It was nighttime in Singapore when the ruling was announced. My husband and I scrambled to find a flight back. The best we could find, at any price, lands 25mins after the deadline.
I feel for you. I just wonder, at this point why would someone look to go back to the US "At any price", given how bad are they being treated? From what I can see, it seems most of us non-US people are "persona non grata" in the US.
I myself am and live in a so called "shithole country ". But specially because of my Technical skills, I've got plenty of opportunities over here. I would never think on living in the USA. Even though I easily could via TN visa. But it's clear US people dont want me living there.
And even if you decide it's time to leave, you'd still want to come back and settle your affairs and plan a proper move. You wouldn't want to leave everything behind, especially if you only brought enough for a brief trip.
That's an increasing consideration for people thinking about moving to the US or those who aren't settled there yet. But, of course, people who already have family and belongings there will want to get back in to at least sort those things out before leaving for good.
I did move away from the US because of these reasons, and it's been a good decision in retrospect. But no one likes uprooting their entire life and it takes years to build a new one somewhere else.
The calculus on immigrating to the US today is clearly negative, but many people immigrated 5/10/20+ years ago before all this shit and have lives there. They did not know any of this would happen.
I'd rather just have waited until an injunction or something next week. The guidance from my company is either make it back before the deadline, or stay where you are until further notice.
Rushing to the US and getting detained by border patrol in a foreign country isn't exactly a shinier alternative at this point. I'd take my risks with my job over my life in those shoes.
the whole US visa morass is complicated and volatile enough that a lot of large companies have dedicated teams who help advise their employees on visa issues and how to best navigate them. this "guidance" is basically saying "this is our lawyers' best guess as to how to stay safe over the next few weeks"
that was not at all certain yesterday, and even now there's the constant fact that a border agent can decide to be nasty and use this as a pretext to deny you entry, with no real recourse on your part.
as a parallel example, trump recently decided that you could no longer get your visa stamped in a third country (which a lot of indians did as a matter of course, because wait times for an appointment can be very high back home). there was an explicit carve out for people who had already made appointments at some third country embassy, but a lot of those people went to their stamping appointment and not only did not get the renewal but had their existing visa cancelled (which is apparently within the powers of the embassy official), so they could not even return to the US while waiting for an appointment date in their country of residence, and are basically on unpaid leave right now (best case scenario, would not be too shocked if some of them lose their jobs if they are away for too long).
I don't understand your comment. My reply was today, in response to a comment that was posted less than an hour before mine, both hours after this was announced. How is yesterday relevant?
microsoft sent their letter out when it was highly likely the new diktat applied to existing visa holders too. they had very little time to respond if they wanted to make sure people got home before the absurdly short deadline.
That's not generally true, of course. It requires they're legally employed, and have the proper work visas. I was confused. I thought the company was doing something shady, for it to matter, since it doesn't apply to current visa holders.
Via what mechanism? Will they be ready to accept the payments a few hours from now? Ready to process the re-entry with procedures that aren’t even developed yet?
Getting into the country before the deadline is the only safe way to avoid the uncertainty and ensure you don’t get stranded out of the country or in an airport for days or weeks while the process is developed.
This hastily constructed and implemented executive order is a terrible way to run a country
lived 5yr on L1A. It's a week to leave the country if laid off. But at the same time, most of the penalties/costs fall on the sponsoring company for all cases.
ICE black shirts make it more uncertain on enforcement, but there's still laws.
The expected value for immigrants is rapidly shifting into it being more favorable to be an illegal, because ICE/CBP is mostly going after low hanging fruit of easy to catch people that they know about with homes and salary jobs / university and a visa. People that are off paper and 100 miles past the border are as good as gone. So basically what we get is the exact opposite of what we want.
Your own premise destroys your argument. If they're grabbing 'whoever' it's at least as easy to grab immigrants with a paper record as those that don't.
We are on our way there.