One of the constant dichotomies that i(and maybe other immigrants) live with are these: The privilege of being a model minority [1] [2] yet being on the edge of having to lose it all if the immigration system shits itself. One might be a senior software engineer paying 100K + in taxes and probably drive EVs and own a home, your largest infraction are parking tickets, yet the risks are asymmetric; the whims of bureaucrats and a border guard who is having a bad day. The purchasing power parity of my $$ salary affords me secure a comfortable financial future, but these are golden handcuffs; You cannot always work for the companies you want because if the company goes bust and you chance to lose a lot.
These are the dichotomies I(and many immigrants) have had to live with. Time is a great healer of things and over time and with financial cushions the dichotomy might fade, I am still not sure it completely goes away. One can only think of the present and make the best of it.
I was born a US citizen. Last time I entered the country, officers faked that a dog had alerted "on my anus", forcibly strip searched me, and fabricated a story that plastic baggies that they suspected 'could be drugs' were coming out of my ass.
I was shackled and cuffed and dragged around the state of Arizona for 16 hours while publicly paraded in Hospitals, including the waiting rooms. Officers attempted repeatedly, across two different cities one hour apart, to get medical staff to perform unwarranted and consentless x-rays and/or probing of my body, which I repeatedly refused. Doctors, despite having zero medical evidence I had did anything wrong, wrote on their paperwork I was 'suspicious' because I denied the allegations.
After 16 hours of this harassments I was release, uncharged, with no apologies.
On yet another occasion, I was told by border officials they would not let me in my own country, despite providing full proof of citizenship (immaculate condition passport, plus identifying myself fully). After 4 hours of probing questions including going practically line by line on what's on the IRS 1040, most of which I didn't answer, I was released.
Now imagine this same happening, legally entering the country at the proper port of entry with full authorization -- except as not a citizen or looking like a boring middle-class corn-fed white guy like me. These sick fucks would treat you even worse. A woman (actually a citizen) who went through a few years before me brutally had her orifices probed in a 'search' for 'contraband.'[0]
I was super upset after visiting China and returning to the USA. Our immigration people were so much more authoritarian scary than the Chinese had been. And the Chinese had this cool smiley computer interface where you rated the chinese immigration official for their interaction on the spot. So China was not only friendlier and more welcoming, but also more accountable. We really need to check ourselves in America. Our Federal Government is out of control (I say this as someone who was failed by the Courts only to have them completely reverse themselves with respect to their rulings against me when COVID came because it would have been inconvenient to follow their precedent because people would die so they finally had actually follow the law, not the Bureau of Prison's Court supported 'interpretation' of the law, and as someone who was abused (I guess we no longer use the torture term) while incarcerated).
I can't imagine the horror of having the Feds have so much power over my life as an immigrant does. Or the fact that you can loose it all in a heartbeat (as happened to my friends in the bay areas in the 90s when they lost their jobs and their VISA sponsors).
Authoritarian countries are often good at maintaining a friendly facade. They understand that the legitimacy of the regime depends on keeping the middle class happy, or at least under control. When they consider someone beneficial to the regime, they will try to treat them well. They are not cartoon villains that treat people badly just because they can. They usually need a reason for that.
I've seen the same differences in the attitudes of Chinese and American immigration authorities. And if my memories of childhood visits to the USSR are correct, the same differences existed between Soviet and American authorities. I believe the main reason is that America is fundamentally suspicious of anything foreign. Authorities are more likely to see threats than benefits in international dealings.
Maybe the US is just good at maintaining a facade that they aren't authoritarian. The US border agents are acting in an objectively authoritarian manner while the Chinese border agents are not and yet somehow you conclude that the Chinese are the real authoritarians. It seems like you are a victim of propaganda.
I don't think the point is "China is not an authoritarian regime", but rather that America is more authoritarian than most Americans think, or are willing to admit.
> I was super upset after visiting China and returning to the USA. Our immigration people were so much more authoritarian scary than the Chinese had been. And the Chinese had this cool smiley computer interface where you rated the chinese immigration official for their interaction on the spot. So China was not only friendlier and more welcoming, but also more accountable.
I've seen those machines at Ikea in the US, though they did seem more common in China.
However, it's almost unbelievably superficial to rate "authoritarianess" by the anecdotal cheeriness of front like officials.
But that’s specifically what OP mentioned - their own experience with front line officers and their conduct. So what else can be there if not “anecdotal”? Every commenter citing a separate research paper including surveys from millions (or thousands?) of people?
Or is it just fashionable on hn to drop a “ha, anecdotal!” comment?
Out of all the immigration officials you deal with when entering the US (i.e. not in the back room, but those presenting a "face" for the country), such an incredibly large amount are such toolbags. They have no manners, show no respect, nothing. It's not all of them of course, but far more than is acceptable. I don't know how to put it any other way. They are simply power-tripping losers. It's frankly embarrassing for the country.
If you’re a foreigner in China, they have no problem tracking exactly where you go and who you talk to after you enter the country. They don’t have much to lose by putting a happy face on their customs process.
Yeah I don't know most of the TSA was just doing their job the best they could. I've come to respect their mandate a lot, reading the history of aviation and how it's all a crazy game to not go splat. It's not the fact of traveling, it's the fact of traveling ON AN AIRPLANE. Everything about it. The basic nature of aviation is it's closely tied to suicide. It's like interwoven with suicide. They are the two threads of one fabric, that give it a color in between, like cloth woven with gold. It's really goddamn dangerous to fly, you're relying on so many parts to work right, despite letting random guys on the street in their pijamas on board with their cellphones, and asking for fucking internet connectivity, no.
I'm completely with Louis CK on this one. We should all fly strapped down completely, upright, I guess with slightly bigger windows as a compromise, realizing the fact of flight and being like "I am flying through the air at nearly the speed of sound, crossing continents and oceans in a mere matter of hours". Just respect it a fuck of a lot more, if flying were easy we'd have flown much sooner. In fact rockets are much older and easier to make than flying machines, rockets got started a little after gunpowder, about the time of the Mongol invasion, and flying machines date to the turn of the century. People think rockets are harder because the space race came after the big improvement in plane speed, nah. Well they're studied together, aero-astrophysics. Basically not going splat.
So 9/11 was about going splat. That's literally what it was, Muhammad Ata and his conspiracy of Al-Qaeda Sunni Muslims decided, let's all go splat with a big plane, at the same building, at the same time. And they did! Because the whole difficulty of flying is not going splat, going splat on purpose is easy (although they were artistic about it, did a lot of difficult maneuvers). Suicide and aviation, interwoven.
So back to TSA, I don't know they actually respond well when you ask them about anything, or thank them for keeping the planes from falling out of the sky. It's not a transportation or border thing, it's an aviation thing.
And one time, when I was repatriating to the states, an agent asked me like what company did you work for, I never heard of that company. As though it mattered, resumes are irrelevant to citizenship once you have it. So yeah there are moments that are rougher. I think I've had good luck.
> Yeah I don't know most of the TSA was just doing their job the best they could. [...] The basic nature of aviation is it's closely tied to suicide. It's like interwoven with suicide.
I would swap "suicide" for "risk". And while I do concede that traveling on an airplane is inherently risky (and argueably one of our most remarkable achievements as a species), I think it's dangerous to deny that TSA - or any other security enforcement body for that matter - is not susceptible to power abuse by their representatives; we have years of evidence to prove it, especially nowadays with social media. Too much blank-cheque power is given them, with little accountability (again, on account of the risk). (Incidentally, airport security is a nice topic to play with error rates conceptually, e.g. precision, recall, etc.)
> It's really goddamn dangerous to fly, you're relying on so many parts to work right
Indeed, the latest systemic failure coming directly from the making and selling of planes. An activity where once safety was held as a sacrosant goal, it's now been placed second to profits and corporate interests (see Boeing).
No, don't swap "suicide" for "risk." It's no secret among pilots. And it's enshrined in the law. America loves the Wright Brothers, two states fought over the right to claim them on their state currency (Ohio and North Carolina). History loves the Wright Brothers. The world loves the Wright Brothers. They were the most famous people on earth (together with their sister) in 1911. And that's why you don't get put in a psych ward for flying, because America loves aviation, no other reason.
And they practically never flew together. Then, at most one of them would die at a time, and the other could live to continue defying death. They were the first great aviators to fly and not die. They crashed sometimes and it was brutal, identical to falling out of a building. There were endless deaths in early aviation, all the time, all the time. In the early 30's the Army was charged with paper mail by airplane, and the weather was terrible, and everyone equated aviation with suicide. Young soldiers dying most days of the week.
I think even Roosevelt said it was suicidal, that what these pilots were tasked with meant leading them to slaughter.
Like heroism, which I carry out all the time, also intrinsically suicidal, for instance all the times I've fought alone, outnumbered. Everyone says that's suicidal. So it turns out it's not actually that dangerous, any more than aviation, you just need to act perfectly, meaning no mistakes.
Also born a US citizen. My experience was fortunately not as bad as yours, but it still gives me a bit of anxiety every time I return to the US. I can't imagine what it'd be like as non-white foreigner.
I was flying back from Peru through LAX and held by security for about two hours with no explanation. Eventually, a pair of officers came and after a bit of questioning, dumped the entirety of my 65L bag onto the floor. I had a few pill bottles—all labeled—just Advil, Ibuprofen, some other OTC thing for altitude sickness. They emptied them all out onto the table in front of me.
They took a few tablets of Advil with them for testing. About 20 minutes later, they returned and told me I was free to go (with everything still on the floor, the pills all over the table, no apology, etc).
The icing on the cake—as I re-entered the LAX domestic terminal, my hiking poles that I had just flown with were confiscated.
I know an intellectual, talking about Harvard inviting him to go talk there, and he was like nah, traveling to the States is too hard. Too much security, too painful, flying hurts. It's not the same America it was back then, either, the Rolling Stones in New York type of thing. A lot of anymosity.
dunno whether your comment is sarcastic or not... But it is definitely not safe to visit china. After the case of the two canadians, it is always a risk and there were some incidents before that also.
In all fairness, I have no doubt the very same thing - getting detained and/or imprisoned under dubious pretences - can happen to you in the US. In fact, given US policing culture, I expect hundreds of such cases happening in the US right now and no-one caring because 'that's just what the yankees do'.
Me either. That's why I live in the Commonwealth of Virginia where I enjoy strong mental health patients' rights. Of course, this also means living without 4th or 5th Amendment protections.
It is because of things like this and more that I decided not to live in the US and moved home after grad school. Of course many of my friends and (then) countrymen/countrywomen decided to live in the US and chase the dream.
For me it was clear that I would never be accepted as a citizen regardless of how many years I live there or what passport I hold. People would continue to mock my religious beliefs and culture pretending all the time that it is a joke.
ProPublica did a story on this type of stuff. There have been many instances of ICE agents doing "mass deports" where they round up groups of people and deport them all. It's hard to keep track of this sort of thing but likely hundreds of people with full citizenship and mental disabilities have ended up deported to a country they know nobody at. Not that the fact that they're us citizens makes this any more fucked up, but it highlights how much power they really have
The ICE director has repeatedly made statements under the Trump presidency that they believe the organization is above federal law (like the army) and only beholden to the president's orders
Honestly, I'm not so sure about that, given the commenter. IIRC, in a couple of previous threads they've taken pretty strong positions that they'll do what they want regardless if the law says it's illegal and they're risking jail. Given that, I wouldn't be surprised if there was some suspicious or belligerent behavior on their part that they left out of the story.
You know it all don't you, even though you weren't there? Care to use your 'belligerence behavior' to embellish more tales?
>they'll do what they want regardless if the law says it's illegal and they're risking jail
So go ahead and quote that, assuming it was said, and go on and explain where it creates articulable probable cause for an x-ray.
I honestly can't believe I'm even responding to this victim-blaming garbage. Try reading Ms. Cervantes complaint, who's circumstances were incredibly similar to mine but she was treated even worse, and think again about your opinion here.
Here you are claiming that you would continue to trade cryptocurrency from a prison ass-phone, in a hypothetical world were it was illegal: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29922956
> and go on and explain where it creates articulable probable cause for an x-ray.
1) A felon can in fact legally manufacture certain firearms, such as working replica black powder rifles and pistols. These are not covered under federal law.
2) I stand by my belief that felons ought to be able to protect themselves with firearms of any type.
3) My belief that felons have 2nd amendment rights is not probable cause of having drugs.
4) There's no nexus by which officers inventing an alert or falsifying evidence is justified by my exercising of my first amendment right regarding belief in second amendment right of felons.
Your whole argument is a red herring. None of this is probable cause for possessing drugs.
>Why? I never claimed that at all.
So how is this even relevent? None of this first amendment protected activity and opinions provide any legitimacy to falsely accusing someone of having drugs up their ass.
> 1) A felon can in fact legally manufacture certain firearms, such as working replica black powder rifles and pistols. These are not covered under federal law.
That thread was not discussing "replica black powder rifles." It was discussing stuff like the FGC-9 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FGC-9), under the assumption that guns like that were illegal for felons to possess.
> Your whole argument is a red herring. None of this is probable cause for possessing drugs.
I never said nor thought it was "probable cause for possessing drugs." It's evidence of an attitude, and attitude affects the probability of certain behaviors that you may not have reported in your account.
1) I never directed a felon to manufacture a FGC-9, although I would be pleased to find out they had. At various times I have praised the idea of felons and prohibited possessors carrying, which by the way can be done completely legally for example by carrying a black powder six shooter that will work as good as any other revolver.
2) Felons can in fact legally own and manufacture modern firearms after having their rights reinstated.
