbage uncle was on one of those MAGA-rants about immigration and how we need to kick foreigners out of the country and how they don't deserve to be here and so on. I chimed in that my wife is an immigrant and you're telling me that my family should be broken up and my kid's mother should be taken away from her. The guy got all red faced and bashful and muttered something about how he's not really talking about my family in particular but all the bad ones out there who really need to go, blah blah blah. The usual MAGA-coward trash.
A lot of America has this world view that there's a hierarchy, and the people they know and like are above the people they don't know and don't like. One group gets the benefit of the doubt and the other group gets rules and cruelty.
I have a conservative family friend that would always speak his mind at social gatherings about immigration Well he ended up meeting a woman who was an illegal immigrant and they wanted to get married. Luckily she only overstayed a student visa and didn't enter unlawfully but it still took several years for her to eventually gain naturalization. Now all he does is complain about how difficult it is for immigrants ("the good ones") to come to America. I've spoken to him recently and he's now concerned about her losing her naturalization. He's pretty much one foot out the door for moving to her home country just to avoid the prospect.
Yes, agreed. I came on a fiance visa, then work authorization, then green card, then naturalization. Spouse (the OG US citizen) thought we just needed to get married in the US..
The number of times I've heard "just wait your turn in line like my grandparents" from people is infuriating. There is no line! We have a series of lotteries, and even these are straight up forbidden for people from a bunch of countries. Failing the lottery one year does not get you any close to immigrating.
The details of this story have glaring mistakes and don't make sense. I know this because I'm a naturalized citizen to the US and I came in on H1B.
> He's been doing the paperwork to finally become a citizen, and as one of the final steps he was required to leave the country
You don't have to leave the country to become a citizen. I recently became a US citizen a few years back and leaving the country is not required.
If you somehow meant Green Card, the timeline still doesn't make sense. Until May 2026, 3 months ago, you could do Adjustment of Status within the country without having to leave. So there's no reason why you friend would need to leave the country to get his Green Card unless he chose Consular Processing.
Getting denied CP is rare, but it means that they lied about something.
And if he did live in the US for decades without having his GC, well, applying for GC under Trump in this climate was a huge mistake, especially leaving the country having been in here for decades illegally. He should have waited 2 years until the Republicans were voted out and maybe he would have some modicum of amnesty where at least ICE would get him.
> His wife and child aren't citizens of his home country either, so it's not like they can move to be with him.
This also doesn't make sense. First off, the country's immigration is even more restrictive than the US?? They can't even visit on a travel visa??
They can definitely move to his home country, since he's a citizen. There's a spousal visas for almost all countries, and the child is most definitely allowed to come in since they can usually get citizenship via the father.
But there's no way he hasn't seen his daughter in over a year since the forced Consular Processing didn't start until this past May, and his spouse and daughter can most definitely travel to see him.
None of this story makes sense, so either you have the details very drastically incorrect or this is completely fake.
“America” isn’t the landmass of America. “America” is the society that was built by mostly British immigrants bringing their language, law, and culture. America didn’t exist in 1492.
I was wondering why you thanked two people who provided secondary sources (very courteous of you), but not me when I'm who you asked and I provided the source immediately. So I opened the reply in a private window and realized the reply I gave with nothing but exactly what you asked for is [dead], but that fact is hidden from me while logged in: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49454527
This site is worse than reddit in all of the worst ways.
They do note that the share of working-age men not in the labor force is near a historic high for this kind of economy.
That probably suggests not reading too much into this before figuring out if the reason so many foreign born people have been hired is because so many native born people have dropped out of the labor pool.
Inhumane is every choice made by this country under this regime. The "bothsides" and "no politics" crowds are equally as complicit in this as Trump voters.
Imagine trying to find a job in your home country but you can’t because masses are being brought over to undercut you and your fellow countrymen. Inhumane.
My company has a H-1B guy that travelled home to India a few months ago and since then can't come back because the next date he can get with the US embassy is next year. Seems he may get stuck even longer...
I am to some degree on board with keeping a closer eye on immigration, but the way the current administration does it feels intentionally cruel. The guy at my company has a house, wife, and kids in the US; his visa is perfectly legal, so it seems it would make sense to process these people quickly. But instead, he is now in some limbo. Same for ICE. Clamping down on illegal immigration makes sense, but it doesn't make sense for ICE to behave like some unaccountable secret police that hires the biggest assholes they can find who can then do whatever they want.
They are intentionally cruel. Its the point. They aren't even trying to hide it. The posts on official Whitehouse X account are borderline gleeful on topics of deportation and immigration. I'm in dis-belief at times.
I'm an American that lives abroad. I have first-hand experience how other countries treat 'immigrants'. H1B is a temporary non-immigrant visa.
I could never imagine myself buying a home in a country where I don't have permanent access to that real estate. I am not opposed to voting to prevent non-PRs from owning real estate in order to keep housing prices lower for residents and prevent non-immigrants from shooting themselves in the foot.
As I live abroad in temporary status, I keep one foot back home (USA) and am extremely mindful of the risks of needing to close up shop and move.
If you want an economic perspective, consider reading Warren Buffet's "America’s growing trade deficit is selling the nation out from under us" article [0].
This comment vaguely blames immigrants for not having an escape plan. Millions of people immigrate to the US through all the right mechanisms and follow all the laws and have every intention of staying forever and becoming citizens. Scaring their pants off is an unnecessarily hostile and unwelcoming act that is unbecoming of this country.
> in order to keep housing prices lower for residents
And where do they live? They rent. So this jacks up rents for everyone, not just for immigrants, but for any who cannot afford to buy.
Basically everything you say and also imply makes life worse for immigrants and better for wealthy residents. It even makes life worse for poor residents.
I think one of the fundamental problem with h1b is that it is labeled as "non-immigrant" whereas for all practical purposes it is really an immigrant visa. Why would a person who is supposedly having rare skills come to a country and spend their best years here without reasonable guarantee of permanency? People buy homes because it is a reasonable belief that they are going to be living here permanently and it has historically been true.
In any case I don't see the point you are making. Should America be treating immigrants poorly because whichever country you're in makes you slightly uncomfortable to buy a home there? It's not an excuse for all this pain and cruelty. America should hold itself to higher standards.
There is a very common pattern of people who go to work to some other, richer country for a set period of time with the sole purpose of making enough money to achieve an objective back home (provide for family, buy a house, retire, etc). I don't know how common this is between H-1B applicants, but it's extremely common in the EU for example.
in the EU there is no need for any visa (within member states) and essentially it's a desired feature of the EU.
Another point is that speaking the local language in a richer country of the EU is less likely than speaking English (with English being official only in Ireland and Malta), so it's harder to settle - esp. with kids and school.
> Why would a person who is supposedly having rare skills come to a country and spend their best years here without reasonable guarantee of permanency?
I agree with your overall point but the answer here is money. The earning potential in the US vs. e.g. India is drastic.
I think that in general, expecting a 'career for life' with one company, as was common in the 1950s, is a bit naive today. Companies change, needs change, people change, just because you like the job now doesn't mean you will in ten years. To give a tech industry example, right now you could be working for a cool startup, in a few years the startup gets acquired by a large tech company, they change the management style, it's not fun anymore. Like imagine you got hired at Github around 2010, would you definitely still be there today? Or even in 2020?
Also, you have plenty of people who will have career plans like "work in finance in NYC for 5-10 years, amass a fat pile of cash, and retire to a small farm in the middle of nowhere". If I were living in China or India, I might see "spending 5-10 years in the US earning large piles of money and returning to my homeland to retire and live a life of leisure" as a valid career path.
It's not really money. Frankly, no 20 year old thinks that much about money. They do things that they like, whether that is going to school, working at a job, or starting up. And you don't know about the broken immigration system from the outside. The reason this problem is unique to India is due to country caps/DEI which prevents people from India on H-1B from getting a green card.
I disagree that no 20 year old thinks that much about money.
If you're lucky enough to have had rich enough parents to not have to worry about money too much, yes, you'll probably optimize for doing things you enjoy, but people who spend a lot of their younger years with money issues will sometimes obsess about it and really focus their lives around 'getting rich'.
I've noticed have similar phenomena with people who are deprived of certain important needs in their youth - people who are starved of a certain type of parental affection overcompensating by orienting their lives around getting more of it (eg women with daddy issues who are very promiscuous), people who feel disrespected and downtrodden who become obsessed with social status, people who get bullied and get into martial arts...
If you've ever read Gone With The Wind, there's a line where Scarlett O'Hara says "with God as my witness, I'll never go hungry again". I suspect that many people who have similar experiences will react by orienting their lives in a similar manner. "I was deprived of something important, so I will react by over-indexing on that important thing I was deprived of, to avoid the future pain of being again deprived of it".
* If you're lucky enough to have had rich enough parents to not have to worry about money too much, yes, you'll probably optimize for doing things you enjoy, but people who spend a lot of their younger years with money issues will sometimes obsess about it and really focus their lives around 'getting rich'.*
I think you’re in the right ballpark, and I have seen it play out exactly that. However, I think it is even more common for rich kids to obsess about getting richer.
In my experience, as long as their needs are being met, most people get used to whatever lifestyle they are raised in, and stick with it. if they grew up in a family that chases wealth, and equates income with self worth, then they tend to keep doing that.
> I think one of the fundamental problem with h1b is that it is labeled as "non-immigrant"
I'm curious as a non-American - labelled by who? People who want to talk tough on immigration but benefit from H1Bs in their companies? Or the system itself in some way?
i think people are missing here that it is non immigrant because it’s temporary. but it is dual intent so you can intend to become an immigrant (permanent resident) on this visa. there are other nonimmigrant visas that are not dual intent such as B-1/B-2 or F-1. To get those visas you cannot have intent to immigrate.
There are arguments from the other side too. Many H1B folks do keep one foot back in the country they are from. But then a lot of backlash on specifically Indian folks for sending most of their salary back home. They know that this is transient state, many of them have rented housing, but still these visas are not like weekly visas, they are for 3 years, people would build somewhat of a life in that time and uprooting them instantly is inhumane indeed.
I don't have opinions about them sending their salary back home. Obviously its better for the USA if the money stayed in the USA, but "earning money in one locality and spending it another" is really really really situation, even in the USA.
American Police officers are famous for not actually living in the cities they work in.
In each country I have lived in, I was a guest. With that knowledge, I carefully designed my life so uprooting would not be a painful inhumane process.
If you throw a party and a guest refuses to leave, you wouldn't declare forcing them to leave your home in-humane.
I don't really like the concept of "guests" being applied to people living somewhere for years, working, paying taxes, making families and friends, sending children to school and so on. I think it would be more humane if this concept was minimized, and instead the concept of "no taxation without representation" was applied. Fast track people as much as possible. Maybe one year as a voiceless "guest" is okay for a human being, but not more than that.
> If you throw a party and a guest refuses to leave
Show me where the govt has actually revoked their visa? Instead, because they cannot cancel the visa legally they are trying to create as much pain as possible for these visa holders hoping that some will give up and leave.
A siblings commenter stated this opinion much more persuasively for me. When these people arrive here, they are absolutely guests. It's incontrovertible that they are guests. Theres no debate.
However, time is important and after a certain amount of time or perhaps even connection made to the community, a person does move from guest to neighbor.
Who's angry about how people are spending their already-taxed income? Is that really a thing? Is it sincere or just racism masked as "think of the economy"? (Honest question, Not American. Don't live there, news to me).
The big beautiful bill included a 1% foreign remittance tax for outbound international transfers funded using physical cash, money orders, and cashier's checks.
Which notably, doesn’t affect money transfers in general, just ways that poor people transfer money, so the concern as stated is not in good faith at all, but rather a way to further punish migrant workers, primarily Mexicans, and is absolutely racial animosity.
If I show up in China (or the USA) on a tourist visa with the plans to pursue a marriage and permanent residency, does that mean I get to backdate my permanent residency to the tourist visa because I’m able to pursue a marriage (PR)?
Can a nonimmigrant in H-1B or L-1 status intend to immigrate permanently to the U.S.?
Nonimmigrants in H-1B or L-1 status can be the beneficiary of an immigrant visa petition, apply for adjustment of status, or take other steps toward Lawful
Permanent Resident status without affecting their status. This is known as "dual intent" and has been recognized in immigration law since passage of the
Immigration Act of 1990. During the time that the application for LPR status is pending, a nonimmigrant in valid H-1B or L-1 status may travel on his or her
visa rather than obtaining advance parole or requesting other advance permission from USCIS to return to the U.S.
I don’t understand the relevance. No one is using a tourist visa in this scenario and a tourist visa definitely isn’t dual intent in the way an H1B is.
People on HN are not a special elect subset of the population, except perhaps around specific HN-adjacent topics (engineering, VC, computer science, maths, etc.)
Why would you think a random person on HN is less prone to talking out of their ass than a random person in the CS/engineering/VC world? Than a random person selected from the population of the world?
i think your problem is you havent also experienced the american immigration system to properly compare
also h1b is “non immigrant” but it is dual intent. this means it is perfectly legal to seek an immigrant (ie green card) visa. again, you have no idea what youre talking about
It was not by law temporary, it was by law indefinitely renewable. You just had to hold a job that'll sponsor you. How is that materially different from any "normal" person who takes a 30 year mortgage with no guarantee that they will stay employed that long? Hell, the vast majority of H1Bs have much greater job security than the average home buyer anyway.