3) Felons can in fact own firearms legally by leaving the jurisdiction of the united states.
4) None of this first amendment protected opinions provide any justification at all for CBP officers faking a dog alert or manufacturing evidence during a strip search.
>It's evidence of an attitude, and attitude affects the probability of certain behaviors that you may have not reported in your account.
Ergo illegal detention and causeless strip searches (which even at border require PC) are justified? I take it Ms. Cervantes was also an HN poster? Did you even stop to think about whether you would like to live in a world where some low level podunk border patrol officers can fabricate evidence merely on the extremely unlikely chance they happen to read my HN and decide to target me because of my absolute stance on 2A and 1A?
That's your opinion. I invite you to read this excerpt [0] affidavit and decide for yourself whether that reads like anything other than made up garbage designed to fabricate probable cause. Then ponder why I would be released uncharged, and why if the allegations were true I would even be publicly discussing it online.
There are a few other paragraphs in the affidavit that are entirely uninteresting to read and offer no evidence whatsoever. I can tell you '10' and '11' here are the entirety of their argument 110%. Maybe I'll get around to redacting the other paragraphs but they offer nothing. If you want to know the 'other side' -- there it is.
I also have a pile of medical paperwork with doctors documenting there was zero evidence whatsoever other than being 'defensive' of being accused of this crime and being 'anxious' to be dragged up and down 60 miles from city to city in cuffs.
You shouldn't have to defend yourself to some presumptuous asshole on the internet. I'm sorry for what happened to you. I'm also sorry you even have to defend what happened to you on this thread.
I remember after 9/11 getting detained on a flight out of the country than for no other reason than my family was the wrong kind of brown. I remember how unfair it felt watching my mom and my sister cry under the stress of what we all knew was security theater. I remember seeing my dad pull out some diplomatic reserves from somewhere I didn't know in order to de-escalate the situation and get us on to our flight.
We were lucky that day. Many people were not. These situations shouldn't have to be about luck. They should be about fairness, safety, practicality, and most of all respect.
Authorities regularly stop people who's flight itinerary include certain nations. When I flew to Iraq, I split my ticket.
I flew to Sweden, and then on an entirely different ticket paid for via Swedish company from Sweden to Iraq.
This isn't advice or saying to do that. But when I did it, the computer in the US didn't know to flag my flight -- I looked like a normal person just going to Sweden. It's all horse shit of course, going somewhere the government doesn't approve of isn't evidence of a crime.
>> No. I'll repeat the situation: I don't trust your account of what happened. That is all.
> That's your opinion.
You are quite correct: that is my opinion.
> I invite you to read this excerpt [0] affidavit and decide for yourself whether that reads like anything other than made up garbage designed to fabricate probable cause.
Honestly: it could be made up or it could be true. There's nothing there to tell either way.
One thing I don't doubt is that you weren't, in fact, smuggling drugs.
Good thing case law in the US doesn't revolve around attitude right? I'm aghast at even having read this thread. What victim-blaming nonsense. Attitudes like this are exactly why the US incarcerates more per-capita than any other G20 country.
What "situation" -- the one where you constantly doubt the story of someone you have never met, based on their "evidence of attitude" which is really just your opinion?
> What "situation" -- the one where you constantly doubt the story of someone you have never met, based on their "evidence of attitude" which is really just your opinion?
The situation in this thread.
Am I supposed to believe everything I read on the internet, or always believe I'm getting the whole story?
"Why wouldn't you just consent to an intimate unwarranted and unjustified search of your body that is completely medically unnecessary, with the expectation that the hospital will probably send you the bill afterwards?"
Every single 'search' along the way was used to fabricate evidence against me. Remember these people are professional psychopathic liers so every inch you give them, they just use it to justify something even worse.
1) The dog -- never alerted -- they lied and said it alerted on my anus (WTF!?!). Used to justify a scan of my body with some x-ray looking machine at the border.
2) The "machine" (IDK what it was, but looked like a body scanner type thing) -- there was nothing, but then someone claims they "Saw something" which turned out to almost assuredly to have been my belt buckle.
3) The machine was used to justify strip searching me.
4) Fabricated evidence from the strip search was used to justify dragging me to hospitals for an x-ray.
Now what was to be expected next? It just doesn't end. I did nothing wrong.
Don't forget the 'good faith' deference that the Courts give to these people. They can lie, you can have actual evidence to show they are lying, but the court will extend 'good faith' to their testimony and hold it above the facts you demonstrate. Reality can literally be trumped by their lies. The USA has gone crazy in its support of the authorities. Oh, what, your evidence wasn't kept secure, and no one filled out any of the required logs of who took it out? Well, we'll throw out all of the rules and still accept it, because we extend 'good faith' to the officers. Why even have rules then if the officers aren't required to follow them and they know they will be given an excepts because of 'good faith'
I believe it, and that's a heinous series of events. Perhaps someone got confused, or there was an identity mismatch, or something. They're no excuse, but clearly something happened.
It's understandable (and not necessarily wrong) to vent here, and I'm not going to ask whether you have done this already, because it's not useful to draw out an answer, but: if you can, find the relevant anti-corruption agency and report the events to them.
There's a chance that doing so might increase the likelihood of harassment again in future -- I have no idea how these things show up on border entry systems -- so it's your choice, but the key idea is to get a paper trail in place that will show up if (and hopefully when) investigations are later taking place.
I haven't worked in law enforcement, but I imagine that the same way that good policework involves collecting statements and records of events to put together a case, internal (or independent) investigations into misconduct require similar records. The ability for individuals to get away with bad conduct is, I'd guess, based on people believing that it's not worthwhile to file reports against them. They do get caught when they are.
>There's a chance that doing so might increase the likelihood of harassment again in future
I'm probably already at max likelihood already. I am detained 4+ hours everytime I enter the country. In 2015 I fought alongside the Kurdish militia YPG in northern Syria against ISIS, and ever since the CBP has targeted me. There is a flag on my passport that basically says 'harass him' as best as I can tell.
>if you can, find the relevant anti-corruption agency and report the events to them.
Still in the process of filing the complaints against the relevant medical professionals who violated patient consent. I am currently working in order of operations from where I expect justice to be most likely (complicit medical workers) to where I expect justice to be impossible (CBP officers).
You're welcome. That's a tough situation; I don't know if there's much I can say.
Sounds like you've got a good, considered approach, so keep up the work to improve the environment and keep in mind other ways you can develop (and enjoy) your time is probably the best platitude I can offer (and one you probably already understand).
Maybe 20 years ago the system worked, but it does not work currently. While I was incarcerated all of the decent COs quit or descended into drug/alcohol abuse if they had to keep the job. One was like 2 years from retirement and he just couldn't work in such a messed up system anymore. We had one counselor who actually helped people. They demoted here to a horrible work situation because she was helping people with COVID release paperwork because we had no access to the law library due to COVIDE. It was actually part of her job description to provide that help with copies (and optionally charge us per copy depending on if we were indigent), but that didn't matter. She was too helpful so she had to go.
It's also worth noting that the COs you refer to are part of a jobs pipeline that feeds into immigration related officers. Immigrants will be treated by the same COs you met while incarcerated, and this time there is not even the pretense there has been a 'justified' conviction.
Criminal 'justice' in US is in dire need of overhaul, and an actual plan on how to get our imprisonment rate down to other first world nations.
I just thought it would maybe help you and not be a lot of medical problem. I wasn't saying that they were right, you just needed to get out of the situation.
I understand you're thinking from the lense that CBP are neutral fair observers. This is far from the case.
Persons such as Mr. Eckert who went through the x-ray, found that after that there were even worse things to come such as a colonoscopy [0]. Thes entities just want to dig deeper and deeper, and there will basically be no stopping until they even knock you out and insert a camera into your colon. The only winning move is not to play.
I'm not sure how being a "model minority" is relevant beyond you just internalizing one potential viewpoint that floats around certain US political discussions.
I'm not a minority in the US, have worked in other countries, and I'm still at the same whim of a country's immigration system as you are.
In fact, a white colleague I work with will be returning home from Asia because the government has decided "we don't need so many foreigners" and has declined to renew their work permit. This is someone making a top 5% salary, with a special skill set that the company needs, that can't be filled with locals. The government could care less that she has kids in school, that they just signed a lease on a place or that their spouse still has a job they want to keep.
It has zero to do with being am minority, it's just the consequence of not being a citizen. If you decided to move to another country as a temporary worker, that's the risk you take - that the rules change, often unfairly so.
You might think driving an EV or making a lot of means you should get some special pass, but I'd argue that's not a reasonable assumption at all.
It's a political viewpoint yes but a relevant one to explain what the attempted creation of model minority does to actual people and their minds, my mind, due to odd ball immigration policies. I don't think we are "model/special" in any way, skilled immigrants aren't superior to any other racial group iMO.
The same dichotomy I talk about might be created in other countries as well but what is different weird is that in the US they intentionally chose[1] to make this community to show to the world, in part, how they liberal and progressive America can be (which has its own contradictions). The intention was and is very clear and the policy really screws with the mind.
To me(and maybe others) being in the reference is very relevant because we, I, in many ways live a privileged, sheltered life and I wanted to highlight how odd that is for my mind to comprehend that that privilege is at the whims of people and circumstances barely in my control and in ways that if I were in my country of citizenship such privilege would be be interpreted by me as laissez faire.
The other thing is that being a part of choosing the reference is that I have done nothing special to get here. I am lucky. And then there are other people that some apparatchik did not choose who were exactly as good as me but are living in tough circumstances back in my home country. This makes the dichotomy of living here even more crazy for me
Even going to the US as a non-immigrant is totally broken at the moment. If you don't qualify[0] for an ESTA (visa waiver) then an appointment for a tourist visa in the US can be upwards of 200 days in some places (i.e Australia or Netherlands). An appointment at the consulate in Toronto is 429 days away if you were to book today.
That's not the processing time, that's literally just the appointment you need to make as part of the application. There is additional processing time added to that if it is successful.
You can plug some cities in here[1] to see how long it would take.
Even with a tourist visa that I got years back it isn't smooth going into the USA anymore (as a shithole-country passport holder). I went many times, but last time I got "the room", for absolutely no reason, and nothing was asked of me but the standard questions. It only took hours in an intimidating setting.
USA, you're just another country. Next time I'll take my tourist money elsewhere.
As a citizen of another shithole-country passport holder (living in country other than US) I can't agree more. I don't get why people make it as if USA is the only beacon of hope. It's just another country.
Now that the world is diversified, globalized and everything is connected with the internet, I don't understand why people have to cling so much to the American idea of success. Are people living outside really that unsuccessful? I don't see any problem with what USA is doing. It's their country, let them do their thing. As long as US is open to trade and exchange, everyone is winning! They made so many great things and everyone can reap benefit out of it.
I hypothesize that it's the generational problem that got passed to other people because of globalized world. Everyone has equal access of information. Just 20 years ago, when people had less information, they were probably more content with the local things. But the result of globalization is people tend to be blinded. They starting ignoring opportunities. I realized that even few people from rich country think that it's only in the US where they can be successful.
I feel it's like how people moved from farms to cities then to another countries. Now the time has changed and the new city is US. I think every place has their own flaws and gains, but life will just keep on going. I believe we should learn to be more gratuitous and be thankful for what we have.
On the sidenote, congrats to author getting the card!
To be fair, it's the Americans disowning the notions that made America such a success. For example, successful entrepreneurs are routinely excoriated and demonized. Politicians get elected on promises of confiscating their success.
It's probably working as designed. Most people in ESTA countries qualify. The list of country visits that disqualifies you is North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, all places where the US is hostile to the government or a major indigenous rebel/terrorist organization. The US government won't ban you outright for going there, but they're happy to deprioritize you.
Compare with China, a non-ESTA country that makes the US a lot of money. The wait time for a visa appointment in Beijing is two days.
Correction: most citizens of ESTA countries qualify. For example, approximately three million Canadian residents are not citizens of Canada (they have work permit, study permit, or permanent residence permit instead). Wait times for a visa appointment from Canada are about 1 to 1.5 years now.
Fun fact: permanent residents of the US can visit Canada without needing a visa, but this is not reciprocated. Permanent residents of Canada need a visa to visit the US, unless their country of citizenship is one of the ESTA countries.
It is totally worth noting that, at least in the case of F-1 VISAs (student VISAs), you can ask for an expedited appointment. I personally helped someone out* who did this and got an appointment in two weeks, while the original appointment would have had a 10 month wait time.
* Because I'd been through this process before, that is.
And that's if you can find an appointment at all. It's over 150 days here in Ireland and you have to check the portal pretty much daily to try your luck. I've been waiting for two months already and can never land one!
It took me also ~18 years to get my green card. I went through a very similar (almost identical) route as the blogger and I'm glad he documented this grueling experience. I went to college in the US; graduated in 4 years; worked with OPT for 2.5 years; went back to a PhD program because my then employer wouldn't sponsor me an H1B (according to them, they are a start-up and cannot put up with the legal burden and cost of sponsoring me, who is the only immigrant at the company); earned my PhD and went to work for a Fortune 100 company; got selected in the H1B lottery on the first attempt; waited 2 more years for my employer to decide that I'm worthy of their green card sponsorship; waited 4 years in the green card application process (thanks partly to COVID delays and thanks partly to the immigration law firm, Fragomen, which not only screwed up with my PERM filing once but also was very slow in preparing the application--probably intentionally because there was no one at my company who is holding Fragomen accountable back then; my company since then moved to PwC for immigration matters although I'm not sure if that improves things for the immigrant workers there) to finally get one.
I went back home twice in that 18 years because I was always afraid that I might not be allowed back in the US when I renew my visa (F-1 student visa or H1B work visa) at the local embassy in my home country.
If I could turn back in time, I'd have gone to Canada to not have to deal with this. Or I should have married a US citizen to make my path to green card easier, or even applied for asylum using my country's political situation as a cover (I didn't do either because I thought these are dishonest *for my situation*; there are a lot of people from my country who do either of these things). Legal immigration (including work visa and green card) is very difficult in the US.
Fragomen is excoriated everywhere I’ve seen them used. They likely have an understanding of the real transactional relationship and leverage that. It isn’t the visa holders they ostensibly serve that is the service they are delivering for, it is some other organization at the company paying them.
Whether that is HR, Purchasing or whoever, I sure would like to know the real dynamic at work, because their ineptitude serving the visa holding engineers has a measurable productivity impact on these engineers when some screw up of theirs consumes the engineers’ lives.
I don't mean to annoy you, but it sounds like it took you 6 years once you actually got a permanent job (although even 6 years is too much!). The years as a student don't really count.
This reifies the view of the system. Particularly the time spent as a PhD would be spent doing meaningful work contributing to the country. This is if we accept that the time spent as a student living in America making connections with people as your life develops as a young adult deserve to be waived away. Yes the system doesn't count them but we shouldn't count the cruelty of a system just on its own terms.
Indeed, PhD students (at least in the sciences) are funded primarily by US taxpayer money, so it’s only in the interest of US taxpayers to keep that educated talent around post-graduation, yet the law doesn’t necessarily work that way at all.
I guess you can say that it really took me 6 years to get a green card via employer sponsorship (although those 6 years were anxiety-filled to say the least). However, if the startup (my first employer out of college) sponsored me work visa and then green card, I would not have gone for the PhD either. I hope it makes sense.
I can only say this sounds extremely accurate based on my own experience of F-1, OPT, H1B. The anxiety resonates as well. I remember getting my work authorization card and noticing that my first name and last name were switched. I remember sitting down at a train station and nearly breaking down into tears, because I was certain this mistake wouldn't be tolerated, that I'd lose my job, and have to leave the country.
When I was getting my green card, USCIS actually lost the one they had already printed. A very kafkaesque situation for which there didn't appear to be a clear process to resolve. I knew I didn't have to leave the country over it like you, but I had no idea if I'd be able to start in my new job, which came with a very significant, almost life changing, pay raise. The USCIS officer I went to see about the situation basically told me "not my problem", and nothing else.
It all turned out ok in the end, but the week or two I didn't know what would happen were the most stressful days of my entire life.
Reminds me of the time the authorities forgot to sign my passport application at my citizenship ceremony. They sent me an email (!) saying I had to refill the form and pay the fee again and send it to some random office address. I went to the local govt office where this had to be notarised and forwarded and they told me perhaps 10 times that this was not normal procedure and that they took no responsibility for the outcome. I replied the same number of times that I had received these instructions (which I showed them) and if I didn't follow them I wouldn't get a passport.
It was stupid and aggravating. You could see on their faces that they thought if they told me just one more time that I'd come to my senses and do it the "approved" way. They never did accept that I had no choice in the matter but eventually accepted my application and I got my passport a while later.
My green card had my name correct but someone else's face printed on it! Unfortunately they didn't look at all like me, it took ages to get fixed. I wonder if someone else got my face on their card, or if they use a grumpy bald man as a placeholder in their card template.
My name is also misspelt on my social security card. I didn't bother to have that corrected and so far there have been zero repercussions.
One more story. When applying for an Amex card they had my name as "Andre" instead of Andrew (this one is probably a typo on my end).
Before approving the application, the Amex agent did a 3-way conference call with me and an agent from my bank to confirm the details in my application.
Amex: "Can you confirm the customer's name is André?"
Bank: "Yes, I confirm the customer's name is Andrew."
Amex: "Thank you for confirming, André your application has been approved"
That's interesting that your card made it to you with the wrong photo on it. There was a visual inspection process that compared what the printed card looked like, to what it's supposed to look like, and cards were supposed to be ejected and reprinted if there was a mismatch.
I worked on the machine/system that prints those cards in the late 90s. When was your card issued? I heard somewhere (and find it easy to believe) that the entire system we built was replaced with something much smaller and simpler a few years later as technology improved.
My memory is a little hazy, but I remember having the photo taken at USCIS, walking over to a photo booth which asked to confirm some information like name or number and maybe a fingerprint too? Anyway, it wasn't a polaroid paperclipped to my forms: it seemed like a different system that would have to be linked to my application.
The images are very different: same gender, but different race, and off by about 30 years and 1 head of hair!
Oh, long after the system I worked on was replaced. Back in 1997-1999 the images were filenames in a database record, and we just read the image file and printed it on the card. Then at a later stage a camera looked at the printed card and compared it to what it should look like. We also used to 'etch' the same photograph into the 'laser' (CD-like) golden strip on the back of the card. When you wrote data to the laser strip, it changed the appearance by darkening it. There was an API library supplied by the manufacturer of the encoder drives that could write a visible image to the strip. Not sure if the modern cards still have that feature.
My name was spelt incorrectly on my driver's license for several years. No repercussions, nobody ever noticed. (Due to the nature of it, if you noticed it, it was weirder than just a vanilla typo.)
USCIS famously sent a whole bunch of RFCs to people renewing their work authorizations in 2021 because a bag of application fee checks was untouched in a corner of a basement. And the RFC meant delays that compounded existing delays, which meant people with completely legal status, with no other issues had to quit their jobs and sit around doing nothing for 12-18 months, for the simple reason that USCIS was too incompetent to renew a work authorization that they had already renewed several times and couldn’t keep track of the paper checks they insist you send in.
In 2021 (I believe they are changing this now…I don’t know when it will be implemented) USCIS only accepted payment via paper checks.
I didn't even notice the mistake at first -- my name is not misspelled, so I figured if I didn't say anything I would be able to get away with it. I knew my EAD card would have to be photocopied or scanned at some point when I first arrived at the office, so I crafted some inane plan to tell an engaging story while the HR person was taking care of my documents, in the hopes they wouldn't see. In the end no one ever noticed, I ended up getting H1B a few months later. But I don't think my worrying was unfounded; I'd heard stories of a single character being wrong (or, missing an accent, and therefore not matching their passport) and someone's entire life changing (they had to go back to their home country).
I should also note that the guidelines for filling out CPT and OPT are also completely nebulous. I forget what the specific issue was, but I remember the administrator at my university being unsure of how to answer some question, them having no recourse, and me having nobody to ask.
I'm on my 4th year of H1B and I need to figure out how to apply for a GC. The time investment in putting together all the documents is significant. Not to mention exiting the country to go see loved ones is always a pain.
I think the name switch is unlikely to get you into trouble. My country has the reverse of the US (First name is last name and last name is first!). I've been switching regularly and this only confused people who wanted to address me by my "first name".
One thing the author did not mention is that there is a huge wastage of green cards every year by US immigration authorities. That wastage compounds the problem faced by immigrants.
The wastage works like this -
1. Every country is allocated an equal number of visas per year .
2. However a lot of smaller countries do not come close to utilizing their full visa allocation
3. The remaining visas can be allocated to the backlogged countries (mostly India and China)
4. The law also allows for the utilization of unused family based visas to be given to employment categories if there are backlogs.
5. However the Us government gets a fixed amount of time to make that allocation .
If they do not do that allocation in the correct time period then those visas are wasted.
Just as an example last year, USCIS wasted around 50K visas and this year they are on track to almost waste 85K visas.
Looking at these numbers, it looks like a manufactured crisis to keep employment based immigrants in a constant state of flux so as to limit job hopping and limit their pay negotiation options.
> Looking at these numbers, it looks like a manufactured crisis to keep employment based immigrants in a constant state of flux so as to limit job hopping and limit their pay negotiation options.
Occam's razor suggests that, given how fucked up DHS, and USCIS in particular is, private sector pay negotiations is well below their noise floor.
Note that India requires prospective citizens to live in the country for 12 years before applying for naturalization, and China doesn't allow non-ethnic Chinese immigration at all (only ~1500 naturalized citizens/10,000 permanent residents in the whole country of over a billion people). Something to keep in mind when people from those countries complain about the American immigration system (doesn't apply to the Singaporean author of this article, but does apply to some of the other commenters).
I never understand this argument. If someone leaves their country to migrate, aren't they looking for a better life ? Just because India requires you to live for 12 years, Indian citizens should just shut up/put up with 18+ years of waiting because their country of origin has it worse/same ? This sounds a lot like "We gave you US citizenship. So shut up and stop criticizing the Govt because you came from a 3rd world country even though you are now a citizen of this country". So much for 1st Amendment or does it not apply to naturalized citizens ?
I think it's simply fair to provide context and compare with other countries. While the US immigration process sucks compared to many countries, it very likely is in the top half of the world - most countries are simply worse.
I've lived in places where you have a zero chance of getting permanent residency, let alone citizenship. Even if you marry a citizen.
A friend of mine lives in a similar country. On paper there is a route to permanent residency, but no one gets it unless they're well connected to a senior government official. Lots of people living there for 30+ years who have to renew their status every few years.
In parts of Switzerland, your neighbors will vote on whether to grant you citizenship.
Of course - it is fair to criticize the US immigration process - particularly in regards to Chinese and Indians. It's also perfectly fair to be grateful that their is a path.
I don't think China and India (or literally any other country) ran saturday morning cartoons for decades talking about the fact that their country was built by immigration. There's a disconnect between America's rhetoric and its actions.
That said, as a green card holder, sure, I'm grateful that the US has this process. But I think Americans need to also acknowledge that they've generated trillions of dollars of wealth from immigrants and they could make the paperwork a little bit simpler.
Yes, just because someone is criticizing doesn't automatically mean they are not grateful. But most comments here are basically insinuating that. I am a naturalized citizen and I love the USA. I love the opportunities it has provided me and I am grateful but I also pay taxes, have created jobs (business owner) and I have plenty to criticize (to hopefully improve). Don't tell me to shut up because I was "well came from a shittier country". This is my country as much as yours.
I tend not to share personal history, so I'll randomly pick one:
> Another country that is very difficult to receive citizenship is Qatar. There are lengthy continuous residence requirements and not all children or spouses receive citizenship automatically.
> Children born in Qatar to Qatari parents are automatically entitled to citizenship. Any person born with a Qatari father may apply to be a citizen, if they meet eligibility criteria. However, the same is not true for individuals with a Qatari mother.
> People who qualify for permanent residence through naturalisation are those who have lived in Qatar for at least 20 years consecutively (if born outside Qatar) or ten years (if born there).
> Applicants must be fluent in Arabic, hold good character, and be able to support themselves financially during their stay.
> Although there are very generous government benefits available for citizens, the government only grants a maximum of 100 permanent residencies per year.
So if you're male, marry a Qatari woman, your kids won't even be citizens. While there technically is a process to get permanent residency, you can see how limited it is - a max of 100 per year, and I bet the majority of those have government connections. Similar story with nearby countries.
Great follow-up reply! I was not aware of the draconian state of affairs for citizenship/PR for half-native Qataris. Only 100 per year... it just crazy in 2022. It seems now fully insane that they are hosting the FIFA World Cup in 2022. But I guess FIFA is so corrupt that they don't care about the human rights record of Qatar.
Many countries in Asia are like this. You are very unlikely to get PR, let alone citizenship, unless you are born there to a citizen parent. e.g. China, most of southeast Asia. Sometimes there is even an ethnicity requirement.
It’s the lack of perspective that annoys me. It’s because America is so accommodating of immigrants compared to the rest of the world that you can talk like your ancestors built the country the minute you take the citizenship oath.
My wife’s family fought in the American Revolution. Mine came here when Seinfeld had just come on the air. I think that makes a difference—the analogous facts would certainly matter in most other places in the world.
Glad too see that you are in agreement with George Orwell. Some citizens indeed are more equal than the others!
Also, you are talking about your wife's family?!!! You mean her great great grandparents or even earlier ancestors?
I am very intrigued by this inheritance based credit system that you are proposing that goes beyond wealth inheritance?
Do you still get points if your ancestors participated in the revolt but were highly incompetent?
How many points do you lose if some of the ancestors fought on the British side? Do you gain or lose points for capturing native American territory and massacring them? Do you also get to keep the points earned by the slaves the ancestors owned or do they go to the descendants of the slaves? Do you gain/lose points for dropping napalm in Vietnam or searching for WMDs in Iraq?
I find this line of argument intriguing. I have soooooo many questions!
It's not about "assigning points" but rather distinguishing "of a place" from "foreign to a place." I think I win on points--my family was wealthy landowners in Bangladesh, and her's settled the west coast of the US. My family had indoor plumbing way earlier than her's did.
But that doesn't mean I'm "of the U.S." just because I'm a citizen in the same way she is "of the U.S." The U.S. as it exists today reflects the culture that her ancestors handed down to her much more than it reflects the one mine handed down to me.
> I find this line of argument intriguing. I have soooooo many questions!
I have come to the conclusion that most Americans don't understand that culture exists in the same way most can't tell the difference between the national deficit and the national debt. They know the words, but don't actually grasp the concept.
Not saying make it easy. Trust me, it is already extremely hard. But I am replying to GP's argument which is basically saying that you should shut up because you are coming from a country which has worse. 2 different things. And yes, there are people who make the argument that if you become a naturalized citizen, you have no right to criticize the Govt or the country since you came from a much worse place. I am tired of that BS. Google "Amy Wax India" and you will know what I am talking about.
ask yourself: why would the US allow these people to come and work here in the first place?
it’s because they NEED them. from highly skilled tech workers to “unskilled” low wage workers. Immigration and pumping human capital into our economy is the way the US stays/stayed? dominant and a superpower.