Again change the law if you want. Give a heads up. Or dont. Nothing the current government does to home owning H1Bs should be rank ordered anywhere but to the bottom quartile of the greatest injustices being doled out.
Immigration is a privilege, no more unfair than all of capitalism. If a country decides things are x or y levels hard to immigrate thats great.
The problem is the moving of goal posts. For decades, h1b (which is an immigrant visa) was a stable path to immigrate to America. People see that, and there was an implicit promise made there. If the US wants to decide not to continue with this practice that is fully fair. Just make up the rules clearly and give people a heads up. Is that too much to ask?
(a) The WSJ article is talking about "immigrant visas" a.k.a. green cards, not H1-Bs.
(b) Even if we are talking about H1-Bs, it takes someone in India 10-15 years of waiting in line to get a green card. If someone were to buy a house in the interim, it doesn't seem so irrational to me.
Its easy to blame the victim and say they should have known.
(a) I responded to OP's comment about H1-Bs, not the article itself. Even then, presumably, they paused processing new visa and the people that have already obtained them may continue to stay. If they fail to renew GC during this time, I agree that is a dark issue.
(b) If I enter China on a temporary work permit visa, with a 15 year plan to obtain Chinese citizenship, no one will have sympathy for me if that plan is interrupted by legal, political, economic changes. Since I full well knew my current status and the risks of failing to obtain Chinese citizenship.
Just because there is a possibility in the distant future for permanence, doesn't mean you can safely backdate it to today.
> If I enter China on a temporary work permit visa, with a 15 year plan to obtain Chinese citizenship, no one will have sympathy for me if that plan is interrupted
I would have sympathy for you if it was interrupted by suddenly changing the requirements through no action of your own.
Like, if you commit a crime, are a belligerent drunk, or whatever and they don't renew your visa over that, I have no sympathy.
If you're unable to secure employment for an extended period of time, and they don't renew your visa, I also have less sympathy since that's part of the bargain you knew going in.
If you play by the rules, but they reject a visa renewal for a reason like "we have too many immigrants from $x country, so we're rejecting y% of renewals" , well that's legally within the government's rights to do, but I'll have sympathy for you and think that you're morally in the right and China's failing its duty to its foreign residents.
Likewise, this US one is a case of capricious rejection, the US government is not holding up its end of the deal you both thought you were agreeing to. Like, the deal with a work visa, even if it's not permanent, is "if you follow the rules and keep good steady employment, you can live here, but yes it's conditional on the work thing".
I have sympathy for this hypothetical you, and also I have sympathy for those holding american visas who are impacted.
When I was in the US as a student (F1 Visa) that is why I decided to go back home instead of trying to optain an H1B. It was just too risky for too long. I did not want to live a life where I had to expect to leave the next day. Besides, it was right at the beginning when Trump won the first time.
Same for ICE. Clamping down on illegal immigration makes sense, but it doesn't make sense for ICE to behave like some unaccountable secret police that hires the biggest assholes they can find who can then do whatever they want.
To you.
But the existence of a secret police has a lot of upsides if you plan to not leave office.
So you agree with the person you're responding to, but you're attacking them for stating it with less melodrama than you would prefer? What a useless comment.
OP is right. There are too many people here in the comments who act surprised although it has been very clear what the Trump administration is trying to do. The cruelty is the point and they are not even trying to hide it.
An H-1B is a temporary non-immigrant visa. You're not supposed to rely on it to build a life in the US with no backup plan; that was never the intent of the law. However, successive administrations ignored the intent of the law, for so long that people began to rely on assurances that the law never promised. Now that the law is getting applied properly, those people are facing the consequences. It sucks for them, but continuing to not have rule of law would suck worse for all of us
H1B is explicitly a dual intent visa. You are allowed to pursue a green card while in the country on an H1B. It has been an accepted, valid path for a very long time now. If the government wishes to change that of course they can. But the humane approach would be to let those who have already started the process finish it.
I don't really think anyone is disputing that the government is able to change their approach to immigration (though it's telling they're doing it by just freezing appointments rather than passing a law), but that you can make changes to immigration law in a way that respects immigrants as human beings. The government is just choosing not to.
Responding to "it's cruel" with "they're allowed to do it" is kind of sidestepping the core of the complaint.
> The doctrine of H-1B dual intent has the following legal bases:
> Unlike many nonimmigrant categories, I.N.A. § 101(a)(15)(H)(i) contains no requirement of proving there is a "residence in a foreign country which he has no intention of abandoning;"
> The H category is specifically excluded from the I.N.A. § 214(b)'s presumption of immigrant intent;
You say:
> You're not supposed to rely on it to build a life in the US with no backup plan
when in fact the visa very specifically allows it (as per the "no intention of abandoning"). People arriving in the US on an H1B visa with immigrant intent are absolutely following the law. Is it a good idea? Much more debatable. But they're not acting without precedent nor without specific legal text allowing it.
It is always possible to make rules stricter for the new applicants. While there was some complaints with visa price hikes, they were for new visas so it was okay. Denying existing legal visa holders entry or time to wrap things up doesn't seem bad to you? These are not criminals per say.
brother H-1Bs are transparently vectors for foreign educated workers to come to the US to build lives and eventually get a green card, so the US doesn't have to actually build a functional education system.
no one talented will come pay taxes and make your nice tech companies carry the S&P500 and in turn, everyone's retirement funds, if you treat them like hogs
You're getting downvoted but this is literally true.
> According to The Atlantic, while helping Trump prepare for a debate in 2024, Miller got into an argument with an ally on immigration. Trump reportedly said, "Stephen... if you had it your way, everyone would look exactly like you", to which Miller replied "That’s correct". In another incident reported by The New York Times, Trump told a campaign meeting that Miller only wanted 100 million people who looked like him to live in the United States.
That’s what my company is doing. Instead of hiring more people in the US they are hiring almost exclusively in other countries. The tariffs seem to be backfiring in a similar way. More production is moved outside the US to avoid the tariffs.
Having the only appointment be a year or more out isn’t new. Anyone I knew wouldn’t take the risk of leaving the US if they didn’t have an appointment secured.
The pro maga crowd has learned to take a less obvious, but just as callous approach to commenting over the last 6 months. They are trying to subtly slide the overton window in their direction.
Sure, he should just have lived as a slave and not socialize with anyone until he left.
H1Bs have been used as a path to citizenship for a long time. You can't just change the rules like that without destroying so many lives in a senseless act of cruelty. But the cruelty is the point.
26 years ago I was a post-graduate student in the US, I arrived a couple months before the 9/11 attacks. The current US government, beyond its idiocy and incompetence, is just so hostile, not only to immigrants but also to its own citizens, so it seems. If I were to go study in another country today, the US would simply not be an option.
Podcaster Scott Galloway puts it best. The US is like a sports team that gets to draft the best players in the world and yet they are doing their best to stop that. Top talent from almost every country wants to come live and work in the US, producing incredible companies and advancing tech. But because most of them are not-white, the US wants to stop that.
This was never about talent. It's about companies hiring foreigners on h1b visas at below market wages where their life in the USA is contingent on their job performance forcing them to work harder and longer than their peers to remain in the country. It's a situation that only benefits companies, while harming US citizens who have to compete with the lower wages of foreigners.
I work in a global company. As an interviewer, I don't even know if the person I interview is a US citizen. I don't even know if they live in the US or another country, and I'm probably not allowed to ask. I just rate their performance. And everybody is paid the same.
I think the situation is quite simple. Companies want the best candidates they can get, and the larger the recruitment pool, the better.
If tomorrow you were to tell (let say) Google they now need to hire only US citizens, would they lower their hiring bar, or would they expand their Shanghai or Zurich offices? Are US citizens entitled to work at Google more than others for the sole reason they have a particular citizenship?
The “lack of local talent” is a fallacy. It’s “lack of talent at the prices I want”. Some people don’t take kindly to having their “product” replaced by a 1/2 price aliexpress clone
> Companies want the best candidates they can get, and the larger the recruitment pool, the better.
Yes, at the lowest wages they can get. Increase supply -> lower prices (wages) -> more corporate profits!
However, there are those who believe that corporate profits are not the highest good. Some of us also care about the earnings of American workers.
Also, "best candidates" alone does not "best company" make. You need people who can work well together—which requires some degree of culture fit. Immigration restrictions help preserve the cultural homogeneity that makes collaboration and social trust possible.
> Yes, at the lowest wages they can get. Increase supply -> lower prices (wages) -> more corporate profits!
I don't understand this.
At least in tech megacorps, immigrants get paid the same as americans. They're also very good, and if they were to hire only americans, their talent pool would be worse. They're not 'cashing in' on cheaper labor.
Why? All big and even medium tech companies have dev offices in EU and India. As example since it's much easier to deal with visas say in Ireland a lot of hiring was shifted to Irish offices.
1/ Employment provides training and experience. If the h1bs are given access to the jobs (training and experience), then is it the American's fault that they are no longer considered "best"?
2/ h1b increases labor supply, not the demand. More supply, means lower wages for everyone.
1/ Training is only effective if you can fill the function of the job and learn from it. Many software engineering jobs people claim are stolen by H1B hires are filled by human beings more likely to meet the bar. Many American candidates just don’t. Filling a software role is hard.
2/ Demand for software is not static. Good software drives demand for more engineers in many cases, intra or extra-company. There is probably a non zero rate of wage suppression per marginal h1b currently. But an American economy with no h1b employees could feasibly have a much lower average sde salary. It is not an Econ 101 problem.
1/ Training goes all the way down the pipeline to colleges. If x% of students are foreign, then Americans didn't have the opportunity to get the education.
Again... the skill issue falls apart when you consider teams at tech companies having 1 non-American national origin or caste. I'm very skeptical that, between two foreign candidates with the same U.S. education and experience but different national origins, the fact that the candidate whose nationality matches the current team composition is selected can be explained purely as a matter of skill.
2/ Great, lets train up more American engineers to push the demand higher.
People are not as capable as you think they are and software engineering (well) is actually difficult. You cannot just push more people in. People are not fungible.
There is truth to your statement, but high salaries and demand encourage locally capable people to enter the industry.
Consider growth of CS graduates in the past 5 years or the number of people that transitioned into tech (like myself).
In 2026, this signal is not as clear: with the uncertainty of tech, increased output with less labor due to AI, and growing competition amongst workers (citizen or otherwise). We may see a shift in studies to other fields.
> I just rate their performance. And everybody is paid the same.
For some visa classes, the law says you should hire an American citizen if they can do the job - not if they rank first at whiteboards or fizz-buzz.
> If tomorrow you were to tell (let say) Google they now need to hire only US citizens, would they lower their hiring bar
Does it really matter? To a point, obviously, but a lot of people are good enough for the role without being the world's best. The bar for getting into Google has dropped since its early days, and Google keeps breaking profit records quarter after quarter.
This entire "hire the best or nothing" mindset has led to a dysfunctional hiring process that's a pain to both employers and employees, and is prima facie unachievable.
> you should hire an American citizen if they can do the job
I went for a job in the US back in the late 80's (Specialist on hardware).
California it was exceptionally strict. While I was more than qualified it took months of the company advertising in the US, and at the end of it all an American was hired.
The second job for another company in California, same deal except they only advertised in the local newspaper (which felt off), and when I finally got an interview they said they couldn't hire me but recommended places in Mexico to jump the border if I ever wanted a job. Noped out of that fast.
Did eventually get to a spend a couple of years in the US in the 90's. It was the same hoops to jump through as the first company. Wasn't easy or fast.
No idea what it is like now. But I had seen the racism of "They are an immigrant, so they were only hired because we can pay them cheap", not as bad as my Indian co-workers though.
> not if they rank first at whiteboards or fizz-buzz.
As an interviewer, I don't rank candidates. I have my set of questions, some candidates solve them, others don't. You can argue that it's the bar to do your job properly. Should politicians tell big tech companies what's the bar for being a successful SWE?
> When it comes to national interest, the argument for "meritocracy" falls apart quickly.
A lot of US tech exists because of skilled foreign workers. I'm not sure what would be the tech industry without them.
Someone in your org does - an individual or committee: that's the entire purpose of the hiring pipeline. I've interviewed candidates at multiple companies small and (extremely) big, and interviews always have to give recommendations for ranking purposes (out of 10/100, or (strong-/)yes / maybe / (strong-/)no)
I am not attacking you personally, but the fact remains: in some circumstances hiring "the best" - when they happen to be a non-citizen - can be in contravention with the law depending on the visa class and whether you failed to find an American capable of doing the job.
Don't just take my word for it, big tech companies have lost or settled multiple AG suits because they tried to hide job postings from Americans, e.g. by posting SWE/PM jobs in some podunk, print-only Farmers-Weekly-type magazines.
> A lot of US tech exists because of skilled foreign workers.
I fully agree. Unfortunately being skilled doesn't grant them the right to vote, and as young people keep finding out, those who write (and sign) laws care a lot about what actual voters think and feel. You have to get into office first before you can do the hard labor-policy stuff.
Being paid the same as the other guy doesn't necessarily mean the wages themselves stayed the same. Adding H1B candidates to the talent pool exerts downward pressure on salary due to the law of supply and demand. I can't say for sure whether the allure of a green card or threat of deportation play a material factor in lowering the average salary that H1B immigrants are willing to accept. But in an environment where talent is treated as fungible (even if it isn't always so), any such downward pressure affects everyone.