Close the pipeline and in 10-20-30 years innovation is gone ,the edge we have us gone. The American dream fuels the growth. Act shitty toward the fuel, scratch your head why things fall apart.
For what it's worth, 400 years is about 14 generations, and would constitute several thousand direct ancestors (~ 16K). Even accounting for pedigree collapse over the generations, for the vast majority of (non-Native Americans) Americans only a tiny sliver of those ancestors would have been on the continent at the time, if any.
And? Personal anecdote has no bearing on the question of whether or not foreigners are ethically or morally entitled to immigration and citizenship, or whether the process should be made easier.
Legally, the US doesn't have an obligation to to do anything other than comply with the treaties it signs. It would be within its rights as a sovereign nation to require that everyone within its borders wear a rainbow wig and hop around on one leg. However, that would be a stupid policy that would make people's lives harder for no reason.
Immigration is what is propping this country's economy up. It is a tremendous gift, not a punishment- unless you are alluding to some wierd racial monoculture thing.
The idea is to not look at a gift horse in the mouth. And stop punishing the most productive people in your economy. You don't want brexit thinking if you want to have an economy.
>Immigration is what is propping this country's economy up.
That's debatable.
>It is a tremendous gift, not a punishment- unless you are alluding to some wierd racial monoculture thing.
Immigration is not free. There are social costs which are being dismissed with shallow accusations of bigotry as an alternative to engagement (as you are implicitly doing with your monoculture reference). All peoples are entitled to preserve their cultures, that a particular nation happens to have a predominantly white population does not erase this entitlement.
Cultures clash. Immigrants vote and potentially originate from countries with incompatible cultures, many of whom have no interest in assimilating, yet their votes influence the laws that natives are obligated to follow. If democracy is meant to represent the will of the people, then it is unfair to dilute representation with immigration from nations with totally different value systems. Case in point is the ubiquitous middle eastern treatment of women; how much influence do you want such beliefs to have over your laws and cultural norms? Not even getting to the statistically proven increase in sexual assaults that native women have to suffer on behalf of immigrants in certain European countries. Consider it the paradox of tolerance.
> votes influence the laws that natives are obligated to follow
Natives? You might want to think again before using that word. Trust me, none of the new immigrants have any violent intentions or intent to steal from earlier immigrants or native Americans.
> Not even getting to the statistically proven increase in sexual assaults that native women have to suffer on behalf of immigrants in certain European countries.
I thought we were discussing US immigration. Columbus was an accomplished rapist too. Or do rapes by white men not count?
> Case in point is the ubiquitous middle eastern treatment of women; how much influence do you want such beliefs to have over your laws and cultural norms?
The post is by an Indian Hindu. Keep in mind that not all brown people are the same. Especially considering the kind of racist violence some white men inflicted on the Jews in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. Perhaps, it is unsafe to let white people dominate a culture. The risk of holocaust and genocide is ever present. It's great if some non white culture is introduced in the society to keep the keep the genocidal tendencies of "white" culture in check.
> shallow accusations of bigotry as an alternative to engagement
You can do your part by not making the bigotry so easy to spot. A highly productive brown immigrant describing his 2 decade long naturalization process really really ticked you off, innit?
Nothing in the realm of socioeconomics is settled science. It very much is up for debate. Look at where our current economic framework has taken our present economy.
>Keep in mind that not all brown people are the same. Especially considering the kind of racist violence some white men inflicted on the Jews in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. Perhaps, it is unsafe to let white people dominate a culture. The risk of holocaust and genocide is ever present. It's great if some non white culture is introduced in the society to keep the keep the genocidal tendencies of "white" culture in check
Your post is predictably combative so I don't know if you're being ironic here or if you are acknowledging these increasingly common and overt intentions, but in any case you are generalizing all of Europe and today's culture based on the actions of Germany 80 years ago. This is textbook racism. I'd remind you that some 50MM+ white european allies died opposing the nazis.
>You can do your part by not making the bigotry so easy to spot.
This poor substitute for an argument demonstrates my point.
>I thought we were discussing US immigration. Columbus was an accomplished rapist too. Or do rapes by white men not count?
Again, textbook racism. Generalizing all of modern day Europe based on the actions of a small minority from a selection of countries. In any case this is another deflection and says nothing about the modern day increase in documented rapes and assaults. An academic who tried to report on it was placed under investigation [0], so it seems that institutions really do share your fervor in denying inconvenient truths. Almost like people are using equality as a trojan horse for petty revenge.
So because this land was colonized 500 years ago (as it was before Europeans arrived as well by the way, native Americans were not pacifists), we shouldn't enforce borders?
How much time must pass after a land is conquered before nations are morally justified in enforcing sovereignty over borders? Particularly when the border belongs to a welfare state with finite resources and a host of internal issues that require fixing.
In this context of legal immigration, the point here isn't about sovereignty. It's simply documenting one persons experience - I don't see it as a call for open borders. Also, does the US recognize a country's sovereignty when it conducts its foreign affairs? It constantly meddles in the internal affairs of other countries, not to mention the countless military interventions over the years.
We are talking about a less than 2 decade time horizon for citizenship for immigrants who are propping up your welfare state of birthright citizens with 100K$+ payments in income tax every year.
>Written ‘in sorrow and anger,’ this is a brilliant and urgently necessary book, eloquently making the case against bigotry and for all of us migrants
If you have to hide your arguments behind accusations of bigotry, you don't have a very good argument. Border enforcement is about far more than blind xenophobia. Such accusations are reductive appeals to ethos over logos.
If I was born in a country with an extremely bad immigration system, I lose the right to complain about the bad-but-maybe-not-as-bad immigration system in another country that I'm trying to immigrate to?
Can you imagine anything more un-American and yet ironically American than "welcome to the USA, now shut up. Also, draconian Kafkaesk rules now govern your life for the entirety of the immigration process"
Exactly. I love hearing the people "complain" but try and make the journey or stay. With remote work and automation becoming the norm. Soon we won't need to leave our respective countries and can all co-exist.
> India requires prospective citizens to live in the country for 12 years before applying for naturalization
Yes, for citizenship, as opposed to Permanent Residency - the author of the article must wait another 5 years at the very least to be eligible for citizenship if he desires it.
Yea, but the USofA is supposed to be the land of the Free, all kinds of free, not just "you were not born here"-type free. The whole "give me your sick, your poor..." etc vibe.
It's a little ironic at the very least that it's so hard to get into the United States, given its history.
I think the times of unclaimed land up for grabs are long over, and people need to get used to a steady state environment that the rest of the world has been in for millenia.
Are you responsible for everything your Government does ? I would hope not. People need to be treated individually. I thought that was the entire point of liberal democracy.
Yes! You are responsible, but more like responsible for the actions of your child, or, an object you own like a house.
You are not at fault, if you are a good parent, or if you maintain your house well.
So if the child breaks the law, or damages something, if the house has a weakness not known but someone gets injured, you are responsible.
But the due dilligence, such as disciplining, teaching, and trying to instill good values in a child, or inspecting and maintaining your house, are key.
With a democracy, participating, voting, being an activist on vital matters, working to keep your democracy responsible and behaving correctly is that same due diligence.
We're always responsible, but are we at fault? Did we do our best?
Or did we decide that taking care of the child was too much bother, and disappear from their lives?
Did we try, at least?
And twitter posts, facebook this and that don't count here.
Because, would that be how you raise a child? Deriding them on twitter? Yelling at other parents because it was their fault?
My man, I hope you're not American because the world has a laundry list of complaints against America. People care about different things to different degrees. You compromise on who you think is the closest to your positions. In a country of 1.3B people, there is always divergence of opinion and in fact nearly no-one would have even thought about immigration as a concern when voting.
There is a difference between the personal things you can influence and being the 1/13000000th voice of the people.
This is assuming that more immigration equals better. And even if one does think so, then the USA is doing "better" - by orders of magnitude. The Chinese and Indians are not set to become minorities in their own countries, are they? But thanks to immigration, white Americans practically already are [1], yet it is they that are called xenophobic. Double-standards doesn't begin to describe it.
In what part of the US Constitution are the white Americans identified as the essential majority for the country? This is a country that was founded through immigration, unlike China or India, so turning around and crying about becoming a minority just as you are enjoying the benefits of your ancestors migrating seems hypocritical.
Appealing to the history of immigration in the country doesn't diminish the GP's point as the US has discriminated against the origins and identities of immigrants since its founding.
>The Naturalization Act of 1790 (1 Stat. 103, enacted March 26, 1790) was a law of the United States Congress that set the first uniform rules for the granting of United States citizenship by naturalization. The law limited naturalization to "free White person(s) ... of good character", thus excluding Native Americans, indentured servants, slaves, free black people and later Asians, although free black people were allowed citizenship at the state level in a number of states. [1]
Race based citizenship remained the law until United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) [2] where the Supreme Court interpreted the "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" clause of the 14th Amendment to meant that anyone physically born in the country was automatically granted citizenship. Race-neutral naturalization wasn't enacted until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 [3] and racial discrimination and national original based immigration (not permanent residency as should be obvious) controls weren't banned until the Hart–Celler Act in 1965 [4].
I’m confused by this … doesn’t “national origin discrimination” make sense in an immigration context. It’s reasonable to treat people from Canada different from people from, say, Litchtenstein.
What the 1952 law says is that you can't ban people from immigrating because of what country they come from. It doesn't ban the creation caps on the number of people immigrating from a specific countries, which the law also enacted. The 1965 Act repealed country based quotas and replaced them with hemisphere based quotas, which were then themselves repealed and replaced with country based quotas again in the Immigration Act of 1990, which created the modern Diversity Immigrant Visas (as well the modern employment based visas).
Also I’m not sure what the race or being a minority or majority demographic has to do with being xenophobic? Pretty sure there are Indian and Chinese xenophobes in the USA as well.
Again, if you want to resort to whataboutism that’s ok but I just want to point out that it’s hypocritical to then go around the world exporting “freedom” and “values” from an alleged high ground.
That's a strange definition of "freedom". Do countries that don't practice mass immigration not have "freedom"? To be free, one must allow one's national identity to be diluted into nothing?
Not sure how you make the jump from sane immigration laws to “dilution of national identity”. If anything the USA does a fantastic job of assimilating a wide gamut of cultures without a lot of friction. Of course if your idea of “national identity” is that it consists only of white people, then I’m sorry but your views are racist and not based on factual history or current reality.
As an immigrant to the US, I hate the double standards applied to Americans. Oh, you think Americans are racist for wanting to restrict immigration? How would people in India react to massive immigration from Africa?
The US is hypocritical (most countries are) and meddles with the internal affairs of other countries. Expecting the world to care about US sovereignty is only going to get a few chuckles, nothing more. Certainly no country is in the position to go to war with the US, so we can be thankful for that.
>Oh, you think Americans are racist for wanting to restrict immigration? How would people in India react to massive immigration from Africa?
It's my view that people, in any country, should seize political power to fight for and implement changes they wish to in a legal, peaceful and non-violent manner. Whether it's about healthcare/internal policies/laws/immigration/foreign policy or whatever. If legal immigrants wish to fight for changes to the immigration system, then they should use all the legal rights they are afforded to under the current law. The previous arcs of history are all irrelevant, people should use the power they have in the here and now.
Double standards or higher standards? I'm pretty sure people in India would react horribly to such a hypothetical situation. But if that's the standard you want to hold Americans and the American government to that's fine but perhaps then the USA should stop preaching to the world and exporting its "values" and "freedoms" and taking the moral high ground in pretty much every conflict around the world.
> perhaps then the USA should stop preaching to the world and exporting its "values" and "freedoms" and taking the moral high ground in pretty much every conflict around the world.
As a Gore/Kerry supporter I agree. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s been a broad repudiation of George W. Bush’s vision for an evangelical role for America in spreading democracy among his own party.
I think Americans have many great virtues. But they’re not aliens, and America isn’t a science experiment. I don’t begrudge any American who wants a country of their own, just like Indians and Bangladeshis do.
> I don’t begrudge any American who wants a country of their own, just like Indians and Bangladeshis do.
Setting aside the fact that your reply had no relevance to OPs argument, I have other questions.
Do you consider your presence in this country impugning on an Americans desire to have a country of their own? Just like Bangladeshis do? Perhaps there is a more appropriate country on this planet that you should call as a country of your own. Why are you treating America as some kind of science experiment?
This clayton bigsby schtick is only funny the first time around.
> Do you consider your presence in this country impugning on an Americans desire to have a country of their own? Just like Bangladeshis do?
Of course! My presence changes the country, because I can’t help but bring my foreign values and beliefs with me. People who were already here; and maybe like things the way they were, are entitled to not like those changes.
People back in Bangladesh would certainly complain if my wife’s family headed over there and brought with them all their individualism, social liberalism, notions of gun rights, antipathy to social hierarchy, etc! Different societies around the world are different, and in particular the differences between immigrants and native born go much more than skin deep, because even the ones born here are typically raised and socialized by parents who come from a different culture.
Under international law, distinct peoples are entitled to say “I want a country for people who look like me and have my culture and speak my language.” My home country of Bangladesh exists because of that principle, as do many other countries. Why should I begrudge those Americans who feel the same way?
> Perhaps there is a more appropriate country on this planet that you should call as a country of your own.
As an ethnic Bangladeshi my kids and I have a right of return. I can obtain Bangladeshi citizenship any time I want.
> Why are you treating America as some kind of science experiment?
I try not to! My family was invited here by Americans on certain terms, and nobody has ever really complained. But I think they have every right to complain if they wanted.
> This clayton bigsby schtick is only funny the first time around.
I point out that I hold Americans to the same standard as people from my own country, and you respond by accusing me of self hatred? I hope you realize how incredibly racist that is.
> I don’t begrudge any American who wants a country of their own, just like Indians and Bangladeshis do.
Neither do I, but between "open borders let everybody in" and the Kafkaesque legal immigration process highlighted in the article above, pretty sure we can come up with something in a happy medium that is more useful and less stressful to everybody involved.
> Anyone who is a citizen is already an American. Or do you mean only white Americans are "real" Americans?
Who said anything about white people? I’m talking about distinct cultural communities with roots in the country, who live in places which are deeply reflective of the culture of those people. Some of those people are white (like my wife’s family who settled the Oregon coast), some are Hispanic (Mexican Americans in Texas), many are Black, many are American Indians. Conversely, many white people lack deep roots in the country, and no part of the country really reflects their cultural heritage.
One of the most fundamental aspects of democracy is drawing the boundaries of the body politic. My parent’s generation went to war to create a country where the body politic would be mainly Bangla-speaking people, instead of sharing a body politic with Urdu-speaking Pakistanis. Why would I begrudge a descendant of Germans in the Midwest or a Tejano in Texas for having the same impulse?
When you mention Germans below are you talking about the Chinese origin Germans?
>One of the most fundamental aspects of democracy is drawing the boundaries of the body politic.
You're conflating legal immigration and demographic shifts to open-borders. Those are not the same.
>My parent’s generation went to war to create a country where the body politic would be mainly Bangla-speaking people, instead of sharing a body politic with Urdu-speaking Pakistanis. Why would I begrudge a descendant of Germans in the Midwest or a Tejano in Texas for having the same impulse?
I don't know what impulse you're referring to. Please expand on that.
> When you mention Germans below are you talking about the Chinese origin Germans?
I gave several examples of people who could point to a part of the country and say that their ancestors built those communities and those places reflect the unique culture that’s been handed down to them from their ancestors.
Some of those examples were “white” and others were not: Mexicans in the southwest or Black people all over the south.
What Charles Blow talks about in the article above is an especially poignant example of a universal impulse: the desire to live among and be governed by people from one’s own cultural community. Nobody suffers more for not having a “country of their own” than Black and indigenous people in America, but the underlying impulse to want that is universal.
> You're conflating legal immigration and demographic shifts to open-borders. Those are not the same.
I’m not talking about “open borders.” I’m talking about having to share political power over your own community with people from a different cultural background. With the example of Bangladesh and Pakistan, there was no immigration involved. My parent’s generation fought a war against Pakistan because we didn’t want to be in the same body politic as Pakistanis.
> I don't know what impulse you're referring to. Please expand on that.
The impulse for people from distinct cultural groups to govern themselves. Bengalis didn’t want Pakistanis to have control over the laws that applied to them. They wanted their own country that they could run the way they wanted.
Notions of governance are deeply intertwined with culture, and having people from distinct cultures try to govern each other leads to tremendous animosity. One concrete example: my family comes from a part of the world that’s had government and civilization for thousands of years. We’re farmers going back to before anyone can remember. My wife’s family, by contrast, settled the frontier of the United States, living off the land, and not being able to count on established governments to help them (because there were not any).
This leads to extremely divergent world views between my dad and my wife. My dad said the other day that he doesn’t see why anyone needs a gun because “nobody hunts for food.” This is true to him—nobody has hunted for food in Bangladesh as long as anyone can remember. Meanwhile my wife grew up hearing people refer to “store bought meat” because it was the exception until her parent’s generation. She grew up eating meat that her grandfather had hunted. It’s a completely different acquired understanding of not only the role and purpose of guns, but more generally the relationship between and among people, the land, and authority.
I look at those interactions and think: if someone from rural Oregon is mad at people like my dad coming to America from Bangladesh, who thinks “nobody hunts for food,” and voting to take away his guns, why isn’t that justified? Why can’t he be mad that people who aren’t acculturated into the cultural underpinnings of his community have so much power in deciding how that community should now be governed? Why would I begrudge him that sentiment when my uncle fought in a war over the same exact impulse?
>The impulse for people from distinct cultural groups to govern themselves. Bengalis didn’t want Pakistanis to have control over the laws that applied to them. They wanted their own country that they could run the way they wanted.
Americans of German, English, Irish, Italian, Swedish origin are not all seeking to maximize the number of individual ancestral cultures being represented in the government. Inside Europe, the Italian culture is completely different to German culture. Being American is not the same as being Italian or being German. Which is why I asked if you were lumping everyone seemingly white as having the same culture.
>if someone from rural Oregon is mad at people like my dad coming to America from Bangladesh, who thinks “nobody hunts for food,” and voting to take away his guns, why isn’t that justified? Why can’t he be mad that people who aren’t acculturated into the cultural underpinnings of his community have so much power in deciding how that community should now be governed? Why would I begrudge him that sentiment when my uncle fought in a war over the same exact impulse?
If people can't convince others and get consensus on their ideas, then those ideas should die out. Tough shit. We managed to clear out the idiots objecting to giving civil rights to minorities and voting rights to women. A country is not static, the laws are not static and should never be. The laws are something we made up to serve our needs. It's a democracy, and all citizens get to vote and make decisions. What you're describing sounds anti-democracy.
Edit: The guns issue is a hot-button but you can draw parallels to anything that one group of people want to "preserve". Well if you want to preserve it - go make the effort of convincing people who aren't convinced. I can appreciate guns from an engineering perspective, but I think owning guns and killing defenseless animals from a distance is not something I would personally do. But I am not "taking it away" from anyone I am simply exercising my right as a citizen.
The whole point is that if you were born anywhere else (except India or China), it is a fairly simple process which would take less than a year (one can file both I-140 and I-485 together).
India's requirement is 12 years seems a lot, but practically Indian citizen's path to citizenship in US is more than that(~10 years to get GC + mandatory 5 years after GC). EB1 might be an exception, which will also come around 6-8 years. But most end up waiting more than 15 years to become US citizens.
US restricts employment visas with a specific time limit. L1(7 years) and H1(6 years). After that period, you have to stay out of the country for 12 months, before you can reapply again. The other option is to apply for Green Card (Permanent Residency). So most of them end up applying GC rather than move out of the country for an year.
US has weird rules that inherently makes difficult even for employment based visas. E.g. If your visa is near expiry, then you can apply for extension. But the extension processing times takes up months. You can't travel out of the country during that period. Even if your petition is approved, then you have to go to US embassy in your country of citizenship to get visa stamped in your passport. Unless you have a visa stamped in your passport, you can't reenter US. Practically there is no visa appointment slots available at US embassies in India at this time. You are in a soup if you have to travel on an emergency
If a foreigner works in India on an employment visa, I don't think they have to run into issues what someone faces with the US immigration system. Just see what Curl's author Daniel Stenberg experience with US Visa process,
And for those commenting "why does country of origin matter," certainly there is something which made one system of governance preferable for outcomes and perhaps too quickly importing from a single culture brings along things which are out of place in the new country.
Thank you we just got here a perfect example of whataboutism! What some countries do to some people has nothing to do with what the US of (pardon me) Assholes does to someone who lived there most their lives!
One of the sane decisions I have made five years ago. Go to US for masters and stuck in the long immigration process with no uncertainty or move to Europe with a well paying job. I choose the latter and I couldn’t have been happier. In the last five years, I dealt with immigration twice and that too just renew my resident permit. Last year, I went through civic integration procedure and gonna get an European passport along with OCI card which makes me visa free travel to almost all parts of the world. It’s just a breeze and it’s not just me. Most of my friends have similar stories and we barely hear people complaining about immigration issues. So, anyone who’s looking for an alternative, Europe, especially Netherlands.
The salary barrier is also reducing a lot now a days. When I moved, I used to make high five figures which was quite good for European salaries but now, almost low to mid six figures.
The interesting part here is he finally got his green card after 18 years only because he married an Australian citizen and wasn’t blocked by the county quota anymore.
Imagine how frustrating it must be being qualified, living in the country for decades and still blocked from residency all because you were born somewhere, it’s something you have no control over
I know a professor of computer science at arguably the best cs program in the world who is an Indian citizen and was only able to get a green card because he is married to a citizen of a western european country. The system is completely fucked for Indian and Chinese citizens. Absolutely egregiously so.
This is one of the reasons why I find the "just wait in line" argument so disingenuous. If it takes a world expert in a high importance topics literal decades to get a green card then there simply isn't a legitimate path available to people.
> If it takes a world expert in a high importance topics literal decades to get a green card
For what it's worth, sounds like the professor would have qualified under the EB1A/B scheme, which even for Indians is "Current". The qualifications are not very hard to meet for someone working as a professor, or even a postdoctoral researcher.
I mean, anywhere you immigrate to, you have less rights than someone born there despite the fact that they didn’t do anything to get that citizenship.
It’s pretty atrocious though that people born in India have to wait in line for decades or, like that person and many of my colleagues, have to marry someone who is not born there, while all the French people I know in the US got their green cards in 1-5 years.
Immigrants understand they have less rights and if they want to go there or stay permanently they have to earn their place through whatever qualifications the host country mandates.
The primary complaint here is the massively different waiting period for the same employment based green card category (qualifications) between a potential immigrant born in India (multiple decades) versus let’s say Germany (maybe a year). It’s an immutable qualification.
One is a developing country of 1.2B people with limited opportunities. The other is 80M people with high living standards. There aren't even that many French greencard seekers so the quota goes unfulfilled almost every year. Meanwhile, Congress has instituted hard limits on greencards that India and China have the largest share of and manage to hit the limits every year, for decades.
This is a big reason to have children who are american citizens. The children can then pay several tens of thousands of dollars once they're adults to sponsor their parents. Two decades is a shorter wait.
Yep, unfortunately this is a known strategy so if one is pregnant and trying to go to the states (like a vacation or business, unrelated to birth) immigration will give you a ton of shit.
I haven't opened the article because I suspect I'm not in the right headspace for it, but I wanted to share my thoughts. I did my degree in the US and my experience with the immigration system was so traumatic that I just gave up entirely and didn't try to stay in the US after graduation. I wouldn't say I regret it, but it does feel wasteful at the end of the day to have put all that time/effort/energy in only to come back to my home country. But oh well.
I think it's really eye opening to me that he still only got a green card so far after 18 years. He's been going thru immigration hoops in the US for as long as it would take to raise an adult.
EB doesn't lead to Green Card as far as I know. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. That'd mean you'll need to be on EB permanently, which is not unlike being on H for 20+ years.
>USCIS administers the EB-5 Program. Under this program, investors (and their spouses and unmarried children under 21) are eligible to apply for a Green Card (permanent residence) if they:
>Make the necessary investment in a commercial enterprise in the United States; and
>Plan to create or preserve 10 permanent full-time jobs for qualified U.S. workers.
>This program is known as EB-5 for the name of the employment-based fifth preference visa that participants receive.
Thanks for the update. Interestingly enough, the targeted employment area (TEA) amount was brought down from $900k to $800k, but the non TEA amount was brought down all the way from $1.8M to $1.05M, with both figures to be adjusted per inflation every five years.
There are multiple groups involved here. Some of us don't want that many immigrants, for us the immigration system is only a disaster because of the high rate of illegal immigration.
Stockholm syndrome much? What a horrible sad story. I felt pain each time the author mentioned being elated or joyful. One hard working Asian gets mistreated by the Land Of the Free, the mother of his child subjected to completely needless stress in the worst possible months of her pregnancy, and for what?
This is a really good account of the immigration system. I've gone through this myself. My path was significantly easier. As an Australian citizen, I got an E3 instead of an H1B. This is both easier to get and has no uncertainty with a lottery. Technically, there's a quota (10,000 per year) but that cap has never been hit. Also, I'm not born in one of the countries that has a ridiculous long wait like the author.
Still, my green card was delayed by a random audit. They do this deliberately so people don't learn to game the system. At that time, an audit added 18 months to the petition processing so overall my green process took almost 3 years.
The author accurate describes just how arbitrary, uncertain and punitive this process is. His example of having to go get a visa stamp in the Bahamas and potentially not being allowed to reenter the country. It's also worth noting that H1Bs have different reentry permissions based on your country of origin. IIRC a mainland Chinese born coworker told me he could only renenter the US on his H1B for the first year of each 3 year H1B.
The author also portrays the necessity that you need to learn an awful lot about how the immigration system works. All of what he said rang true and I only had one issue with one thing he said.
His move of resigning right when getting his green card is a dangerous one. He mentions this and also mentions how you can be subject to claims of immigration fraud. In his case it was for potentially extending his stay at Amazon. This is true. But immediately leaving a job after getting a green card can come back to haunt you if you ever apply for US citizenship because at that time, possibly years later, they can still view this as visa fraud.
So how long do you need to stay in a job to avoid this? Like so many things in the immigration system, it's unclear. Many lawyers will give you advice to stay for at least six months to demonstrate your intent but this is a discretionary test so there's no hard-and-fast minimum.
Even looking to change jobs (including founding a startup) while your petition is being processed can be a red flag as far as visa fraud goes.
So if anyone is in a similar boat, here's my advice to you: don't even look for jobs in this stage. Get your green card in your hands, celebrate the end of probably a long journey, give it a few months and then consider your options.