That's the parent's argument. Prevailing wage in country A is X. Prevailing wage in country B is Y, and according to your numbers X > 2Y. Person from country B emigrates to country A and accepts wage 1.9Y, putting downward pressure on the jobs in country A at wage X.
You don't need the carrot of a green card or the stick of deportation to make a software engineer on an H1B accept a depressed wage, because it's not depressed relative to their alternatives.
The idea is that the "same wage" you are talking about is too low to hire enough employees in the time needed that the company needed so they had to look abroad for people willing to work for that amount.
Then fix that. This administration is eager to point out problems and propose "just don't do that" as a solution. The problem is that to them, pretty much everything is a problem, so they're proposing we do nothing.
The problem is the H1B visa is a lottery not a points based system. As someone who applied for an H1B 5 times and never got it, despite being highly skilled and having a PhD and a well paying job. The only way in was on an intern visa or an Einstein visa. Insane system
Actually they get normal wages now. H1B’s get hired because H1B’s are now in hiring, recruiting, HR, etc.. they stack the candidate pool with their own shamelessly. I’ve seen it first hand.
Employment based and immigrant are not opposite categories of visa - these are orthogonal axes.
There are employment-based nonimmigrant visas like H1B and L1. Being a nonimmigrant visa means it doesn’t grant you a right to immigrate but some (including H1B and L1) are ‘dual intent’ visas meaning you can apply for an immigrant visa while in the US as a nonimmigrant.
There are employment-based immigrant visas, which have categories like EB1, EB2. Like all immigrant visas these are also known as ‘legal permanent residency’, LPR, or ‘green cards’.
There are also non-employment-based visas that are both nonimmigrant (eg visitor visas, student visas) and immigrant (eg family based green cards)
H-1B / L-1 are non-immigrant visas, immigrant visas are green cards yes. Pausing green card processing in consulates after (on sketchy legal grounds) forcing folks to not do adjustment of status for getting an immigrant visa inside the country is, indeed, how the admin is trying to get around doing their job the way the INA intends them to.
That only means you won't be denied if you express immigration intent during interview. Besides that it's nothing special. There is no special path to GC/naturalization for H1Bs.
If you mean the memo earlier this year, it was about tourist visas and similar doing aos in country when they are not dual intent visas, which makes it iffy.
They explicitly said that for h1b and l1 aos wouldn’t be affected as they are dual intent visas.
It’s a common pattern to say ‘company X laid off thousands of employees but then applied for thousands of H1B visas’ which very much gives the impression that the company has just fired a few thousand Americans and hired a few thousand foreigners.
What actually happens is: a company has a global workforce of 100000 or so. 50000 of them are in the US. 5000 of them are in the US on H1Bs, 45000 of them are Americans.
Company does a 10% layoff: 4500 Americans, 500 people who are in the us on visas, and 5000 people around the world.
Headline: “Company X lays off 10000”
Then the H1B renewal numbers come out and what do you know company X is applying for 4500 H1Bs, to retain their existing H1B staff who weren’t affected by the layoff.
Headline: “After laying off 10,000 staff company x applies for 4500 H1B visas”
Unstated in such a headline: 5500 of those layoffs were foreigners; the company still employs 40500 Americans.
To bring it back to your point: you cited this article as evidence for the claim that Microsoft laid off ‘thousands of domestic employees’; the article does not say where the thousands of layoffs were and explicitly contains a quote from an MS spokesperson that says “H-1B employees were also impacted by job eliminations in the U.S.”
They are doing that now too, however the problem is that h1b is used for roles outside of tech, believe it or not, and if you measure everything by Bay Area tech salaries a bunch of necessary but lower paying jobs will go unfilled
These visa policies have already encouraged large tech companies etc to expand their Indian offices. It erodes the US tax base and means talent stay in their home country, which means more innovation happens outside the US. More start-ups are been founded in these countries because more talent is now there.
Trump first term was make Mexico and Vietnam Great Again as companies moved their manufacturing there.
This term its make India Great Again as companies retain and train their tech talent there.
Who cares where this so called innovation happens? Won't it be cheaper for all of us if the salaries are in much lower cost of living places? Why would a US citizen give a shit?
I've never worked at a company that gave offshore teams the same responsibilities as onshore employees. When shit gets real, and someone's head needs to be on the chopping block, it's always a same-shore employee. But reduced responsibility also means reduced impact. Let's see if that changes, and I'd love to see it happen, but I'm not holding my breath.
I used to think things like this as an American. But let's simplify. What if they're just fucking idiots and they realized they could rally a bunch of other fucking idiots to the polls?
So if you were essentially having a spasm about how no one understands how perfect the world was when you had all the advantages, I mean, we don't need a fancy theory at that point. It's literally old people spewing up acid about why their kids don't come to Thanksgiving, only we managed to create such a presence in the world media, it's a damned disaster.
Welcome to how immigration works in other countries. Canada just changed a bunch of rules and is actively sending immigration officers to immigrant protests to run status checks and deport anyone in the country illegally.
There is no right for non-citizens to come to the US.
Israel is trying to stoke anti-immigrant policies, specifically they want to exacerbate Islamophobia. They're also well aware that the US is about to become staunchly anti-Israel once the baby boomers are gone.
There are many possibilities. The conspiracy theorists like to talk about how the people pushing the "pro Israel" actions in the U.S. are more loyal to Israel than they are to the US and so their end goal is to make Israel a regional superpower in the Middle East and to them in the end, it doesn't matter what happens to the US. I mean if you are loyal to Israel and not the US I could see this. Each country acts in their own interests and these people have been able to exploit the weakness of money in politics for their benefit. I personally don't fully buy that, but that's one theory.
Another theory is that the leadership in Israel is not really thinking long term. They are suffering from the same issues that other poor leaders like Trump are suffering from. They're just looking at themselves and what benefits them in the short term, so the moves that they're making are beneficial in the short term but very detrimental in the long term.
It's possible that they think that the US decline is inevitable due to uncontrolled spending, the decline in development in its people and other issues etc. and so they are grabbing as much as they can before it collapses and then afterwards they align with the next superpower there have been some moves in that direction to open up to China although small. Its a risky move because China may not treat them anywhere near as well so Israel has to work harder to earn its seat at the table but if the US decline is out of their full control then the next best move is to grab as much as you can before it comes crashing down and then move on.
That's the only source that I've heard for this quote:
> U.S. intelligence sources report that the one Israeli who is considered an extreme threat to U.S. national security is former prime minister and current prime minister hopeful Binyamin Netanyahu. Not only has Netanyahu visited convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard in his North Carolina prison cell and advocated strenuously for his release, but he was once overheard by an ex-CIA agent as saying to a group of his supporters, "Once we squeeze all we can out of the United States, it can dry up and blow away." Considering the damage the neocons and their Israeli facilitators are causing for U.S. national security, Netanyahu may soon have his wish.
> the current admin are working hard to destroy the U.S as if they're foreign agents
The U.S. had a draconian restrictive immigration policy from 1921-1965. That worked fine. How can you say with a straight face that someone must be a “foreign agent” to think doing the same thing again will have the same result? Surely the burden is on you to prove the opposite, right?
How can you with a straight face equate “fine for 1921-1965” with “best for 2026”?
Even odder: what makes you find it plausible that an understanding of the policies of this period and their effect on the economy were part of the decision-making process of this administration - especially when they have actively voiced opinions that fully explain this action? At some point bending backwards to provide some benefit of the doubt is saying more about the speaker than the topic - I am certainly of the opinion that we are well beyond that rubicon. I cannot fathom the reasoning at this point.
> How can you with a straight face equate “fine for 1921-1965” with “best for 2026”
It’s strong evidence that immigration restriction isn’t economically destructive. If you think economic circumstances have changed and the result would be different this time, then I think you have the burden to prove it.
The U.S. was at the apex of its power during those years. Those years are also why we remember earlier immigration waves as “working.” The foreign born population dropped from 15% to under 5% during that period. The Italian and Irish enclaves disappeared and so did the separate ethnic identity of those groups (to a large degree).
“I’m okay with racial prison camps if it makes us powerful” is the exact sort of moral bankruptcy to be expected from the people who defend this administration.
We should modularize our discussion to distinguish between the various effects of immigration and the most humane/optimal way to enforce immigration law.
That’s a common misconception. The U.S. actually became the world’s largest industrial power before World War I. Germany had 60% of the US’s GDP per capita in 1910. It dipped during the war itself, but by 1960 it was closer to 70%. https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/us-gdp-per-cap....
It contradicts the conclusion he’s drawing from those two facts, which is that U.S. economic dominance results from European economies having been destroyed after WWII. The U.S. became a world power during its isolationist phase prior to WWI.
I think the last 20 years of that 45 year period were substantially due to exactly what they described.
If you give any debit for the decade-long Great Depression, or wartime malaise due to loss of life, emotional toll, and rationing, it’s fair to conclude that half of the period of good times was during exactly that post-war rebuilding (largely powered by US industrial capacity) and concomitant baby boom.
Would you have preferred that the US military stay at home during WW2 to avoid bombing anyone? You know that Japan was killing something like a Hiroshima and Nagasaki worth of civilians every month?
I would have preferred the banks be told not to expect a bailout in 1914. Privatize the profits, socialize the losses. It's been a problem for a long time and the body count stretches into the millions.
Mmmmhmmm. Ah yes 1921, the year both the Klu Klux Klan (and European Fascism) metastasized in society. All immigration controls come from a rather interesting, dark place; shifting of the Overton Window, and all that.
>And the U.S. has been doing even better since 1965.
Better for whom? People are struggling to afford groceries largely because the dollar is worth 1/165th of its 1913 value and the minimum wage hasn't been raised in 17 years.
I found a job that pays in BTC and I'm super hopeful about that one because my effective salary won't go down by 3-8% every year but instead will appreciate relative to what things are priced in.
We were able to make progress on those fronts in the 1960s because we had a culturally homogenized population after decades of immigration restriction.
In the area of women’s rights, for example, the driving force was mainline protestants who wanted prohibition, in opposition to recent immigrants: https://www.wpbstv.org/prohibition-and-the-suffrage-movement.... If America had remained an Anglo-Protestant society, it likely would have developed on a similar trajectory as Canada, the UK, and Australia on issues like abortion. Remember, Roe v. Wade had five Nixon and Eisenhower Republicans in the majority. The party shifted positions on the issue with Reagan because it was a way to flip a large number of catholics, who had overwhelmingly voted democrat until then. Evangelical protestants plus religious Catholics was a big enough coalition to offset mainline protestants on the issue.
White people are a global minority at ~7%. "Minorities™" have their own countries where they are majorities. If they don't want to be Minorities™, they can stay home.
Personally, I'm fine with non-white people. But the idea of moving to a country where people like me are in a minority, then complaining: "Woe is me, I'm a minority, I demand special treatment", is objectionable. This isn't the type of immigrant I want.
No more than they like white people. The only race in any study you can find shows that every racial group prefers themselves the most, other races less, and whites the least. Except white people. Who've been conditioned to get rid of their in-group bias. If HN supported images, I could show you the charts.
I looked at that data and decided deliberately, out of rational self interest to be just like them and put my own race first exactly like they do. Equality!
> The only race in any study you can find shows that every racial group prefers themselves the most, other races less, and whites the least.
Hard to parse .. ESL ?
That aside, what made up assertive nonsense is this? There are many stories and studies about various non Caucasian groups WhiteMaxxing to make themselves look more Caucasian because <reasons>.
1) not all minorities have their own countries. Examples today would include the Tamagzight people in North Africa and the Kurds in Iraq and Turkey. Other examples could include Christians in the Middle East (Lebannon comes to mind, but I think there are other countries as well), Uighurs in China, or even people living in a place like Iran that is a religious theocracy who want more freedom.
2) in particular, for the case of the US, there has been, since the founding of the country, a large population of African-Americans who don't really have a home country anymore, and don't really have much of a choice but to be American, because, having lived there for hundreds of years at this point, that is the only country they know.
3) I do believe that religious tolerance, and tolerance in general, pays off in the long run. Many early American colonies were founded by people seeking greater religious freedom - Pennsylvannia, founded by a Quaker, Plymouth was founded by Pilgrims who rejected the conventional dogma of the Church of England at the time. More recently, the large number of scientists and engineers fleeing the Nazis in Europe during the early-mid 20th century did have a large impact on American industry, in fact I linked Andrew Grove's wikipedia page in another post on this thread as an example.
That doesn't follow. I'm pretty sure they're talking about the effect of nominal wage stickiness: you're not constantly renegotiating your rate, so when there's fluctuations in relative value, it matters what unit the original number is denominated in. Compare with the case of a US expat being paid a steady salary in USD and converting to the local currency to make purchases, if you want an example with a similar mechanic but very different intuitive feel and practicalities.
(I'm not sure they're right about the overall effect though.)
You basically nailed it. USD crashed in the 1970s after the Nixon shock, and is basically a shambling corpse losing 3-8% of its value every single year while BTC is 600x the value of a 1913 dollar... and trending up: https://i.imgur.com/PJT01T8.png
Even if they don't give me a raise, I'll still have more purchasing power at the end of a year rather than less as the case with USD.