> It's also worth noting that H1Bs have different reentry permissions based on your country of origin. IIRC a mainland Chinese born coworker told me he could only renenter the US on his H1B for the first year of each 3 year H1B.
There isn't a separate re-entry restriction, it's just the expiry date of the visa stamp in the passport.
For Chinese nationals, US consulates only issued visa stamps valid for 1 year. I am not sure if this is still the case.
This would be a non-issue if visa stamps could be issued within the country (like basically every other country on earth), and in fact the US did issue stamps internally in the old days, but after 9/11 they changed it so only foreign diplomats and officials of UN, NATO etc can get visa stamps here.
> Normally, getting the approved I-140 is a major milestone, and means you’re close to receiving your Green Card.
Yeah, no. Even if you are current, it could be months away, or it could be years. 2 years is not uncommon these days, even if your country is theoretically 'current'. More if there are RFEs. If you are exceptionally unlucky they can even send a RFE _after_ approval, sometimes months after (these are called Notice of Intent to Revoke).
Even permanent residents can theoretically receive RFEs years after approval. Or site inspections. As of today, this is uncommon and only really done if fraud is suspected. However, if the administration changes again, you never know.
And getting the green card is never guaranteed. It's a 'privilege'.
If you change jobs you need to restart the whole green card process. But not if your Adjustment of Status has been pending for 180 days or more. Then there's some 'portability' clause. Still dangerous - there were lawsuits because USCIS sent RFEs to a previous employer. Which obviously they didn't respond to. People were unaware that anything was going wrong until their applications were denied, at which point it is too late (and, if your I-140 gets denied, and you have been using your EAD, you are retroactively out of status and have accrued unlawful presence, as well as your dependents). They did this because according to them, those applications are not related to the employee at all, they are done by the employer.
As a result of the lawsuits, they will notify the 'beneficiary' now, at least.
> Any secondary source of income, even if it’s from a business that you’ve built from the ground up, would violate the terms of your H1B visa
Interestingly, you are never given those 'terms'. You'll eventually learn about this. But it's very vague. Doing a garage sale? Might be ok, if you don't do it very often. How often is often? You can be a landlord (and bring in significant revenue), but you can't fix a tenant's clogged sink - because then you'd be working. Hiring someone else to do is is apparently A-OK. You definitely can't drive for Uber, or release an IOS app on your free time, or have an Youtube channel (again on your free time).
> Yeah, no. Even if you are current, it could be months away, or it could be years. 2 years is not uncommon these days, even if your country is theoretically 'current'.
My case took a bit over 18 months, from PERM to Green card. Even worse, there was a gap of 20 days between my visa expiration date, and the arrival of my EAD, so I had to be put on unpaid leave.
The USCIS has been a complete shit show since the Trump administration took over, and COVID made it even worse.
I have a pro-cons list about immigrating to Canada.
Why Canada ?
- Getting a masters level education is much cheaper.
- Immigration has less hoops to jump through. Specially if you are willing to live in the Atlantic side.
- Great government and social benefits
- I heard people are generally nicer.
Why not Canada -
- TAXES! TAXES! TAXES!
- Canada is essentially the money laundering heaven [0] of North America. So buying a house and being in the so called "middle class" is a nightmare.
- I believe that there is no middle class in Canada but I could be wrong as an outsider. If you are making money within a specified range that supposedly makes you an middle class individual, it is best to find shelter in government assistance programs because the income taxes are so brutal. I could be wrong, and I hope I am wrong.
- American LCOL salary even if you live in Vancouver or Toronto which is HCOL.
- If you want to earn big bucks you have to open an LLC and start contracting, which I believe requires a Canadian citizenship. I don't think you can open an LLC with a PR. Doing contract or remote work often requires an LLC.
are one and same thing. Unless you think benefits can just appear out of thin air. Or just that others must pay for all good stuff that you looking to get.
I believe Canada could find a better way to provide social benefits without alienating the middle class.
First of all levying higher taxation or regulation for money laundering. I think that alone will reduce the tax burden on the middle class people.
Taxation is a long controversial discussion that often leads to no where.
But the gist is that, for the 60k+/year roles, if you are employed in America, from what I heard, your medical coverage is the same as the public health coverage by the Canadian government.
In America you can buy a house within a smaller time frame at a more reasonable financial burden compared to Canada.
The cost of Canadian taxation is reasonable to a limit.
Making money laundering illegal will send shockwaves across its economy. Canada is being criticized by both its citizens and foreign governments but the illegal moneyflows are actually proping the housing markets of Vancouver and Toronto up. It is a very complicated situation as taking any action against money laundering will also might greenlight foreign governments to sue Canada for harboring money from corruption and illegal activities.
Taking actions against money laundering is always a slippery slope.
It was a joke. Money laundering is already illegal in most jurisdictions, including Canada [1]. Generally disguising the source of funds is financial fraud on its own, even without dedicated money laundering laws.
The canard that the housing market in Canada has been propped up by illegal money has been debunked so many times it's not funny. Everyone continues to prefer to think that over the real truth, which is that domestic speculation and house-horniness (house at any financial cost, down-payments from a HELOC on the family house, etc.) is responsible for the insane market. How else do you explain the 50%+ increase in rural Ontario over the pandemic? Peterborough didn't suddenly become the hot spot for laundering.
I wouldn't use the word the "propped up", I would probably use foundational. It is not like the Canadian government is eager to turn away the flow of money entering into their economy as they say. Canada is doing as great of a job of preventing this moneyflow as UK is doing with stopping Russian Oligarchs to "invest" in their economy. UK too have laws in preventing money laundering I presume.
Jurisdictions in Canada keep passing laws on the basis of this kind of xenophobia (e.g. the foreign buyer tax in BC, non-local tax in Ontario) that have consistently turned out to be ineffective. Why? Turns out it's not the problem and it applies to a minor fraction of buyers. So they crank up the rhetoric and pass more ineffective laws.
If you want to call money laundering foundational, then you need to explain how on earth that is connected with the market in Peterborough being up 50%+ over the pandemic. Peterborough isn't unique; it just gives the lie to the idea that this is somehow foreign money causing the problem. Foreign buyers have tanked in the last two years (since most of the time they were not even permitted to enter the country) yet it is continually called out as the culprit. Nonsense.
Without higher taxes, you generally won't get good social services.. but just because taxes are high does not imply that government benefits are good. There's a large range of effectiveness at using tax dollars to actually provide value to citizens (and while I wouldn't put Canada at the top, I think it's well above high tax states like California).
I prefer the whole middle region of America as truly the best part of America. Weather can be an issue in WY, SD, ND but overall the region is fantastic from what I have heard.
I have been thinking about the idea of social benefits. For the middle class what is even good social benefit? Affordable housing, affordable medical, maybe some kind of financial support for the elders, good public education, enough social benefits which lowers crime rate. Like if that is the things that are essential, America is doing a fantastic job.
But over emphasising social benefits aspects at the cost of the middle class is a bad idea. Canadian middle class from what I heard is somewhere between too rich to not get access to subsidized housing and too poor to buy a 600k house.
An interesting take from Matt Bruenig is that if you look at the “six figures doesn’t go as far as you think” genre, you almost always see one or more of:
* Saving for retirement
* Saving for college or having a kid in college
* Having young kids and paying for daycare or losing an income
* Dealing with a health crisis (while not currently a full time employee at the kind of corporation that has great insurance… even if at other times you were or you will be again)
* Caring for an aging parent
These are all significant financial stressors even to the upper middle / professional class in America, whereas in a strong social benefits environment none of them are a big deal at all. The idea that middle class families need to stand up to all all these costs personally, sink or swim, is not necessarily pro-middle-class.
Like, why is it so important to own a house? One reason is so that you could sell it or otherwise tap the equity in case you have to do something ruinous like go to the hospital while between jobs. Another is that the apartments are all in neighborhoods overrun with untreated mentally ill people. Both of these are self-chosen problems.
> - If you want to earn big bucks you have to open an LLC and start contracting, which I believe requires a Canadian citizenship. I don't think you can open an LLC with a PR. Doing contract or remote work often requires an LLC
I'm a citizen, but I work as a contractor without having to do anything to create a legal entity. I'm considered self-employed, and a de facto business of one.
If you get a PR through express entry it should be 6 months, then 3 years living as a PR in Canada, then apply for citizenship, and a year later you are a citizen.
And express entry is "simple" to apply, you fill boxes, get points, every month they publish the points threshold, if you are above it, you get a PR!
The processing time for a citizenship application is currently at 27 months. For economic immigration (=PR cards) it's 22 or 27 months, depending if you are a provincial nominee or skilled worker. Skilled trades is 41 months, the new startup-visa is 31 months.
A really good in depth take on how the U.S. immigration system works for a highly skilled technology worker (Intel,Google,Amazon,Startup) from the point of view of that person.
At first read of your comment, I read "works" as "it works!" i.e. as a synonym for "succeeds", but maybe you just meant how it works as in how the gears of bureaucracy turned.
From the point of view of someone who immigrated from a developing Asian country to a EU country, geez, I had it a lot easier than he did. The country's law doesn't seem to allow refusal without concrete grounds as long as the applicant meets all the requirements, whereas in the US, even if you meet all the requirements, the decision is still arbritary.
I honestly can’t fathom what’s so great about America that people are willing to put up with this stuff. Do people still buy into the facade of fake hope? I have a Russian coworker who lectured at MIT and he said that every year immigrants would come to the new lecture series adorned in US flag clothes, absolutely full of propaganda. Then after time they would realise the truth: just another country, worse than many
what an exhausting but gripping example of how the immigration system is Byzantine and absurd.
I am in the grips of it now: my ex and I both filed to renew our green card within a week or so of each other in early 2021. She received her replacement card in less than six weeks. According to the USCIS web site I still have at least another eight months to wait.
Meanwhile I can’t even get a stamp in my passport to indicate my status (so that I can travel): I arranged for such an appointment but when they finally called to tell me when it was instead to tell me that there are no appointments available.
The complaints about national quotas are strange. The prevailing assumption that everyone outside of the US should ideally have an equal opportunity to receive permanent residency. But that's not a goal of US immigration policy.
US immigration policy is built around maintaining a diverse pool of immigrants and focusing on family reunification. Skilled labor is obviously a plus but it's of secondary concern.
Everybody understands the stated goals of US immigration policy. They just don't necessarily agree with it, and are pointing out ways in which the current policy is detrimental to US interests in ways that likely supersede the value gained by diversifying the country of birth of potential immigrants.
I decided to move to Canada after a few years on an H1B for this reason. I got a PR card literally on arrival at the airport! I can do everything but vote and can choose to become a citizen whenever i want. Border agents are nice and don’t make me feel like a criminal, companies cannot exploit me, i can be unemployed or start a business anytime. Zero immigrant stress. Salaries and taxes are worse but its worth the freedom & peace of mind.
Putting aside politics & whether you agree/disagree with US immigration policy, i think going elsewhere is simply a better option for Chinese/Indian immigrants as of now. Most of the West is staring down an aging population and is desperate for young labor, so there’s tons of options. A lot of places have well functioning governments and the demand for technology is global.
I am sailing in the same boat. Except that I am still waiting to be liberated with a Green Card.
Its outrageous that there is still a big racism on the name of "Per-country" caps for a common-sense high skilled immigration system in the country like USA who makes a tall claim of being "Equal-Opportunity" country. A Pizza-delivery guy from Non-India/Non-Chinese place of birth can get his citizenship before atleast a decade than the person of Indian/Chinese original who filed on the same day. Its 2022, 4 administration went away since 2007 who made claims of changing the immigration system. Let's see how long do we wait to suffer.
But here this could be case of of person less talented the pizza delivery person, having very classist attitude, looking to settle in explicitly racist country by their own admission.
I guess it's almost impossible to emigrate as a Junior to US being European, but I would like to know the opinion of someone that has experience in that. I would like to work there in my first years (don't want to spend my life there) but I see normal that no company would like to support a VISA for a Junior having a lot in the US.
I know that some companies hire you for 1 year in Europe and then offer you move to America, but they are usually big companies where it's difficult to get hired.
If you are a European passport holder (yes, I know that is broad), you should try for the Diversity Immigrant Visa -- aka the Green Card Lottery. I had a German co-worker once who applied and got it. For wealthy European nations, it is not /super/ difficult to win this lottery, as there are so few applicants.
Ouh, I didn't know about this program. It's so interesting to see a country like USA doing this. I will read more about the program, it seems interesting, I will read more about it.
> it is not /super/ difficult to win this lottery, as there are so few applicants.
I see in the Wikipedia article that 13M people applies. I guess that you mention that not so many people emigrate from Europe to the US, that's why it's more likely to get this. I will consider this, it's so interesting.
Given the reality of remote work, one might hope the allure of immigrating to the US for the jobs might diminish. Sure, you probably won't make half a million working remotely as a software engineer, but you probably don't need that in most of the world anyway.
I can't fathom waiting almost two decades for a permanent residency status. It was excruciating just reading the post, yet alone living it. Mad kudos to the author for enduring the process. Personally I'd never go for it.
this story resonated a lot with me. Have been in States for a decade and still waiting on GC.
However, throttling(7% quota) based on country of birth appears to be a bad proxy for diversity as India is a very diverse nation with rich cultural and linguistic distinctions. Designing a new immigration system would be a reduction problem from the existing one but we have seen successful implementations in other countries such as Canada and EU (albeit with their own set of problems)
"Given that managers are a dime a dozen in any country, it seems odd to put managers in the same category as people of “extraordinary ability,” but I digress."