It did matter. It was restrictive in actual effect, in that it blocked immigration from the places it was mainly coming from, and dropped the foreign born population under 5% by 1970.
This is cruel. This is stupid. But more broadly important to this group, this will continue to push skilled workers out of the US and into friendlier countries. It will continue to erode our soft power since countries will have fewer economic ties with the US and fewer personal ties to the US. There are no redeeming aspects to this that I can see. This is a bad move in the short term and the long term.
The main thing that has made America exceptional has been that we attract all the smartest and most ambitious people from around the world. They work side by side by all of the smartest and most ambitious people born in America. We have won by having a disproportionate percentage of the world's smartest and most ambitious people, those born here + those who choose to come here.
So now, we're just throwing that all away and becoming a merely average country with an average amount of smart and ambitious people. Throwing away our key advantage for literally no benefit.
It is only a matter of time before this administration does this to green card applications and renewals too. A permanent green card is not permanent. It needs to be renewed every 10 years. I am also worried about policies eventually directed at naturalized citizens. I sincerely hope I am wrong.
This is incorrect. The physical card itself expires every 10 years, but your status as a permanent resident doesn't. That can only be revoked by a legal process.
Obviously if you do not renew the green card itself, you are going to face practical issues, because you have no easy way to prove your permanent resident status. So things like employment verification because of new employment and entering the country from abroad will become quite a bit more difficult.
> I am also worried about policies eventually directed at naturalized citizens.
There is no eventually about it. This administration has a quota for revoking naturalized citizens' status set hugely higher than the historical level of cases. Given the quota they will just ignore justice and revoke the status of those least able to defend themselves, like they have with other immigrants.
I wonder if this has to do with the current economy and job market. Anecdotally I have found it very tough to find a new job (software engineering), though my previous employer continues to post job listings for green card applications as part of the required labor market test.
You're correct. I spoke a little too loosely, there are many different kinds of visas, but something like 95% of all work visas issued each year fall into the category of non-immigrant.
I'll concede that this statistic is cold comfort if you fall into that 5% category, but the point is that work visa almost always means non-immigrant.
Attempts to find plausibly deniable rationales for this administration's anti-immigrant policies other than "gutter racism" are ridiculous.
Occam's razor. When somebody shows you who they are, believe them. Nativism is possibly the only stable and coherent political ideology this admin holds. Everything else is negotiable, but not this one.
Don't forget Nazism! (AKA, anyone who isn't left-wing.)
There's nothing inherently wrong with pausing immigration visas. These commenters act like anything less than fully open borders and unlimited immigration quotas makes you Satan reincarnate.
They intentionally over-dramatize everything he does to spread fear and alarmism cause that's all they can do. It's so tiring and nonsensical.
In a vacuum the immigration pause might be innocuous. But put into context the other actions and statements from this administration and it tells a deeper story.
Just think of it as the return of the 19th-century Know Nothings or the 1920s nativists if the Nazi comparison makes you squeamish.
I'd say it's on the Trump administration being full of racists and white nationalists and wanting to deport immigrants.
Why do you wonder if it's economic instead of the Trump administration's announced policies of stopping immigration, including unconstitutionally removing birthright citizenship?
I think many (if not most) countries in the developed world should reduce immigration, and usa in particular should abolish birthright citizenship.
The first because a lower supply of labor is going to create breathing space for an entire working population who will see tremendous job upheaval due to AI automation. A lower aggregate demand on houses, services will also be welcome to take the fuel out of inflation, and maybe we'll regain some of that experience of true affluence, where scarce things (e.g. access to cabin in the woods, a rowhome in a walkable city, ...) are in abundance. There is also the import of an idle, criminal element that has very clearly reduced quality of life and safety in many places.
Birthright citizen should be abolished because birth tourism and illegally crossing the border to have anchor babies are a vector for foreigners to participate politically and claim imho undeserved welfare benefits.
I think largely these are the stated reasons of the administration too.
Birthright citizenship is a constitutional right in the US same as freedom of speech, religion, the press, and the right to sue the government.
The change would require 2/3 of all states to approve a constitutional amendment. It won't ever pass. Most of us are only citizens because someone up the chain was born under this rule.
My family came here in the early 1700s and fought in the revolution. It would be a disgrace for me to do anything other than support immigrants.
> Most of us are only citizens because someone up the chain was born under this rule.
This understates the situation. All of us who are not naturalized citizens are citizens only because of the birthright clause in the Constitution. The US does not have any other way for a person born here to become a citizen.
If the birthright clause of the Constitution stops being enforced, Congress (or more likely in our current iteration, the President) will have to create a brand-new set of rules determining which of us natural-born citizens get to retain our citizenship and which do not. There is no existing law to guide them, so they can make it up out of whole cloth.
More plainly: if we choose to eliminate birthright citizenship, whoever is running the country at that time gets to determine whether you are still a citizen.
Serious question - would your ancestors from the 1700s agree that you should support the immigrants you are supporting? Or have you been taught that your ancestors were wrong and evil and that you should honor them by doing the opposite of what they believed?
The administration has never justified immigration policy on economic terms, only keeping out criminals.
If it were really part of a coherent anti-inflation, pro-housing strategy, then, well, a lot of other policies would be different... (Including signing the ROAD act, not starting trade wars, or driving up the price of oil)
FWIW the Road ACT became law anyway without his signature, but yeah if he wanted to demonstrate he cared about such things he would have signed it promptly and proudly.
>The first because a lower supply of labor is going to create breathing space for an entire working population who will see tremendous job upheaval due to AI automation. A lower aggregate demand on houses, services will also be welcome to take the fuel out of inflation, and maybe we'll regain some of that experience of true affluence, where scarce things (e.g. access to cabin in the woods, a rowhome in a walkable city, ...) are in abundance.
Many immigrants come to America to work and start businesses. That creates jobs. Even the day-laborers buy food, clothing, tools. If we cracked down on businesses that used illegally immigrated workers, that would be a much more targeted way to fight wage suppression.
How could inflation come from illegal immigration? Are the immigrants bringing in crazy amounts of money? Does the existence of more workers competing for an open position drive up the going wage?
If we want to reduce the price of housing, we need to build more houses. That's the key. The trouble is how to tackle the financial and regulatory hurdles that discourage building houses. Clamping down on immigration from poorer countries hurts the construction industry, which employs a lot of immigrants.
>Birthright citizen should be abolished because birth tourism and illegally crossing the border to have anchor babies are a vector for foreigners to participate politically and claim imho undeserved welfare benefits.
If we cared about people with foreign allegiances participating in our politics, we'd ban dual citizenship. If we cared enough about welfare costs to do unpopular things, we'd ban smoking and high-sugar foods. That would save a lot more in welfare costs, and our citizens would be healthier. On my list of priorities for reducing welfare costs, taking money from poor people who don't actually qualify ranks low. It's a mistake or crime that feeds people and gets money circulating in local economies. Not efficient, but not world-ending and probably not common. If you really want to find people receiving benefits despite not actually qualifying, look for senior citizens hiding their wealth as cash in their house.
>I think largely these are the stated reasons of the administration too.
Trump stated immigrants poison the blood of our nation. I'm going to accept that as his actual belief and reasoning.
I don't get this argument. We skip over fixing the birthrate and instead rely on immigration. There's a whole bunch of reasons people give for why we can't fix it like costs, jobs, housing, etc. Ok, so then first wouldn't immigrants also have the same problem once they get here or do they have a way of bypassing our low birthrate somehow but then we were told we can't bypass it, it exists because of the costs, jobs. etc.
So the immigrants end up with the same birth rate and then we have to bring in more immigrants. So there would have to be a constant source of excess people somewhere else for this to be sustainable. So it gets to a point where I wonder if this is really the plan.
You're assuming the birthrate can be "fixed". Japan has an even worse demographic problem. They've tried "fixing" it and nothing much works. Similar for South Korea. Japan would certainly benefit from opening up to more immigration. Countries that can attract more immigration are going to benefit economically as the birthrates continue to decline globally. Why not be attractive to immigrants instead of wanting to repel them?
Teenage pregnancy, limited rights for unmarried women, heavily surveilled birth-control usage, all that good stuff. So long as the culture is preserved! There are 14 words that basically sum it all up
Yes, the only way to preserve USAs culture of freedom of the individual is to dissuade/force women from making choices that dont benefit the group. Else we will fall to communism!!
Or, crazy idea, we make life livable for the locals and then we incentivize them to have kids of their own? And before you say it, I'm an immigrant from the 3rd world myself. I'm not anti-immigratiom, but the birth rate talking point is a very poor one.
Not to mention how unsustainable it is anyways, what happens a few years down the line when the immigrants stop having kids? There isn't an infinite ocean of people you can import on a whim, and definitely not forever.
I don't care about US immigration, but remember that people don't want to have more children. There's nothing related with costs or whatever. Norway have a lot of incentives and people still prefer to have less kids than USA. If these "livable conditions" were a true argument, rich countries would not need to incentivize people, because they would have more children willingly. Life is way more livable in a rich country than a poor country
I think birth tourism is an overblown fear, but I suppose their answer is that poor welfare sponges and rich-ish passport collectors are both threats, for different reasons.
How many, how expensive, and how much is this offset by others who come back and pay taxes?
I have seen a lot of freakouts about birth tourism since the recent SCOTUS ruling and I haven’t seen anyone give even the most cursory overview of the actual scale of the supposed problem. It’s purely an emotional reaction.
What kind of welfare? Do you have stats or stories? I'm skeptical someone wealthy would slum it for the peanuts they could get from welfare fraud.
Or if they do, surely there are ways wealthy "real Americans" could hide their money just as easily and defraud welfare, so this isn't really a problem specific to birth tourism.
They can do whatever you presume the rich birth tourist does, like deposit in foreign banks, not own US land, obfuscate land ownership through trusts or straw owners.
straight up lying and doomer boomer mentality, sad and gross.
very consistent correlations between migrants being net positive economic providers, more law abiding then native citizens, and just straight up regurgitating racist myths
mass deportations won’t solve anything economic when it’s the same admin hamstringing prices and rates with tariffs, war, and defacto support of the oligopoly
i really wish basement dwellers like you though of something original now and then
Conflating not wanting to compete with foreigners for jobs in your own country with racism is bad faith bullshit. Foreigners of the exact same race are equally unwanted competition.
Even taking you at your word, immigrants also create far more jobs. The economy is not some zero sum thing, with some fixed amount of jobs and fixed amount of work and fixed amount of wealth to be split.
Every economic analysis I have ever seen shows that there's economic surplus from immigrants entering a local economy; more jobs and more wealth is created, per person, than if those people had not come. In particular I'm thinking of some studies of local economy in Miami when there have been bursts of immigration.
>In particular I'm thinking of some studies of local economy in Miami when there have been bursts of immigration.
That was study about Cuban immigrants into Miami, a city with large Cuban population and thus existing infrastructure to absorb. I wouldn't draw that study into anything broader.
As someone in Local Politics, the issue generally is, immigration, esp of unskilled kind decimates local budgets since they are generally directly tied to number of people. Here is CBO report on it. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61464
Now, type of immigration that mostly impacts this study is not type of immigration that is impacted by visa application processing halting but acting like "Yea, this current system is working GREAT!" is false. This is what so annoying about this issue, it's in clear need of change but Congress refuses to do it and Trump doesn't have leadership to get it done.
No it's a negative sum thing. Especially when they come in at such insane rates as they did under Biden. Notice you car insurance rates going up? Housing costs skyrocketing? Hospital waits taking forever? That's the cost of mass immigration. And that's not even accounting for the millions of illegal immigrants.
>Every economic analysis
Since there apparently so many, surely you wouldn't mind citing a handful.
They say it out loud. The people writing these policies are vocally proud of being white nationalists. Defending them with "well maybe they have a good reason!" is evidence that you're either on board with their actual agenda (i.e., evil) or incomprehensibly naive (i.e., stupid).
Its only racism when you then go and invite white south africans in. And make statements like "Why cant we have more people come in from countries like Norway"
Birthright citizenship is so weird, because when I think of my son’s birthright, I imagine things he’s entitled to because he’s my son. He’ll inherit from my estate, he’ll enjoy my love and encouragement and support, etc. The location of the hospital where he was born doesn’t really have anything to do with it, but now I have an entirely new fear about foreign countries claiming my child if my wife happens to give birth early while on a vacation. Like, I want to go to Israel, but don’t they have compulsory military service? I wouldn’t want the baby to accidentally become an Israeli citizen and forced to serve for some foreign army. Same with China. I’d love to see the country, but they’ve had some weird and draconian laws like the one child policy. For all I know they take some children to be raised by the state. Whatever their laws are… I don’t think they should apply to my children.
This is rather weird framing since usually an additional citizenship (especially one in a country like the US) is considered a valuable thing to have for your child. Usually people claiming birthright citizenship are weird are doing it because they also see it as valuable. It’s also woven into the traditions of New World countries.
Regarding your concerns, I don’t see why it is unreasonable to simply renounce citizenship later or just simply double check your travel itinerary during the late stages of a pregnancy. This seems like at best an unfounded concern.
I agree that you can "just renounce" although notice that this won't necessarily work (it will for the US assuming you follow the procedure properly)
However being a dual citizen isn't necessarily all upside. Citizenship comes with requirements, particularly in some countries military service is mandatory and so if you're a citizen - even though you are a permanent resident of somewhere else, you must either go do your service or maybe pay a fine depending on the country.