This is really important point in case anyone missed. The gross misuse of this rule to bring in project managers, account managers (L-1 based) and such have really made things worse for non L-1 immigrants by hogging most of green cards awarded per country basis.
I'm not sure that's a fair comparison - the rant about managers is concerning their special status in the highest priority EB1 category for Employment Based Green Cards, not L1 work visas. Or are you referring to L1 managers eventually working their way to EB1 Managers?
I am talking about L1A , people who are brought in as "International Managers" where in reality they are just some IT project managers doing daily scrum and crap. See here [1] for "Certain Multinational manager or executive" . Here is the definition:
"You must have been employed outside the United States for at least 1 year in the 3 years preceding the petition or the most recent lawful nonimmigrant admission if you are already working for the U.S. petitioning employer. The U.S. petitioner must have been doing business for at least 1 year, have a qualifying relationship to the entity you worked for outside the U.S., and intend to employ you in a managerial or executive capacity. "
Using this criteria, IT body shops are running wholesale scam.
Whew, I just went through the process of getting a Permanent Residency in Japan, applying after working here for a bit over 4 years, and being accepted this spring, at a little under 5 years in.
It was stressful, but after reading this, I have to admit that immigration in Japan seems like a walk in a park, at least if you're privileged enough to speak Japanese and have a high-paying job.
Sigh, I tried to follow what US Government was doing about this and eventually gave up but here is a short history:
S.386 was introduced in the Senate by Mike Lee in 2019 [1]
There was a unanimous consent on it in 2021 [2] but the bill expired (?) because Dick Durbin, senator from IL wont table it (I dont clearly understand the process in the Senate but some people who follow this had expressed anger at Durbin for not doing anything - https://www.durbinisracist.com/)
It was reintroduced in Congress as Eagle Act [3] but its been stalled ever since. It ironic that people think Democrats want open borders while the same Democrats could not even pass a sane bill for legal immigration (especially for immigrants who contribute a whole lot to the US) with their majorities while immigration was a top agenda for President Biden. Not to mention all the big tech companies with big lobbies cant get this move at all.
The history of this bill goes back further. It passed the House in 2011 as HR 3012 [1].
Note that we are told that Trump is racist and his opponents are not, but a lot of lawmakers with an axe to grind against Indians with 150-year immigration wait times [2] are prominent democrats.
The multiple occurrences when INS had just delayed my entry by hours while also not letting me use my phone to message my American partner were what made me eventually become American. It’s not just that INS can screw you, it’s that they seem to relish holding that above you.
Oh, and to be clear I am the whitest white dude whoever whited, so I wasn’t even being subjected to skin colour based racism, and yet was getting screwed around.
I'd definitely like our immigration system to be better executed even under the current overall goals; the arbitrary/capricious CBP officer at the border seems pretty bad.
Most of H1B could be fixed if we could get rid of Wipro/etc. staffing agency abuse (almost entirely of people from India, but there are lots of Indian H1B who work for other companies and are fine); the process seems relatively non-abused by actual end-user tech employers, with the biggest problems for smaller companies being the "can't work here because if company fails you lose status (in 30 days now, thankfully, not immediately)" and "hassle of the process".
I'm not sure how legally to ban the Wipro style use of H1B while preserving the rest. I'd also always prefer fees vs. delays; there are jobs for which $200k/yr fee paid to US Treasury would still be worth it for ~instant processing, and it's inefficient/bad for everyone to not have that as an option.
As someone who was born in the U.S. nothing makes me more grateful to be a citizen than hearing stories like this from my colleagues. Fascinating story, and a wonderful happy ending!
The comments here in this thread illustrate why unions are so dangerous. So many Americans subscribe to the “we are full” and “why should I lower my wages” arguments against immigration. On their own, they’re flaccid. If unionized they would be powerful. Better that software engineer unions never see light lest they behave like unions of old did and turn their ire on immigrants.
For an alternative approach and path – it took me 7 years from landing in the country on a B-1 business visa to a EB-2 greencard via 2 separate O-1 visas. And I thought that was grueling!
Just received my card in the mail two weekends ago.
US immigration is in the biggest crisis in decades - between rhetoric & admin burden from Trump, covid, and ossified bureaucracy, it is the worst time in history for a tech worker to migrate to the US.
Each time a developer works for the US from abroad, the US economy loses up to 50% o salaries in taxes for gov funding, and up to 80% of the reminder in spending within the economy.
An argentine developer making 150k from the US pays 0 taxes and spends 80%+ in argentina. If he moves to the US he pays 60k in taxes and spends 80%+ in the US.
US is shooting itself in the foot so hard. The solution is the easiest - remove H1b caps.
Holy sh-t. What kind of country will you create with "zero taxes"? A sh-tty one! No one likes to pay high taxes, but there are almost no highly developed non-microstate nations with low taxes. (Even the Switzerland argument still has a bunch of holes when you look at the aggregate and include all levels of taxation.) How else can you pay for (subsidised) child care, health care, education, unemployment insurance, and national (old-age) pension? It costs a pretty penny.
US taxes all income you earn anywhere in the world. It’s not that bad in practice, as first $100k or something earned abroad is exempt, and there are anti double taxation treaties with many countries, but overall, if you’re a US citizen abroad, you might owe US taxes.
I'd guess that most people living in Argentina are not, in fact, US citizens. If an Argentinian did a contract for an American company while living in Argentina, I'd expect them pay Argentinian rather than US income tax on that
Does that apply in the context of this thread? Presumably the person hired in Argentina is a Argentinian national, not a US citizen living in Argentina.
Incorrect. It taxes all income anywhere jn the world for US citizens and green card holders, _regardless_ of where they reside or the source of their income.
So I should want companies to be able to import cheaper workers from abroad and drive down my salary via supply and demand, and all so the government can get more tax revenue? No thanks.
How is 150K cheaper unless you are in Bay Area may be. Companies will always find ways to reduce cost so you cannot do much about it. GP's point is that someone is getting paid 150K working for an American company in Argentina so that means they are not only NOT adding any tax revenue for US but they are still taking away your job (based on your argument). So which one is better ? a 150K remote worker in a foreign country who doesn't pay any US tax OR a 150K worker in the US who also pays taxes and contributes to the economy. In both cases, the job is not going to you anyway.
Think of it this way, more people in your country means more economic activity, and a larger tax base.
If you work a laptop job currently then assume that it can be done by anyone anywhere in the world. Wouldn't you want that person to buy US products, US services, and pay US taxes?
More tech people means more tech business means more tech demand. I don't see the problem. Immigrants tend to be much more entrepreneurial and create disproportionate opportunities for business.
Companies still do that by hiring abroad and importing goods from abroad. You will surprised to know most of the things you consume in the US are imported.
I am a white American that majored in History. I am a self taught programmer making $225,000 per year now.
I believe that all countries need to reduce restrictions on the movement of people. Humans should be free to move and live where they want.
I am worried, however, that transitioning away from our current flawed system will have a lot of unpleasant side effects. Many Americans might lose their jobs, simply because others will work for cheaper and probably provide around the same quality.
Additionally our house prices would likely decline as well.
For these reasons I am selfishly concerned about my job prospects, especially since I have to compete against others in my own country, but I will never be given the chance to compete against them in their own country.
Why though? If Google is hiring an engineer, it doesn't make a distinction and does so purely on skill. Why should it matter if said engineer is from Argentina (arbitrary example) instead of India?
The US issues roughly 1 million green cards each year. 86% of those go to family based immigration. The rest 14% are for employment based immigration. Even in there the dependents (spouse + kids) are counted against that quota. So net effect is close to 5% employment based immigration if we count only primary applicants. What purpose is discrimination by country of birth serving here?
Benefit is greater diversity. Rather than have majority of immigrants from hugely populated countries like China or India, immigrants are more evenly distributed from all around the world. The system obviously has big downsides to individuals from India/China. If it can be proved to US citizens that it’s in their interests to get rid of the cap, I think it will be gone.
What makes arbitrary geographic borders markers of diversity ?
The language, religious practices, food, festivals and traditions change every 100 miles in India. It is an old civilization with as much or more diversity than all of Europe.
Small countries like Belgium, Netherlands and Austria can balkanize and claim diversity over minor differences. Yet, Indians are clumped together under 1 umbrella ? How does that make sense ?
What makes skin color marker of diversity ? This is world we live in.
India can have diversity claims if they let individual states in India their passports, languages, flags and so on. It's on them to show diversity before expecting others to appreciate it.
It gets even more ridiculous if we try to use 'physical' differences. It then becomes about genes.
Guess what ? Everyone who lives out of Africa has a common-ish ancestors as far as 80k years ago. So, Africans are significantly more diverse than the rest of the world combined.
Diversity can be preserved for 86% of the green card quota. Why does need to be there for the other 14%?
Already this is forcing companies to make investments in offshore centers as it is difficult to hire here. There is enough proof this is bad for Americans but the current political climate makes any change impossible.
There are other "diversity" visas. One is a literal diversity lottery and a family permanent resident visa. Does it not make more sense to look at qualifications for employment petitions.
You get enough diversity from the 85% of people who come in through family based immigration. So, the majority of immigrants are not coming from countries like China or India irrespective of whether this discrimination persists or not.
We are talking about 14% of the total annual green card quota, 140,000/1,000,000.Everybody is not coming from same place and it will be a pure FCFS system if these archaic quotas are gone.
>> Now i wouldn't want anyone to be discriminated but still it makes sense to limit green card based on nationality
> Why though? If Google is hiring an engineer, it doesn't make a distinction and does so purely on skill. Why should it matter if said engineer is from Argentina (arbitrary example) instead of India?
Because the priorities of the system don't have to be the same as Google's. Specifically, the US decided it prefers to get immigrants from everywhere rather than letting a couple big countries flood the queue.
If there's a demand for certain roles, which clearly seems to be the case, what difference does it make where the people filling those roles comes from?
Most of the people who are interested in moving to the US, as expat workers, are mostly from India. Let's break this down piece by piece:
1. Canadians have TN visas, so they prefer to use that since there is no lottery for that and it's a simple process of taking your offer letter and have CBP stamp a 3-year TN visa. Even though it is not dual intent, people can and do apply for green cards on TN status since for Canadians the wait times are current and they can get a green card before they need to renew their TN visa.
2. Australians have E-3, so that is what they will use.
3. The Chinese use H1B's but the numbers have dropped as more Chinese prefer to stay in China or return there after their foreign education since a lot of big Chinese tech companies have sprung up.
4. Europeans either do not want to move to the US, they sometimes don't try to have a prospective employer sponsor for H1b visas since a lot of them seem to believe that Indians have a monopoly on those visas.
You're left with mostly Indians, most of who study STEM subjects in college, overwhelmingly come to the US for studies and then hop on to work visas post-graduation. Most of the highest paying tech employers in India are American companies even then many Indians still want to move to the US since there are still a lot of socio-political and quality of life issues in India.
Take all these points and that's how so many H1B's go to Indians.
Because all else being equal, that skew shouldn't exist. There is nothing inherent to Indian people (or any other people) making them better at these jobs, so there is value to understanding why their numbers are so high. And by value, I mean value to US citizens. It could show us how we can improve within the country, or it could expose fraud in the system. Or a mix of both.
> There is nothing inherent to Indian people (or any other people) making them better at these jobs, so there is value to understanding why their numbers are so high.
Their numbers are so high simply because they represent almost a fifth of humanity - there are almost as many Indians as there are people in Europe, South & Central America put together.
This is just obviously and factually wrong. Even average age differs greatly between countries. Why would they have the same degrees/skills/value? You just want to chop down the forest because trees are different heights - you're optimizing for nothing based on nothing.
So what about Basketball ? Should there be more whites ? Is that skewed by design ? Have you ever thought about the various factors behind why a certain group dominates certain fields or you just think it is unfair and on purpose ?
It's funny that you bring up sports, because one of the hot topics in the sports world right now is that there should be less whites in many positions, from coaching to ownership.
It's supposed to be accepted as fact that if there are a lot of non-whites somewhere, it's simply because they're better. But if there are a lot of whites somewhere, it's because of racism.
You didn't answer my question though and deflected. I am not talking about whites being discriminated (thats a separate topic). I am discussing the "skewed" comment you made. Why do you think Basketball has less whites ? Let me add a few more. Why do you think a lot of Gas Stations are owned by Asians ? Why do you think a lot of Landscapers are hispanics/Latinos/South Americans ?
>>>> Let me flip your question too: why do you think it matters?
Sure, it matters because there are tens of millions of black, hispanic, and latino US citizens -- numerous with CS/STEM degrees -- who cannot get into FAANGs. Many end up in retail or as best buy tech squad reps or tmobile store salespersons.
Yet we're told that someone from a foreign country is a better candidate for these FAANG jobs. In my experience, half the foreign workers cannot even speak english legibly.
Do Americans and the US Government owe at least some chance to local citizens who are being passed over for jobs generation after generation?
Surely there must be something the profit driven FAANG companies are seeing that they prefer hiring broken English speaking Indians over American hispanics/blacks with tech degrees?
With FAANG companies it is not as much profit driven as much as it is that they get an employee who will have to work harder than others due to keeping their visa, and will stay for longer at least until their green card processing is complete and they have their I-140.
> Sure, it matters because there are tens of millions of black, hispanic, and latino US citizens -- numerous with CS/STEM degrees -- who cannot get into FAANGs.
FAANGs aren't discriminating against black, hispanic and latino US citizens. If someone can't get into FAANG its not because of their "race" or "citizenship", it's because they can't pass the hiring bar -- whether hiring is broken is another question, but hiring isn't biased against blacks latinos and hispanics.