You also get treated differently if things go wrong. Foreigners are entitled in most cases to diplomatic assistance from the representatives of their country. Your country can't necessarily do much for you, but typically you will get that phone call home to let loved ones know what happened, they can find a lawyer who speaks your language (but you'll need to find a way to pay them), if there's some paperwork snafu they might be able to help (often for a fee). It's at least nice, if you're jailed or in hospital after surprise food poisoning or whatever, to hear somebody who speaks your language.
None of this applies to dual citizens. You're "home" from their point of view, so no need to contact your diplomatic representative, maybe you have never been there since the day you were born and can't speak a word of the language but too bad.
> You also get treated differently if things go wrong.
Not treated differently. Treated the same.
You are required by law to enter your country of citizenship using that country's passport (this is true for every country). Not doing so can result in fines or jail time. This is precisely to stop idiots from playing the "foreigner" card to try to, for example get out of paying a speeding ticket or parking fines.
You are spreading false information. I routinely enter my other country with a combination of US passport and national ID card. I haven't renewed my passport for that country in almost 20 years, more than half of which I was living there for.
you have a kid like billions of other people in the world, nothing special tbh besides it is "your" kid
you just want a subscription pass to a country, and i think people like that are useless freeloader people who want none of the stakes and all of the benefits
cool you can code and get hired by some company, or maybe you start a company. so what?
Yea, he sensed the heat that H1-B scab labor is getting now that the economy is in a downturn and AI is poised to take out a lot of high-tech white collar jobs. He wants to nominally end H1-B but really just wants to shift attention away from what these non-immigrant visas are doing to the people they are designed to replace.
> These visas played a very important role in making America the world leader in technology and innovation.
Citation needed -- it's as if we didn't have major technological advancements and a burgeoning tech industry in the valley before 1990 when the H1-B was signed into law and companies rushed to force Americans to train their (unbeknownst to them) replacements.
> But the system became badly corrupted. Unethical body shops learned to game it.
Who corrupted it? Certainly Vivek and his compatriots have some culpability here. I'm sure there are other examples but Cognizant was the most egregious where they were found liable in discriminating against non-Indians when deciding who to put on the bench and who to ultimately terminate.
This is a response to the supreme court ruling on birthright citizenship. They're using the levers they do have, since that was removed. Anyone who agrees with the ruling should really read justice Thomas' dissent.
it’s a cut and dry constitutional amendment, it doesn’t matter if Thomas thinks the people that were in mind when it was drafted are not the same people it applies to now. if they want to change it, go ahead and get the states to ratify a new amendment.
Supreme Court doesn’t get to throw out an amendment because it’s old.
The funny thing is I bet ending birthright citizenship is an amendment that could actually be passed. You don't have to be a virulent racist to think the context has changed when you can get almost anywhere in the world in about 24 hours.
(I'm not sure where I stand on it but I can at least see an argument for revisiting the question)
I'm guessing that you did not actually read his dissent.
Far from agreeing with the Trump administration; his view would effectively end birth tourism but preserve birthright citizenship (and maybe even stronger) for the children of non-citizens, legal or otherwise, who are domiciled in the US.
As for it being cut and dry, do you earnestly believe that "and subject to its jurisdiction" is cut and dry? You might have your view, you might have some historical receipts for it, others have other views, and historical receipts, and others rely on common law readings. There's no single unambiguous interpretation of this phrase. Thomas's dissent is well reasoned and has ample historical antecedents and if adopted would have been the best possible interpretation.
Subject to its jurisdiction is pretty cleanly meant to mean paying taxes and obeying laws enforced upon them, which I concede could mean one is subject to multiple jurisdictions but it is not necessary to be subject to only one.
You think "paying taxes" is an important part of this? At the time this amendment was passed, income taxes not only did not exist, but also were unconstitutional.
It was one vote away from going Thomas's way, so I wouldn't say it doesn't matter what he thinks.
As a non-american, I would have enjoyed the precedent that the logical conclusion had to be that I would not be subject to the laws of the US, when visiting.
The Thomas interpretation must logically have given diplomatic immunity to anyone on an ESTA too.
You also won't find Thomas making this argument for birthright citizenship because he didn't make that argument for birthright citizenship. The post you are replying to is incorrect, this was not his argument.
No, it's not. This seems to be Stephen Miller's baby and the efforts to limit legal immigration (see my other comment) predate the birthright citizenship case and pretty much started day 1 of the administration. Birthright citizenship is really part of that.
I see a lot of comments in this thread in support this stance, as if that is something good for Americans, and say it is not a political statement.
One thing that changed my viewpoint was this book. Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism by Anne Case, and Angus Deaton.
In it, they make a point that, almost all US economists agree that immigration, both legal and Illegal Immigration, is not the cause for American working middle class failure. It is lack of education, and capitalistic system wherein rich steal the money from the poor, which is like a reverse robinhood.
Hacker news crowd can easily verify this by spot-checking. But still we fail for the false narrative and divisive exploits of immigration topic, which is certainly not aimed to solve the problem of American well-being at hand. Truth to be hold, politicians know this too.
Yes, propaganda is increasingly not about what you say on a topic but what topics are being talked about.
Decades of loose policy around financial regulation and ZIRP made living unaffordable for most western citizens but politicians rediscovered the eternal scapegoat in the shape of immigrants. This way they don't have to answer for their failures. They just made one up.
It's tragic how gullible the public is. This scam worked in Britain, USA and is likely going to work in Germany, Poland etc if the polls are to be believed.
For anyone here who supports this, just go back into their post history and see what they said about DOGE and whether they thought that was also a good and prudent idea.
>Hacker news crowd can easily verify this by spot-checking.
a significant proportion of the HN crowd DGAF because they see themselves as current/future founders whose goal is ultimately to scale/enshittify/retire early, which typically requires the reverse robinhooding.
Bold claim without artifacts: no artifacts to your claim.
> Hacker news crowd can easily verify this by spot-checking.
Nobody got time for this. You provide the verification for us or else your claim just doesn't mean jack.
You try to sound smart by saying words like `false narratives` or `divisive exploits` but they don't mean anything here. You just trying to sound smart.
the point is that almost nobody will read the book just to verify an internet comment. If you can provide some resources cited in the book it would be better... but this reasoning can be applied to 99% of comments here. At least you provided a book.
Probably a good thing for many migrants. I mean who would want to migrate to a country that's so hostile towards anyone that looks and prays different.
> a country that's so hostile towards anyone that looks and prays different.
You are making a bold claim that US is being racist here. US is THE melting pot, and no other country in the world has accepted all races living together like this.
They’re doing what they should have been doing all along: enforcing the visa rules. The system is being gamed so they have to crack down. There are around 10-15 million illegal immigrants in the US, not including mass visa fraud. It cannot continue.
"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!"
A poem on a plaque on a foreign statue, written 107 years after the formation of the United States is neither legally binding nor central to what the US is. And the poem doesn’t endorse visa scammers.
Educated, young Americans are pissed off because the life they were promised when they went to college is not attainable for a majority of them. Inflation caused by the government's pandemic response has devastated US consumer buying power and increased the cost of everything in life, while simultaneously Americans are being forced to compete with the entire world of professionals for US jobs, driving down wages. Everything is more expensive, jobs are harder to find and wages haven't kept up with inflation. On top of that, if you're a young white guy, it was the specific policy for the last decade of massive American companies to minimize the hiring of your ethnic group.
So you have a lot of really pissed off young people, on both the left and the right, looking to politicians for a solution. On the left it's essentially socialism and in the worst cases communism and on the right it's American job protectionism and the removal of racist anti-white policies from American institutions... and a whole lot of deportations.
Young Americans do not want to compete with the entire world for jobs and houses and SBA loans, so you're going to see the right push very hard to look like they are appeasing them, when in reality they will not do anything because the corporate oligarchy that finance our politicians and the stock market that feed their primary boomer constituents. On both the left and right, all the boomers want is for the stock market to rise and their home value to rise and they don't care if it disenfranchises a generation of Americans... but it will definitely create a millennial political machine that will be pushed to the extremes of Communism and Nationalism when that generation rises to power... so we will see how it all plays out.
That doesn't sound too bad, it just means that workers who would otherwise have migrated to the US can enrich their home countries, or other countries they are more easily able to migrate too. From an economic point of view this may well end up being a positive policy decision for both sides.
This one doesn’t mention tourist visas, so I am guessing they will be issued? I don’t get what benefit they see by inconveniencing and potentially harming folks that are already in the country legally to just live their lives. I get that this administration’s goal is to completely shut down all immigration and potentially even remove folks here legally too but there will be a cost to bear for the country because of that. It will be slow to come and so they will be able to blame it on the next administration
This is specifically for immigrant visas. USCIS distinguishes two broad categories of visas: immigrants and non-immigrants. Tourists are part of the latter group.
That's not accurate. H-1B is a non-immigrant visa. It's not intended for tourists.
From CBP's own website[1], emphasis is mine:
An immigrant visa (IV) is issued to a foreign national wishing to live permanently in the United States.
A nonimmigrant visa (NIV) is issued to a foreign national with permanent residence outside the United States but wishes to be in the United States on a temporary basis for tourism, medical treatment, *business, temporary work, or study*, as examples. Note: There are more than 20 different categories of nonimmigrant visa classifications.
That is reference to people who have applied for asylum after having come in on a tourist visa. Technically their status is legal, because they have a pending application. This is an attempt to make their status illegal, so they can be deported.
Genuine question for any american fellows:
Is this a real problem ? Is this a really a priority problem in your pov ? If if is why ?
In my country, we do have a policy of integrating people quite early on if they come from a fragile situation and for other people if they have jobs and can sustain themselves it is a bonus as they contribute with taxes and will have basically no benefits like retirement.
I am not making any points here, I am trying to understand why people think this is a priority and/or problem.
I won't dox myself, but you'd be welcome if you needed to.
Following World War II, we took in European immigrants who had lost everything. More recently, we have welcomed individuals from countries in the Middle East and South America.
Within a few days, you would receive your citizenship and be integrated into the system. I believe there are some initial advantages, but based on what I've heard, the expectation is that you'll need to become self-sufficient very quickly because the financial support diminishes rapidly.
Despite not having a community center or NGOs for that, the overall community would find out and help.
You can find out where I am by searching for the single country in the world that continues to uphold all post-World War II human rights.
My position to this policy changed when I encountered a refugee who had successfully integrated into the community.
He has lost his wife and two daughters and his only remaining daughter was all he had when he got here.
He rebuilt his life working his a* out to be able to provide to his daughter.
We never know what people are going through.
I'm an American who's lived in Europe for the past 20ish years.
Comparatively, the US is extremely good at 'integrating' immigrants for whatever reason they come (asylum, work, family reunification, etc). There are a lot of factors, but I'd say the biggest one is that the "American" identity is one of immigration and is generally more flexible than say, the Dutch or Norwegian identity. I'd also say the general lack of a safety net compared to more socialist countries mean you pretty much have to hit the ground running and work, which usually means learning English quickly and all of the social components that come with work.
The idea that there is an urgent need to protect the US from a significant number of people abusing the system who come via legal immigration (as is the case in this context) is, to me, pretty laughable. I would assume that any abuse in the system or strategic priority shifts (which I may or may not agree with) could easily be picked up through a more normal policy/procedure/training structure within the state department.
There doesn't appear to be a specific, recent event where a significant number of people were discovered to have gotten through some state department filter or loophole that needs to be IMMEDIATELY closed in the context of some large risk to the US.
> I'd also say the general lack of a safety net compared to more socialist countries mean you pretty much have to hit the ground running and work, which usually means learning English quickly and all of the social components that come with work.
Even before that, the US only attracts people who are at least willing to work.
we're not as bad as Europe is laughable, because Europe is in the process of comitting ethnic and cultural suicide. I want to be heading in the opposite direction as them, not "theres no problem we're not as bad as them".
The figureheads (Trump and others) are the least qualified populists imaginable, who have no business governing anything. They have zero ambition solving big problems, and have rather managed to get the US bogged down in a war with Iran, trade wars, and what have you. Trump is more concerned with the ballroom and the Kennedy center, than fixing anything of substance.
But working in the background, you have extremely goal oriented people trying to implement changes outlined in Project 2025.
So there are essentially two admins working in parallel.
On top of that, conservative media is working like a propaganda machine to filter what the MAGA base sees. Unpopular or head scratching news never make it to prime time, while the culture war nonsense is aired 24/7.
And frankly, Trump is not concerned what non-MAGA, or left leaning voters see. The current admin is concerned with convincing their base to keep voting for them, while doing everything in their power to make it harder or more chaotic for centrist and left leaning voters to vote.
the Trump administration is ham fisted, performative, and ineffective in almost everything it does. but i agree with stopping and reversing the rapid demographic change in our country. even law abiding ones. i want to live in my culture and my country, not an international airport.
As a relatively centrist American, I find this reasonable. I live in a very blue state (NY) and still 43% of my neighbors voted for Trump, with immigration cited as a key reason. So changes to immigration policy are to be expected.
With regard to temporary visas, the article cited a few types of issues. For example the scenario where someone obtain a temporary visa (promissing to return is a part of the application) and then files for asylum once here. This is broadly understood to be an abuse.
More broadly, because HN is a tech crowd we tend to understand that H1-B visas are often used to supplant American labor cheaper (vs - "filling jobs that Americans aren't willing to fill.") The same dynamic is seen outside of tech as well. Representative example: last year we stayed at two hotels in upstate New York. One was a family run operation that hired local teenagers and older people. It was awesome. The next place right next door, is owned by a larger operation and every single employee was central European - recruited over there and brought here to work the hotel for the summer. I don't think that's a reflection of lack of local labor (said teenagers and older folks) but a business strategy (ab)using temporary worker visas for cheap labor. I think Americans intuitively understand that this doesn't benefit Americans - except the business owners hiring the h1-bs and similar.
So because the system is perceived to be abused and not serving the people's benefit most people are fine with a pause and re-evaluation. Obviously there are sympathetic stories of people caught with uncertainty at the moment and we hope it resolved well for them. At the same time this is a sign of a problematic system in place - the fact that someone here on a temporary visa has an expectation of indefinite renewal means we have created and reinforced such expectation and that probably isn't right.
You're suspiciously credulous. There is no practical reason to do this and the idea you have to shut down immigration for training staff suggests that the US is merely incompetent.
Moreover, this administration has a track record which makes it clear its not being reasonable on purpose.
I don't think centrism is about leaving logic behind and splitting the difference.
You do understand these rules impact Americans who petition for the visas of their foreign spouses, right? Its not just people coming into this country for work purposes only. Its awfully heartless to assume that the only immigrants coming over here are doing so to solely make money.
This was not mentioned in the linked article so I wasn't specifically holding that (nor did I see this mentioned in a lot of comments?)
Without knowing much about it - that sounds likewise like a something to be sympathetic about but also makes sense that it's part of the overall visa process.
This is political warfare. War is cruel and inhumane. If you want to stop the cruelty, stop the war.
There’s a lot of discussion about whether this is cruel or justified or legal—whatever. This sucks for people who get caught up in our immigration fight and ultimately it’s bad for all of us because it makes the US a less attractive place for immigrants.
However, we are here (1) because US citizens voted for more scrutiny of the immigration process to make sure people immigrating are successfully landing in the US and not taking advantage of the systems we have in place. And (2) because a vocal minority is unwilling to enforce any of our existing immigration laws and is actively sabotaging the administration’s attempts to do so. Nobody has clean hands.
In the US we do not approve visas for immigrants who we suspect will become dependent on our welfare system. This isn’t some new rule Trump made up to get rid of immigrants because he’s cruel, it’s existed for over a century. Fun fact: the current statutory language Rubio used in January to limit immigration from 75 countries comes from the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, a Democrat sponsored bill.
The legal challenge honestly feels like a technicality which is probably why the state department responded as they did. A judge said we can’t limit the ban by country based on public-charge language, arguing that the public-charge consideration must be evaluated independent of nationality or in other words, it can’t be used to institute a country specific ban. So the state department removed the country specific ban and said fine all immigration is paused until we can properly train people to evaluate public-charge since the current training is ineffective.
The state department tried the surgical path, judicial activism, whether technically correct or not, vacated the surgical path. So the state department escalated with a tactic that more literally adheres to the judges interpretation but also has more collateral damage.
This bickering is dumb and shouldn’t be happening in the first place.
> Fun fact: the current statutory language Rubio used in January to limit immigration from 75 countries comes from the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, a Democrat sponsored bill.
This bill was originally vetoed by Truman, but overridden by both house and senate by a 2/3 vote. However, in the house vote, democrats were split about 50/50, and republicans overwhelmingly approved. (https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/82-1952/h165)
Note that this is pre southern strategy and post new deal era. There was a conservative coalition of both democrats and republicans against the new deal. The majority of the Democratic Yea votes came from southern states where the conservative coalition dominated.
Saying that it was a Democrat sponsored bill is missing some important nuances.
Do you believe the majority of immigrants come here specifically to leech and NOT work? The data that decades of policy across parties has been based on doesn't support that at all. Living on even the most generous state and federal government benefits alone is a terrible way to live, and not something you would leave your country for.
I've been waiting over a year trying to get my wife into the country. Looks like I'll be waiting even longer now. The US immigration system is just so utterly cruel and broken.
50% of all American unicorns were started by immigrants. This is sheer stupidity to prevent the best of what the world has to offer when they are knocking at your door.
The impact on academics and research has already been felt over the last decade. US used to be the default destination for academics and skilled workers from China ever since the cultural revolution. They engrained themselves in the country, studied/worked at top univerities, taught multiple generations of students, did key research, worked at top tech companies, and overall were major contributors to American technological superiority.
Then starting ~2016 Trump and his DoJ made it borderline impossible for Chinese nationals to get visas, specifically targeting research universities. Since then new Chinese skilled immigration has slowed down to a trickle, and there has been a massive "brain gain" of existing talent in China's favor.
The result - China now has a booming tech industry, Chinese universities have overlapped Amercian ones in research output, China is a very close 2nd in the AI race. And as skilled immigrants continue to be driven out of the US China in particular will enjoy the benefits.
You can't ignore the impact of China also becoming a better place to live as well. China is a different place no than it was 20 years ago, and the need to go overseas anywhere is probably felt less today than back then.
It’s unquestionably bad for the United States, but it will be good for the rest of the world. Time for US dominance to end, and Trump is doing a good job of that.
No one just starts companies as soon as they land. It takes decades of hard work and building yourself before they are at a point where they can start companies.
The world's richest man is an illegal immigrant who started multiple companies.
(Musk started X.com while on a student visa and didn't get around to securing a work visa until many years later. This rule violation technically renders his U.S. citizenship void under Trump-era immigration rules.)
And how many immigrants didn't start unicorns? How do we filter out the best and leave the rest out? Should we have automatic deportation for people that are not economically productive enough? Deportation if some of the best in the world is not so best anymore?
Wanting to tie economic performance to public support for immigration is risky gamble.
The US better be careful how many games like this they play. Even in the last few years I have had a lot of difficulty at my employer attracting people from canada as the US is not seen as a safe and stable place to work.
Not just immigration, seems like travel in general is becoming difficult too.
It's a real shame that just when we have the tech and infrastructure to allow people to travel anywhere in the world within a day, for a single person to be able to explore the entirety of this awesome planet for the first time in human history,
that the worst among us have to enforce artificial borders and deny everyone this basic freedom.
Travel should be codified as a human right.
If someone can support themselves and doesn't harm anybody, what ethical justification does anybody have for denying a person from living where they want?
People aren't simply interchangeable units of economic output, and when they live together for long periods of time they develop unique and distinct cultures that are dear to them. Letting the entirety of the world into your country without stops is cultural suicide. If you put any a value in preserving culture you will find it ethical to put some limit on immigration. Assimilation is possible but there is a limit to the rate and amount of foreigners a place can absorb before changing significantly.
'Cultures' have never been units of 'insiders' isolated from 'outsiders'. Cultural change is inevitable and there is no reason assume 'changing significantly' is inherently bad. That's what history _is_.
> Letting the entirety of the world into your country without stops is cultural suicide.
The natives of the Americas, Australia, and the many nations previously colonized by European countries, know that better than any descendants of the colonizers.
No one actually thinks this is hypocrisy. No one is giving up their houses to Native Americans. They do an land acknowledgement and call it even. Even the most liberal among us don't feel it's necessary to sacrifice any meaningful amount of their own comfort to right some past wrongs.
Land acknowledgement where the most ancient natives get the most marginal and inhospitable land. Plenty of people think it's hypocrisy and are willing to collectively sacrifice to right the many, many wrongs.
The US is too large to have one monolithic culture but it certainly contains many subcultures on the regional level. I won't dispute they're on the decline though.
The easiest way to see it is look at Japanese portrayals (outsider perspective). Cowboys, horses, guns, pride in our military and our free speech, fireworks and BBQs.
Just because you look down on the culture doesn't mean there isn't one.
I’m think the weird irony is - and your example may exemplify this - a lot of the culture the right may want to preserve might be improved through immigration.
If you want more religious conservatism and traditional values, Americans are naturally moving away from that. Americans aren’t creating a whole lot of cowboy movies. China is innovating in fireworks.
David brooks has specifically called out this nihilism of the modern right. I think people attributing intention to policies like this are sadly externalizing their own values into an administration that doesn’t have them.
Because I think nobody is unified in this stuff. The people representing the culture you purport to imply a desire to preserve I don’t think agree with you, and certainly not with each other.
This is like Cracker Barrel all over again where most of the liberals I know loved Cracker Barrel and all the conservatives complaining about it almost to a one never went!
The sad truth is there is some sense things might be better if you were right.
Big cities are indistinguishable from other big cities in other countries. All big cities mostly have the same culture. That's why I liked the Japanese perspective on us. They saw cool things that they liked and included in their fiction that contained us.
I'm American lol why are you sending me YouTube video like I don't know the country live in. Red necks in Appalachia aren't representative of Americans. They're a joke.
There's no singular American culture. You can't even get a consistent slice of pizza in the North East let alone the whole country.
More people live in Brooklyn then West Virginia. Why isn't hip hop out that area more representative of the US then Appalachia?
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> to enforce artificial borders and deny everyone this basic freedom.
a very postnational view, humanist in a way, lipsius or erasmus would recognize it.
that sort of individuated cosmopolitanism only works for educated men and women with means, who have or have the capacity to self-actualize.
not for the masses. the nation is still a cradle to protect and nurture the commonwealth, and given that they took hundreds to sometimes thousands of years to form, i don't think borders are artificial in the least.
> and given that they took hundreds to sometimes thousands of years to form, i don't think borders are artificial in the least.
"Borders" as they are treated today began barely 200 years ago, and only started being enforced so strictly since WW1 and then even worse after WW2.
For the vast >95% of human history, if you could walk to somewhere and survive there, you could live there.
The real ironic shit is that most of the travel and immigration restrictions of today are instituted by the descendants of people that invaded and occupied the lands of other people :')
What will be next in Trump's destruction of the American Economy?
So far he has driven away allies, put huge tariff on our most loyal allies. Driven away manufacturing by tariff policies. Driven away immigrants and academics. Pushed a last century oil based economy. Shown us how our exquisite weapon tech will fail (this might actually be good in the long run). Along with crippling our cybersecurity and state departments.
It's funniest if the economic collapse begins with Republicans still in power everywhere to pretend that things are fine. Once Democrats are elected, even if they're not actually doing anything yet and so couldn't plausibly have any role in the problem the US media will insist it's their fault which is very boring to watch.
Slanted take here, but this is exactly what they are doing with the federal government.
They like to complain that "big government inefficient and bad" while actively making it inefficient and bad. They are fulfilling their own prophecies.
Similar to immigration I'm sure. If all immigration is illegal then it's all bad!
By "they" it is that every single politician lies.
So of course that is the tiniest small print of every promise any politician makes, such that once it is a promise broken it is someone else's fault and not theirs.
Being anti-illegal immigration and pro-legal immigration doesn't mean you want to flood the country with legal immigrants. That's the case in the UK, by the way, where the vast majority of immigrants are legal and it's the reason for the growing anti-immigrant attitude of the natives.
People who are anti-illegal immigration and pro-legal immigration also have requirements like:
- there should be a fixed number of legal immigrants
- they should be well vetted (this may be lacking in the US and UK)
- legal immigration should be points based
- quotas for legal immigrants should be increased contingent
on the number of illegal immigrants which are expelled
- there should be checks to verify that visas are not abused (the way H1Bs are abused in the US with under qualified immigrants)
- asylum should be abolished because it's abused. It can be replaced by paying poorer countries to permanently host asylees.
It most certainly is hypocritical. You can not be simultaneously pro-legal immigration and support banning legal immigration. If you support banning legal immigration, you are by definition anti-legal immigration.
> Being anti-illegal immigration and pro-legal immigration doesn't mean you want to flood the country with legal immigrants.
If only there were something between 0 and unrestricted immigration, some sort of program where people apply for permission and the government issues approvals for individuals to enter its borders after meeting legal criteria.
> You can not be simultaneously pro-legal immigration and support banning legal immigration.
Nobody is banning legal immigration. It's being restricted. The headline itself says "pauses". Do you think no legal immigrant will be let into the US until 2028?
> some sort of program where people apply for permission
Yes, and if that program is being abused (just ask people here on HN about H1Bs to see how they feel), then you pause it until you figure out how to solve it.
> Nobody is banning legal immigration. It's being restricted.
No it has been banned. There is no legal way to do it. Even if it is a temporary ban, it is a ban. If you support indefinitely pausing legal immigration, you are anti-legal immigration.
> Yes, and if that program is being abused (just ask people here on HN about H1Bs to see how they feel), then you pause it until you figure out how to solve it.
That is an absurd strategy. Would you "indefinitely pause" schooling children until you can figure out a way to solve the problem of students cheating on tests? Would you "indefinitely pause" funding police forces until you can figure out how to prevent police abuses? Would you "indefinitely pause" money transfers until you can figure out how to solve tax fraud? Pausing any of these would create massive problems while doing nothing to speed up improvements, and it doesn't help that "solving" those problems may not even be possible. We can immediately switch to a better system after someone figures out that better system; until then we make do with what we have.
You're giving the current government the benefit of the doubt, which I never do.
In 2024, I didn't think we'd be murdering protesters in the streets or kidnapping heads of state or inciting global tariff wars paid for by US citizens or watching the president take billions of dollars of bribes using cryptocurrency.