> Many end up in retail or as best buy tech squad reps or tmobile store salespersons.
This comparison is disingenuous. Had you said they therefore have to work in the government sector as software engineers, I'd say you might have a point. But your comment reads as: "because they can't get a job as at FAANG they work at t-mobile as salespeople.
The US government is supposed to first and foremost take care of US citizens, not just allow them to be pushed out of jobs because corporations would rather import cheap labor.
In the tech labor market (as per the post) the labor simply isn't available. We don't generally see American software engineers languishing and unable to find jobs.
I guarantee that the like of Microsystems, Google, and Amazon were not paying the poster a pittance.
>We don't generally see American software engineers languishing and unable to find jobs.
That was me from 2016 to 2018. Trust me, there are weirdos like me out there in the country that can't get a job. I decided to go all in on this exciting tech stack called Ruby on Rails. I heard all the cool kids were doing it. Spend all my life savings trying to get in on the action. What I didn't realize is that they were all unemployed......as a result I don't think Matz is so nice.
I'm ok now, wasting my life writing one line of code a day on software that does not make one lick of difference in this world (and no its not in ruby on rails): The American dream™
Not sure who you hang out with, but black, hispanic, and latino US citizens have a very hard time getting jobs despite having software engineering degrees. They end up in GS-5 equivalent military tech "careers" or crappy geek squad jobs.
If you have friends in each of these categories who are skilled, I’ll interview them. Job is onsite in San Francisco. Interview is leetcode style plus software design.
Since it isn’t based primarily on past experience, it won’t matter that they haven’t had opportunity if they do have the skills.
I’m in HFT. Only hire people I’d consider capable and I’m comfortable with our interview process. If they knock the interview off the hook they’ll be in. Let me know.
Nobody wants to work for your crappy startup. What you are asking for requires a lot of sacrifice and investment (living in an overpriced dump called SF, leetcode interviews, dealing with people like you) for not enough benefits hence thats why you rely on outside "help".
I agree with your first statement. I've never felt threatened by imported cheap labor in my role though. I think our immigration laws should protect US citizens but what they seem to be doing is allowing companies to hire people for cheap but not giving a very good path for those people to become US citizens even though they're contributing to US companies and the US economy as a whole.
If you're worried about losing your job to cheap labor that's an issue with our immigration system not a problem with immigration in general. You should be asking yourself why companies are allowed to pay non-US citizens less for the same jobs we're doing.
I, personally, have zero fear of being replaced by cheap labor. I've climbed high enough in what I do and I know how valuable my skillset is. But I see it all over the place, and it still concerns me.
> You should be asking yourself why companies are allowed to pay non-US citizens less for the same jobs we're doing.
I would ask myself this, but I know the answer. It's because these companies have our lawmakers in their pockets. That is the problem that really needs to be solved, which would take care of this and many other issues.
Do you agree that should be weighted by the need of the country to remain competitive, say in the hypothetically scenario where we came to the conclusion that the average american is lazy, and that that's the core reason why immigrants replace them?
The entire reason we have this system is so that the country can remain competitive, which is an important and valid reason. But it was never meant to be what it has become, which is just a way to import cheap labor. It needs to get back to what it was supposed to be, which is a way to bring in highly-skilled labor that simply can't be found in the US, at the same pay US citizens would receive.
The country shouldn’t act in the interests of the “country” but rather in the interests of its citizens. “Replacing” the citizens (sounds a little genocidal) is not in the citizens best interests.
This is an emotional subject. I've gone through this but come from a country that has a relatively easy path.
The source of the huge delay for Indian-born people is these four facts:
1. India has a population exceeding one billion;
2. Green cards have a diversity rule that no more than 7% of applicants can come from a single country;
3. Your category is based solely on country of birth not country of citizenship; and
4. H1B visas have no per-country caps or quotas (beyond the total annual quota).
The companies that are really ruining this for anyone are the bodyshops like Tata and Infosys who direclty benefit from the situation. As the article mentions, if you have a pending I140 petition you can stay beyond the 6 year limit and changing jobs is dangerous. So employes get to hold this over employees creating an indentured servant type situation for 10+ years. These bodyshops flood applications and create the lottery problem.
There are numerous problems with all of this and (I really do hate to say this but it's true) the only administration who even made noises about reforming the H1B system was the Trump administration like basing H1B on salary (these bodyshops pay low for software engineers). None of this came to pass.
Here's one big problem: children ageing out of the system. If an Indian national has a pending green card petition and their child is born outside the US and that child gets to age 18 before the petition is approved, they are no longer eligible to receive a green card as part of their family's petition. Given how long Indian delays are, this may mean deporting someone to a country they left when they were 6 months old and have no memory of. They may not even speak the language.
Prior to the pandemic a couple of bills floated around to fix this backlog, most notably S369 [1]. These all ultimately went nowhere and (IMHO) had a lot of problems. For example, this didn't really increase the annual caps (it did, kinda, by only counting the petitioner and not their family against the quota) and eliminated the per-country cap. But what this would've done is made things terrible for everyone else for a transition period of years.
I am an H1B holder and an Indian national. The bodyshops alone did not screw this up. A TON of Indians come here for graduate school, the main motive being that it is an easier path to getting a job here in the US. A lot of them also end up on H1B's and have their companies sponsor them for residency permits. A lot of those students have zero passion in what they're studying but it's all ok for them for a chance to work here.
A family friend's kid just arrived here for his MS CS. He told me upfront that he plagiarized all through his undergrad and couldn't write basic programs. I was like "why on earth would you purse an MS in CS then?". I saw a lot of folks like that.
Attributing all the problems to those bodyshops is a bit disingenuous IMO. Yes they are part of the problem. Even Chinese nationals face 5+ years backlog for their green cards. Limiting immigration from populous countries based on arbitrary country caps for employment based immigration makes no sense. As it is it is a small piece of the overall immigration pie (14% and if we count only primary applicants, ~5%).
What is happening due to this is all advocacy to fix this has to be done by the folks in backlogs (Indians & Chinese) and the rest of the world folks can happily go about business as usual. Yes, H1 reform is needed but green card reform is needed yesterday.
All of the factors I listed apply to China. But even though both countries have similar populations, around two-thirds of H1B applicants are Indian nationals. Bodyshops are a big factor here. This flood of H1B applications is a big factor in everyone having to go through a lottery.
So if two-thirds of the H1B applicants are Indian nationals but the current system caps per-country green cards at 7% (per category), you see why Indian nationals have a much longer wait time than anyone else.
In saying that I'm not denying others (eg China, Mexico, the Phillipines) don't have long wait times too.
This is a great point that is rarely mentioned. China has larger population than India yet has a much shorter backlog so is it really the fault of the US immigration system that India has a long backlog? The Indian outsourcing industry and India’s lower level of economic development are parts of the problem.
Why does it not make sense? Imagine you have factory workers making 15$ an hour and a company decides to import labor to work at 10$ an hour because there’s “no limits” to immigration. The government should act in the interests of its citizens.
It's in the interest of citizens to get their goods at the cheapest price. Thats why you have imports, which is no less than importing the produce of labor.
With people, you have the added benefit that if people working within your country they spend and consume in your country.
Countries all over the world fight each other for talent, and the US immigration system is doing to itself what other countries spend money to prevent.
Do you know what discrimination means? This is literally discrimination. Yes, it is encoded in law, still is discrimination. Imagine this, next time you getting interviewed by someone, and he rejects you,because you are not chineese/Indian. Then you'll be discriminated and that would be acceptable, per law. I'm sure your definition of discrimination won't change then.
Not the op, but to be pedantic, every single international border crossing in the world is an official government “nationality discrimination” department. That’s what passports are for. (Not saying I necessarily agree with this, but it is the world we live in)
I'm just trying to understand the meaning of "I wouldn't want anyone to be discriminated" in the context of "Now i wouldn't want anyone to be discriminated but still it makes sense to limit green card based on nationality". I just think it is unclear. If we want to discriminate by nationality then we should just admit it and say we're going to discriminate by nationality instead of being covert about it.
Emma Lazarus posted a poem in 1903 and now the US has to bend over backwards to make everyone a citizen. The amount of people I hear living or working in the US that explain away bureaucracy as racist/xenophobic/etc while hailing from countries that literally won't allow you to become a citizen unless your genetic parents are from there is insane. It's obviously not a monolith of people but it does become tiresome hearing about how the US is a byzantine of immigration as if there is some obligation for US citizens to adopt every nation while the other side of the mouth explains how racist the US is and all the while the nations large swaths of immigrants are coming from won't let US citizens hold their passport unless they are multimillionaire investors.
You cannot compare policies with any random country - most immigrants pick the countries that have already hoarded all the wealth over centuries by waging and funding wars. In light of that history, the US should do a lot more than bend over backwards as reparations.
> obligation for US citizens to adopt every nation
The legal immigrants that came here are mostly self-supporting people whose taxes and spending supports a lot of US citizens.
Therefore your statement is almost entirely reversed, it is beneficial to the country that these people join us here.
Of course, we can kill the H1B program entirely. Businesses will find a way, except this time all of the aforementioned taxes and spending will happen somewhere else. Sundar Pichai, Elon Musk, Sergey Brin, Satya Nadella, they'll all work elsewhere, along with millions of other people in the tech community.
How many people in India had exactly the same idea at the same time?
If 1 billion people suddenly all wanted to go to the same restaurant, or do anything that involves certain form of capacity, that system would collapse.
Then, companies want to keep people under H1B as long as possible because H1B is a form of control.
You keep claiming the system is “at capacity” with no evidence, and the psychological trauma it inflicts as inevitable. How does it strain the system differently to process an Indian applicant than an Australian one?
I went through the same process as this man, so I am speaking from experience.
The actual impact to my life was negligible, as all of the actual work was done by immigration lawyers. The only thing I had to do was submitting some info to the attorneys, a biometrics appointment and a short interview. And paying fees, and presenting a vaccination record.
And the system is at capacity because there are long waiting times, which is the definition of a saturated system. And this is public, published information.
If the guy has anxiety and checks the case status every 1 minute, there are good solutions for that, all of which have nothing to do with the immigration system.
> I went through the same process as this man, so I am speaking from experience.
Did you go through an EB2 application as an Indian/Chinese? If not, then it's not the same process. For every other national, you know your status in a couple of months, not decades. Children do not age out of the application as happens for Indians/Chinese.
But then, that aging you described happened while residing in the US where you were making money hand over fist same as a US national. And your US-born kids are citizens.
So in the end the only difference is the inconvenience of the paperwork that you worked on very rarely. The rest of the time you were enjoying life in the US.
So, this story of 18 years of suffering is really nonsense. The guy had a great time working at great companies and making millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and stock while being midly bothered by some paperwork that was mostly prepared by an attorney.
The average small business owner is bothered by the government 1000x more and won't have the prosper life of a MAANG engineer.
> So in the end the only difference is the inconvenience of the paperwork that you worked on very rarely. The rest of the time you were enjoying life in the US.
I'd disagree with that assessment. The issue really isn't the amount or the effort of paperwork - for most people it's the uncertainty. There's the very real possibility that at the end of that very long process you do not get a green card. The making money hand over fist also only applies to a certain proportion of Indian applicants, especially in tech. There are plenty of other Indian applicants who make nowhere near as much money and face just as much (if not more) of an uphill task. For example, I'm an Indian working as a postdoctoral researcher in Developmental Biology & cancer and yet make probably less than a tenth of what this guy does. Nor does the US offer substantially better pay in this field as compared to say, Europe (worse in some ways). Yet for me it still feels worth it because the work here is just better in my field, but at some level the system feels incredibly unfair. My European colleagues are able to apply and get an EB3 green card in a few months that's very little paperwork while the only reasonable pathway for me is an EB1 petition that's exponentially harder and a lot more paperwork. My European colleagues could go directly from a J1 visa to an EB3 visa simply because their petition will be processed in a few months. For an Indian in my position that's not possible - I must first secure an H1B/O1 before I can think of an EB1/2 petition. All the Indians I know in my field who have green cards have had to make EB1 petitions while none of the Europeans have had to.
Here's the practical considerations - very few companies in my field offer immigration support. The Europeans tend to apply for an EB3 after about a year or two of postdoctoral experience and move into industry with their prompt green cards. For Indians and Chinese postdocs, they tend to work for an average of 6 years before they've accrued enough publications to wrangle an EB1 petition. That's 6 years of grueling work at very very low pay and a very uncertain future at the end of it - but only for the Indians/Chinese.
Seems like a nonsensical system. I could then say “considering how saturated the system is, I see a working system” about an immigration system that has exactly one immigration agent working exactly once every 3 decades. That system would also be “working”. Which makes what you’re saying rather comedic.
You use Hacker news. Hacker news rate limits requests and throttles some activity like commenting.
Do they do it because they hate people? Because they have an evil political affiliation? No.
They do it because of simple common sense and I agree with it. Same with the immigration system which is similar to the one from my country of origin.
The guy in the article is definitely a the type of immigrant any country wants, sure. But he comes from a country where you have jerks like Infosys and Tata submitting 10 copies of the same application for every employee, DoSing the USCIS. And where there are fake universities with 24/7 phone numbers and websites and fake photos. And a world of cheating in every aspect imaginable.
This has resulted in higher skepticism not only from the USCIS but from every governmental immigration agency on the planet.
These are the dichotomies I(and many immigrants) have had to live with. Time is a great healer of things and over time and with financial cushions the dichotomy might fade, I am still not sure it completely goes away. One can only think of the present and make the best of it.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/01/the-mak... [2] https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Karma_of_Brown_Folk...