Why do you think thos government is responding to something in a good faith attempt at improving a system?
> Leftist overreactions is what brought Trump back in power.
"Ugh! Now look at the bad thing you made me do! It's entirely your fault, this all happened because you kept on warning me it was a bad thing and that I should stop doing it."
Nonsense, the prediction coming true so easily shows it wasn't an "overreaction" in the first place. There is no iatrogenic chain of causation here.
Justifying the murder of Alex Pretti who was acting legally and defensively and was on his hands and knees disarmed when he was executed, and the (at least) fatal excessive force of the woman who wasn't trying to run over anyone is a bad thing.
Like, you know that about Pretti right? That he was shot on his hands and knees surrounded by agents who celebrated? I don't think someone on HN would knowingly lie about the government murdering citizens.
If only there was some kind of reasonable investigation by the government about those things.
You're right on one thing, defending human rights against government misbehavior and abuse of power seems to be exclusively left wing these days.
Oh, and that Venezuelan takeover we did, which likely led to massive amounts of fraud and wealth transfer to Trump and others? That illegal act and feckless obedience of the legislature is the same root cause for the illegal tariffs you seem to dislike.
There is no contradiction here. Different groups have different interests.
The natives rightly attempted to fight off the Europeans. They lost.
It does not follow that the Europeans here now should just let in whoever wants to come in, to the point that the Europeans themselves are outnumbered.
If the Europeans fight and the newcomers win, so be it. But why should the Europeans lay down and let it happen? Especially when they trivially have the ability to stop it, unlike the natives. For now, anyway…
> The irony: many native Americans believe that all of your own immigrant ancestors should never be allowed to enter the US.
And your lesson from this is that Native Americans should continue to be ignored and more immigrants let in?
If you care about Native Americans (and don't just use them as a rhetorical device to argue with people on the internet) then surely, you'd support a reduction in immigration, right?
“If you care about Native Americans, *and agree with the assertion I presented as fact that they/we are being ignored and that’s purely the fault of new immigrants, and agree with the implication I made that immigration has no value*, then surely …”. Surely.
The political leaders (not just Trump) and their backers clearly are thinking that AI and robotics will replace most of the work force, so why keep importing new ones.
The issue is American citizens will likely face similar but different developments. A future with almost no work in a country and political elite that detest social safety nets will lead to a societal breakdown.
An immigrant visa is a privilege a country grants and can withdraw. It's not like two parties signed a contract, and the contract was broken. Applicants bet on a slow, arbitrary system, and now the odds are moving.
I am one such "gambler" in this process, and it's happening to me too. I don't like the turn of events, but I also do not feel robbed.
We all know this whole H1-B situation was to cripple wages and to get an indentured workforce. Glad its being "paused". Would love to it being modified to not being tied to a company, or gottennrid of for good.
Sorry about the people who were using it, but also not sorry.
Maybe we Americans can get some of those jobs the companies were scamming the govt with.
We can also take a more critical look at the definition of what being American is. The 20th century, especially pre-1920, was rife with illegal immigration. Why should the descendants of those who skipped the line, who didn't come in "the right way", be able to now call themselves American and reap the unearned benefits of citizenship? They've taken and continue to take jobs from Americans who need them.
While we're at it, I guess we should kick out all the descendants of Europeans, etc, and the only people who should be able to get jobs and count as true citizens are the direct descendants of the Native Americans.
What an offensive comment. You earn the benefits of citizenship by paying taxes, and ideally participating in your community (though _many_ americans also just disappear into their houses and watch tv / tiktok instead of being part of the community, both first generation citizens and people from a longer line of citizens).
First generation american citizens are every bit as much citizens as nth generation citizens. They all pay taxes equally and are subject to the same laws.
I guess satire doesn't come across in a thread where it fits in too well. My point was threefold:
1. The definition of American is not as black and white as people would like to think, so who is included and not included in "we Americans" is pretty nebulous. As a recent example, the debate over birthright citizenship and the 14th amendment.
2. Who should suffer the consequences of taking advantage of the H1B program? The workers hired under it? The business owners who hired them? The policy makers? If companies were truly 'scamming' the government as the parent comment said, it sounds like the owners of those companies should be punished, perhaps to a degree commensurate with the other anecdotes in this thread of lives being upended and people separated. As the parent comment said: "Sorry...but not sorry"
3. "Immigrants are taking jobs from Americans" is a refrain almost as old as this country is but is also not as clear cut as some users here seem to think. Not to mention that it's a very convenient political tool often used to redirect the anger of the poor or marginalized towards immigrants instead of the business owners and those with power who flaunted the law but will not be held to account. I guess "companies who hire illegal immigrants are taking jobs from Americans" just doesn't roll off the tongue in the same way.
I think the correct move would be to enforce wage parity for the H1Bs rather than throwing out the baby with the bath water. I don’t want to lose out on international talent for the sake of protecting employment for people whose only qualification is where their mother gave birth.
H1-Bs are usually paid MORE, not less, because of wage parity laws that have existed for DECADES. The application process has a 6 month delay just to determine the minimum wage that the government forces employers to pay.
This is really frustrating. I'm (native-born US citizen) naviagting the visa process with my future wife. She has no intentions of working (enjoys being NEET) and there's zero risk of her becoming a public charge (our hh gross income is closer to 7 digits than it is to 5 digits), very frustrating that we're getting screwed by this under the justification of labor market competition and public charge risk.
I want to give some context to this because I know a lot about this system. You have to see it as part of the larger moves thi sadministration has made to restrict legal immigration.
The most important thing to note is this for immigrant visas ie green cards. As yet, nonimmigrant visas such as visitor, student and employment visas are unaffected. That may change. It's also unclear if K1 (fiance) visas are affected because they're technically nonimmigrant but they'll probably be treated as immigrant visas.
This has the most effect on family-based green cards. The most common type is a marriage-based green card but there are also green cards for parents, children and even siblings of primarily US citizens but also lawful permanent residents ("LPRs").
When a US citizen or LPR marries a non-resident and they wish to live in the US, you broadly have three routes to make this happen:
1. If they're within the US, you can do an adjustment of status ("AoS"). This is where you file an I130 and an I485. Generally you do this concurrently. If you're an LPR and not a citzen then you might not because you may need to wait for a visa to become available. There can be other reasons depending on the foreign spouse's immigration history, whether they're in removal proceedings and what other immigration benefits they've applied for;
The I130 is filed by the sponsor (ie the citizen or LPR) and it basically shows that you both are free to marry and the marriage is legal. If neither of you have been married before, this is relatively straightforward. It can be difficult otherwise but an I130 is generally considered routine;
The I485 is filed by the immigrant to adjust status. It can be based on an approved I130 or filed concurrently (within the US only). This is where USCIS will determine if they believe the marriage is bona fide, meaning there's no fraud taking place. This includes the submission of marriage evidence (eg joint bank accounts, bills in both of your names, a lease or deed in both of your names, photos, proof of the relationship and so on). USCIS makes a holistic determination based on the totality of your case and prior immigration history. For various reasons, you may have a bar on adjusting and may need a waiver;
2. If the foreign spouse is outside the US, you will generally need to do what's called consular processing. You file the I130 as per normal and once it's approved you apply with the consulate. Depending on the country it may take over a year to get an appointment and the embassy and/or USCIS may end up sitting on the case. This whole process can take years. If granted, you are granted a visa to enter the US. Upon entry, you get a green card; or
3. The so-called fiance visa (K1). In this case you are unamrried and the foreign fiance is outside the US. It's similar to consular processing. If granted, you get a visa stamp and can enter the US. You need to marry within 90 days of entry and then you apply for adjustment of status within the US.
So, what has this administration done to block legal immigration? A ton, actually:
1. They've placed various bans on the issuance of visas to citizens of certain countries. There are 3 such bans in place now and they're called the 19, 39 and 75 country bans. I honestly forget which is which. What happens in consular processing and fiance visa cases is that you go through all the above steps including a consular interview and then... nothing. The consulate is forbidden from issuing you a visa by executive order.
Although it's never been estated, the administration tends to take a broad view of citizenship. For example, if you were born in Afghanistan and your family moved to Canada when you were 1 month old and you've never been there in your life, this administration treats you as an Afghan for the purposes of the bar.
2. The administration implemented a rule whereby you have to consular process in the country of your birth regardless of where you live. There's really no reason for this rule other than to make it harder for people from "shithole" countries to get visas because certain countries have incredibly long wait times for consulate interviews. And if your country of birth has no consulate, they'll assign you to another one and that may not be convenient or even possible (ie you may not be able to enter that country);
3. The administration released a policy memo that stated that adjustment within the US was an "extraordinary" rememdy and that most cases should consular process. They like consular processing because AoS can be challenged in federal court whereas the Supreme Court has ruled that the president has broad powers to limit immigration so consular decisions generally can be reviewed by any court. So the various bans will likely stop issuance of visas to citizens of those countries outside of the US until, at a minimum, Trump leaves office;
4. They're introducing a new rule that's typically called "public charge". This is a new standard whereby USCIS should reject visa applications from people who have been or they consider will be a "public charge", meaning rely on public benefits. You can guess the skew in what countries this does and doesn't apply to;
5. When you adjust within the US, you can optionally apply for an employment authorization document ("EAD") ie a work card. In earlier times, this would arrive within 2-3 months and allow a person to work legally while their I485 case is being processed. It seems like since January 21, 2025, USCIS has basically stopped issuing EADs to make life difficult for immigrants in most cases;
6. To adjust within the US, you need to be inspected at the border. People without this (eg they sneak across the border) are called entering without inspection ("EWI"). This administration has decided some previous programs under Biden specifically (eg CBP One and TPS) in most cases won't be treated as valid entries. This generally means you need a difficult to get waiver to adjust and if you leave to consular process, you're facing a 3-10 year bar and possibly a permanent bar depending on circumstances;
7. In certain circumstances to adjust within the US you have to maintain valid status the entire time or be in status at the time you apply. This administration is trying to take the view that TPS is not valid status for this purpose. This can be mean you're retroactively out of status and can be placed in rmeoval and/or face a bar if you leave and try and return;
8. Various humanitarian programs to parole in place ("PIP") have been ended, forcing people to leave the country to adjust and then face bans from certain countries, bars for unlawful status and/or inadmissibility;
9. There have been pilot programs, particularly in San Diego, to coordinate removals by ICE when people go an appointment at USCIS for an interview or check-in;
10. Judges in immigration court are not Article III judges like federal judges are. They can be fired by the executive for any rason. This president basically fires judges that approve too many cases;
11. Previously, people in removal proceedings depending on their circumstances could get out on bond. For a lot of people, this has been eliminated;
12. ICE will generally try and get someone out of the jurisdiction after picking them up to avoid getting blocked by a habeas petition in federal court. Often they're moved to jurisdictions with far friendlier judges (eg Louisiana). They can also be moved randomly to make it hard to family or even their attodrneys to find and talk to them;
13. There is a ton of evidennce that USCIS is sitting on cases to delay for really no good reason. For example, they'll approve the I130 and just not make a ruling on an I485. This can force people to pay even more money to go into federal court and get a writ of mandamus;
14. Naturatlization has a requirement for "good moral character". Up until thi sadministration, that's been treated as the lack of bad moral character, such as a conviction for certain aggravated offences. This administration takes the view that an applicant has to instead prove good moral character, which can be letters of support from citizens;
15. Denaturalization has historically been a very rare occurrence. It requires the government to go into federal court and make a case that you committed fraud to become a citizen. Historically this has been a few dozen casea a year at most. Now it's in the hundreds. That's still not a lot but people expect this to ramp up. They're also taking a broader view of grounds for denaturalization. For example, if you committed a disqualifying offence before you naturalized but weren't charged and convicted until after, they isometimes now go after that where they didn't previously;
16. They've implemented so-called third-country deportation. That is, you can be deported to some other country entirely if your home country won't take you or if it's deemed unsafe for you to return to that country. So, you can flee civil war in South Sudan and be deported to El Salvador now. Historically, we didn't do this;
17. This week they announced they were going to revoke the B1/B2 visas for asylum seekers issued in the last 10 years. For anyone who doesn't know, visitor visas typically allow you to enter the US for up to 6 months. It's up the officer at the port of entry and they just make it up, basically.
People who seek asylum are generally forgiven for however they get into the country as long as they entered with inspection. There is a huge backlog in immigration cases from the mid 2010s that are still pending.
Now those visas have long expired so what's the point? I have a theory. When you apply for a temporary visa, you're asked what it's for. So for a visit visa, it might be to go to the World Cup. At any point later on if they find you didn't do what you said you were going to do, they can view that as misrepresentation (ie immigration fraud). This is particularly the case for people who get a visit visa, come to the US and get married within a short window of time.
A finding a misrepresetation can make you permanently inadmissible and that makes you ineligible to adjust.
So what's the point of expiring old visas? I believe they're going to say certain asylum seekers committed immigration fraud to get into the country and they'll find them inadmissible and use that as an excuse to deport them, something we never previously did;
Or, that evocation will potentially break your chain of maintaining status retroactively, making you ineligible to adjust in other circumstances; and
18. The latest: immigrant visas are being paused in consular processing cases, ostensibly for "retraining" in public charge scenarios.
Right wing oligarchs want infinite immigration because they get a larger labor pool and lower wages. Right wing normies want less immigration because they don't want to compete with the entire world for a job and don't want to become a minority in their own country.
Spend some time on X and you can see the two parts of the right wing attack each other over this issue.
Huh, this is rather useless argument. People in US already how companies, sport teams extract exorbitant tax breaks to move or stay put in particular state/city etc and nonetheless still end up moving because someone offered even better incentives. The jobs that are moving will not stay here for long even if all hurdles removed for immigration.
Most right wingers are fine with that. As the recent GTA 6 leak shows, companies that embrace offshoring too eagerly learn the hard way that not all jobs can be sent to the other side of the planet.
Ultimately, there is some value in each position, and in a corresponding set of positions on the left. Unlike many issues in US politics, in the long run this one is not well left-right aligned, and there is no single correct number for how much immigration is best. It's a bunch of trade-offs, which should be made democratically and end up somewhere around the number that the median person wants, such that roughly half of us are unhappy because too many immigrants come in and roughly half unhappy because too few. Arriving at that number and changing it slowly would be far better than wild swings.
> don't want to become a minority in their own country.
Yet in the next thread over, people are crucifying DHH for saying the same thing, except they are spinning it as "denying their right to exist"... somehow.
It's an obvious thing that anyone can understand, any group of people on the planet would behave the same way. It is natural to oppose becoming a minority, minorities are treated poorly and marginalized, by dint of human nature. The data showing it's happening are undeniable, the only way to defeat the argument is to shut it down by labeling the people who make it as hateful.
What? Where is the contradiction? DHH is deplorably wrong for the same reason that these right-wingers are deplorably wrong. (Even more so in the US because none of them are "native" to the country in the first place. Their immigrant ancestors just got here a little bit faster.)
The US seems hellbent on destroying its own economy, immigrants have always played a key part in it. Looking forward to Trump yelling about how the radical left has somehow undermined the US economy in a few months.
I often think about how far the Republican party has fallen from Truman with his "The Buck Stops Here" plaque on his desk to Trump's "I don't take any responsibility at all" response to poor Covid testing in 2020.
Plus he outright stole government money, not even the pretense of some kind of pass-through contracting entity or something, just brazenly stole cash. And later went on a PR tour lying about being destitute to get Congress to give him a big pension (presidents didn’t get one before that; and he was doing quite alright financially without it).
Whatever the party affiliation, he was an actual thief and scam-artist at the public’s expense, so wouldn’t be a great example of some high water mark for public service.
Meanwhile, just this week, he's taking credit for Biden's legislative efforts on cost reductions for pharmaceuticals that every single Republican voted against, and Trump campaigned against.
Looking forward? He never stopped. It's been 10+ years of narcissistic scapegoating, even for times when he was President, even while Republicans controlled congress, and even over trade-deals, policies, and laws that he took-credit for and bragged about. (e.g. USMCA in 2020.)
> Without words said, a wave of understanding rippled through the crowd. Oceania was at war with Eastasia! The next moment there was a tremendous commotion. The banners and posters with which the square was decorated were all wrong! Quite half of them had the wrong faces on them. It was sabotage! The agents of Goldstein had been at work!
Donald Trump: Billionaire in one of the top government roles of one the most powerful countries in the world; puts enormous banners of his own face over buildings; runs a personal distribution network to announce what he hates every day to his followers; regularly "jokes" about being a dictator; triggers perpetual wars with other countries; etc.
Emmanuel Goldstein: An exiled academic in hiding with a death-sentence over his head for criticizing the despotic government.
You: "People like myself who actually read 1984 know that Trump is basically Goldstein! Not any other character. The parallels are impossible to ignore."
If you really read the book, then that's tragic, because all you learned was how to embody doublethink.
You sound like someone who started paying attention to politics in 2016. Trump isn't even an outlier. Foreign policy has been dictated by AIPAC (as well as a lot of domestic policy) for decades.
Do you not remember the two-minutes-hate where they screamed at Emmanuel Goldstein? Apparently not. The point is people rabidly attack Trump when his policies - especially foreign - are indistinguishable from Biden, Obama, and Clinton. You're attacking a dummy setup for that. Your obsession with him makes it obvious. Israel gets whatever they want instantly, and Americans get fancy speeches from figureheads.
You're the one screaming at a figurehead and accusing me of doublethink? Read the book again.
> > [Trump has] a personal distribution network to announce what he hates every day to his followers
> Do you not remember the two-minutes-hate where they screamed at Emmanuel Goldstein? Apparently not.
Oh hey, what's that up there, it's that thingy from the book which I just specifically referenced! Except in my comparison, "the hate" is directed in the same way at the book (from the central authority towards ill-defined enemies) rather than your version which contradicts the book for no reason.
Do you know how to bother reading others' comments before making arrogantly incorrect replies to them? Apparently not!
And in the interim he's positioning his family and cronies to benefit from any rebuilding. Just as he literally sat in the White House and said, verbatim, "My children insider trade all the time".
And they are. I read somewhere a few days ago that France is vacuuming up academics and advanced students that have been displaced by various recent policy changes that have proven to be hostile towards academia and research.
If you can't understand the utility of having welcoming and creative/tenacious people involved in your science (which your questions listed are asking about) then you are not nearly the expert in qualifications you think you are.
I am saying we are not selecting for those people.
When we hire at the university, we ignore creative, tenacious people and instead select mediocre people with a nice woke story that meets the woke requirements.
>When we hire at the university, we ignore creative, tenacious people and instead
select mediocre people with a nice woke story that meets the woke requirements.
Which university? Name some "creative, tenacious people" who were rejected by said university.
There's nothing in your HN profile to out you to anyone, so have at it. If you are unwilling to do so, I call bullshit on your anecdote. Or as they say, "pix, or it didn't happen."
I would encourage you to reflect on what you think "woke" is, and why things that you think are woke are mutually exclusive from the skills and qualities you value.
"Woke" is a nonsense scare phrase at this point, when what you're actually taking issue with is valuing people's lived experiences and backgrounds as a part of what they contribute. Understanding where people come from and how that colors their world view is simply a good practice when doing anything, but especially when you're trying to do science/academia. Too many similar minds in a room will never produce what one with a diverse group will. Diversity is good science, and valuing it is not "woke".
Pretending the word doesn't mean anything is the most obvious sign that the person saying that is one of them.
If you don't like the term given to your basket of political beliefs give one that encapsulates it that you like better.
"MAGAts" is the obvious 'other side' parallel. Both sides have their crazies and denying that one exists means you're obviously one of them. As a Pacific Green I don't even like the fact that I can say "both" and people both know what I'm talking about and perpetuates the misguided notion that only two parties exist.
I mean this in the best possible spirit, but if it does seem intentionally inflammatory, then I think it's mostly a result of your political priors.
The 4th top reply on this submission is: "the current admin are working hard to destroy the U.S as if they're foreign agents."
If I were a less patient man I would also find this inflammatory, but I know the person saying it just says it because they genuinely believe it, they aren't saying it to make me angry. Furthermore, because of the political bias prevalent here, most people here would agree with it, instead of disagree with it, so they would not find it inflammatory at all and do not consider what people with other political views than their own think of it.
I get more people will disagree with my comment than with the comment I quoted, and downvote my comment, but that is their choice. I posted it because that is my sentiment on this matter, this is what I genuinely believe. This to me is good news. As good as news can be. This is just the reality, and there is nothing intentionally inflammatory about reality. It just exists.
Good for the economy is not the same as good, bad for the economy is not the same as bad. Sometimes good things can still be bad for the economy, like outlawing child labour or slavery.
That being said, I don't think there is any evidence that survives scrutiny that immigration has been a net positive for any western country, and if I take Norway as a specific example, we have good data that immigration has been a net negative [1]. And furthermore we have the peculiar problem that whenever a statistic does show that immigration has a net negative effect in Norway, that the government rapidly stops collecting the statistic as a mere coincidence [2].
I think we could potentially change our immigration policies so that immigration becomes a net positive, but I'm not interested in that. I just want it to stop.
The people who sold mass immigration as being an economic benefit did not actually ever care about the economy, they just thought it's the easiest way to convince people, and they have already pivoted to other reasons for supporting mass immigration because the thing they want is the mass immigration and the resulting consequences.
The people who sold mass immigration on economic grounds also never had any real data behind their claims that it is economically beneficial, and institutions like universities, media, entertainment pushed the unfounded claim uncritically, like good little soldiers, and then retroactively worked as hard as possible to only ever paint it in a positive light and to dismiss negative consequences.
The result in me is a complete distaste for the very idea of immigration. I just want my country back.
I think you need to look at Japan to understand what happens to a country with an aging population, low fertility, and low net immigration. Which is what Norway is currently trending towards, and the US will trend towards without immigration.
If immigration to Norway continues the way it has almost every single Norwegian is worse off. Maybe immigration could in principle solve the problems we had if it was done differently, but again, as it has been implemented it will only make every single problem we have much worse.
I also don't trust the people who implemented it poorly to do it better in the future because I have every reason to believe that they implemented it the way they did because their primary concern was not the wellbeing of Norwegians. At every possible junction choices have been made which benefit immigrants and hurt Norwegians. If there was a more random pattern in the choices I would say that it could have been honest mistakes, but the pattern is not random, choices only ever go one way, and it's the way which has the worst outcome for Norwegians.
If we want to solve the problem of an ageing population we have to look to other solutions than mass immigration. One solution may be to give more tax breaks to working Norwegians who have children rather than giving their tax money to immigrants who don't work. Another may be to stop using public funds to indoctrinate the youth to view child-rearing as a net negative. And we could, of course, consider measures to reverse the damage that mass immigration has already done to Norway.
If the government said that you never have to pay income tax again if you have 5 children, then more people may have 5 children, this would be super low risk to try, much lower risk than mass immigration.
Because you don't need to pause applications to train staff? Schedule a training meeting for an hour on Wednesday. Reschedule the appointments you would have had then. No pause in application.
They aren't really pausing for training. The training is an excuse for the pause. The pause is to cause pain and difficulty and try to get people not to immigrate. Because they don't like immigrants.
Because if that were the case they should have just kept the existing staff that already had the requisite knowledge instead of letting DOGE fire 400 people from DHS who did this kind of thing. You have no backing for your presumption either. The Iran war was supposed to be short. The Trump admin is full of pathological liars. Stop giving them the benefit of the doubt.
What, were they untrained before? Is there a reason this training would take more than (at most) 16 hours?
It's a bullshit excuse that's barely more palatable than the truth, brought to you by the same people who paused immigration for almost all of Africa except for "Caucasian South Africans".
So an even narrower group, driven mostly by one man's claim that they were being persecuted and warranted refugee status at a time when we pretty much refuse refugee status to applicants from the rest of the world...
> Every other refugee under the sun seemingly gets in with no issues
What absolute steaming garbage. Literally 158 refugee visas have been approved this year for anyone but South Africans. And all asylum applications have been suspended since last 2025 except for... again, guess.
As noted clearly in the article, this is a temporary pause while personnel are brought up to speed on the protocols. The real question is how just or unjust the refusals will be once it is unpaused. It's bad enough that the process is excruciatingly slow.
Users keep downvoting my comment even though it is the only literal interpretation supported by the evidence, without any evidence to the contrary. I would rethink only if it lasts over three months.
Note also that courts would easily overrule Trump if the pause became unreasonable.
You're obviously wrong, it obviously doesn't make sense to close down instead is implementing the training for the new protocols in parallel. And the current disruption is just as real of a question as the future refusals.
And obviously courts couldn't do it easily.
By the way, you also haven't provided any evidence for your opinion, why would you burden type replies with it?
Also, lol @ "the courts will fix it!" Fat fucking chance. I'm looking into my crystal ball: I see a 6-3 supreme court ruling supporting the administration's executive order to liquidate congressional power and fold it into the executive branch (as the founding fathers intended...)
Consular staff are trained on this as-is. It is hard to imagine a re-training on process that could take any more than two days.
And yet we have an entirely open-ended "We have nooooo idea how long this will take!"
Garbage. This is the same administration that paused all immigration from Africa except for "Caucasian South Africans" who were classified as refugees by default, regardless of their motivation on immigration.
This is just Stephen Miller doing exactly what he said he intended to do, and exactly what Project 2025 said the government should do (meanwhile, Trump, "What's that? Never heard of it").
> The State Department has paused all immigrant visa applications while it briefs consular officials around the world on a new policy that aims to keep out people who are considered potential drains on public coffers.
From AP NEWS. Sooo Trump can get deported? Is anyone draining public coffers faster than him?
> Melissa Chavin, a London-based U.S. immigration lawyer, said she expects the pause to be temporary. “I don’t think that they’ll leave this indefinitely, especially for wealthier developed countries,” she said. Applicants from developing countries might find it harder to progress their applications under the new guidance, she added.
This comes after one judge ruled the 75 country travel ban was illegal[1]
My sense is they’re trying to get some of that travel ban back through other means
> ...and seek to prevent foreigners from traveling to the U.S. to give birth.
FYI: It doesn't come up in the news often, but birth tourism is a real phenomenon. A lot of rich people in poorer countries travel to the US to have their child, and their child goes home with a US passport, or is raised by relatives.
Leaving the child with relatives, (or otherwise allowing an American family to adopt the child,) doesn't bother me, but going home with a US passport does.
